Summary
- Ubuntu 25.04 will support NVIDIA Dynamic Boost for more GPU power on laptops.
- The nvidia-powerd daemon shifts around power limits for CPU and GPU.
- Dynamic Boost improves gaming, video editing, and 3D rendering performance in certain cases.
Windows has typically been the platform of choice for gaming, but Linux is becoming an increasingly useful option for playing games as well. With Ubuntu 25.04, you might be getting a cool feature that will squeeze more performance out of your computer.
Ubuntu 25.04, the next update to the popular Linux desktop operating system, will enable NVIDIA Dynamic Boost by default, leveraging the packaged NVIDIA driver support to dynamically optimize power allocation between the CPU and GPU. This is a technology designed for modern laptops equipped with discrete NVIDIA GPUs (dGPUs). It intelligently manages the power budget shared between the CPU and GPU, and shifts power towards the GPU when it’s under heavy load. This is achieved by dynamically down-clocking the CPU cores, freeing up more power for the graphics processor. Conversely, when the CPU is under heavy load and the GPU is relatively idle, power can be reallocated back to the CPU.
The key component enabling this functionality is the nvidia-powerd daemon, a system-wide power controller. This daemon monitors the power demands of both the CPU and GPU and adjusts their power limits accordingly. Until recently, Ubuntu’s NVIDIA driver packaging did not include the necessary service file for nvidia-powerd, preventing Dynamic Boost from functioning. A feature freeze exception was granted, allowing the Ubuntu team to include the nvidia-powerd service file in their NVIDIA driver package for Ubuntu 25.04. This means that the daemon will be shipped and enabled by default, and eligible computers will be able to benefit from the many advantages Dynamic Boost provides.
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In a nutshell, if you happen to have a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU, you’ll see an improvement in gaming scenarios, where the GPU might need more juice to keep the game running smoothly. Other GPU-intensive tasks, such as video editing and 3D rendering, could also benefit from the dynamic power allocation. It only kicks in when the GPU is getting more utilized and might need more power to keep the party going—some games are more CPU-intensive, such as Counter-Strike 2, and you might not see much of a performance increase in those specific games. And the larger performance gains will also depend on your exact hardware and game. If a game is running the GPU harder, it might see an improvement, but if the game already runs swell with the default settings, you won’t get extra frames or anything of the like.
Still, for those games that do benefit from this, this is a boon. It’s not the only change coming to Ubuntu 25.04. We have GNOME 48 and an update to the Linux kernel version 6.14. We also have the introduction of Dracut as an alternative to initramfs-tools and improvements to encryption and enhanced handling of BitLocker-encrypted disks, updated toolchains for Python, Go, Rust, and LLVM, and -O3 compiler optimizations (this latter one will result in faster loading times in apps). The addition of Dynamic Power is arguably the most user-facing change in this version, but all of the underlying changes eventually result in a faster and more stable operating system.
The next version of Ubuntu is coming out next month, so make sure to keep an eye for this if you want to check this out.
Source: Phoronix
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