It isn’t looking good from an audio perspective.
You’re using the “powersave” governor (“The governor “powersave” may decide which speed to use
within this range”) when you should be using the “performance” one instead.
Run cpupower -c all frequency-set -g performance as root.
I have had a look and if I am correct , I will need to change this in the conf file.
dx@dx ~ $ urpmi cpupower perf
Packages perf-4.9.95-2-rosa2016.1.x86_64, cpupower-4.9.95-2-rosa2016.1.x86_64 are already installed
dx@dx ~ $ cpupower
Usage: cpupower [-d|–debug] [-c|–cpu cpulist ] []
Supported commands are:
frequency-info
frequency-set
idle-info
idle-set
set
info
monitor
help
Not all commands can make use of the -c cpulist option.
Use 'cpupower help ’ for getting help for above commands.
dx@dx ~ $ cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 500 MHz - 3.00 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 500 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
The governor “powersave” may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 2.45 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
dx@dx ~ $ cpupower frequency-set -g powersave
Subcommand frequency-set needs root privileges
dx@dx ~ $ su
Password:
dx dx # cpupower frequency-set -g powersave
Setting cpu: 0
Setting cpu: 1
Setting cpu: 2
Setting cpu: 3
dx dx # cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 500 MHz - 3.00 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 500 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
The governor “powersave” may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: 2.49 GHz (asserted by call to hardware)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
dx dx # sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/cpupower
If you would like to use a particular CPU frequency scaling governor
rather than the default one, specify it here.
CPUPOWER_GOVERNOR=
Other command-line arguments to cpupower.
See ‘cpupower help’ and cpupower(1) for more info.
The command you want to run before doing audio is cpupower frequency-set -g performance , not powersave.
You could remove the # in front of CPUPOWER_GOVERNOR= and add performance after the equal sign but that would mean that you’re always running in performance mode and that’s not necessary for your every day computer use.
The /etc/sysconfig/cpupower line is probably case-sensitive, so you should type performance and not PERFORMANCE.
But unless you’re only using that computer for audio work and for nothing else I suggest you run the command instead.
Running in performance mode when doing word processing, writing an email or checking out some web pages is a waste of cpu cycles and energy.
dx dx # cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 500 MHz - 3.00 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 500 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
The governor “performance” may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: 2.40 GHz (asserted by call to hardware)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
I don’t think you have to fiddle with the GPU settings because I don’t think Ardour is that graphics intensive.
But if Ardour is using a lot of CPU you can try and set the GPU max frequency to something low, like 550, and see if you can get some extra CPU cycles available.
Do you have dropouts or x-runs? A lot of modern CPUs do switch frequencies quickly enough. If you don’t have any issues, don’t bother, but if you do have drop-outs, disabling frequency scaling is the first thing to check. – The main issues is that low average CPU usage (not per core) may hold things down.
