Hi, newbie here, this issue has been plaguing my laptop for a while. The power limit somehow dropped to 5W instead of 50W and tanks my fps to only 10fps. The issue first happened when I was playing War Thunder, so I decided to try out other games to see if it also occurs, and it did. I have tried switching open and closed drivers and even reinstalling the OS, reinstalling did fix for a while and it came back. In the Nvidia settings it showed default and max TGP as “N/A”.
Sat Nov 23 12:19:06 2024
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 565.57.01 Driver Version: 565.57.01 CUDA Version: 12.7 |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A |
| N/A 69C P8 8W / 5W | 902MiB / 4096MiB | 100% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 939 G /usr/lib/Xorg 95MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 1826 G ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 2MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 2133 G ./steamwebhelper 3MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 2172 C+G ....local/share/Steam/logs/cef_log.txt 4MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 7595 C+G sober 783MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nvidia-powerd.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2024-11-23 16:22:11 WIB; 3h 59min ago
Duration: 14ms
Invocation: c5363a21938d445b834205fd60c0f698
Process: 687 ExecStart=/usr/bin/nvidia-powerd (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 687 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Mem peak: 1.7M
CPU: 4ms
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo systemd[1]: Started nvidia-powerd service.
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: nvidia-powerd version:1.0(build 1)
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: SBIOS support not found for NVPCF GET_SUPPORTED function
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: No matching GPU found
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: Failed to initialize Dynamic Boost
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: Failed to detach GPU id 256
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: Failed to initialize Dynamic Boost
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[687]: Failed to detach GPU id 256
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Nov 23 16:22:11 FreakyLenovo systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
From what I read your card will probably be unsupported by nvidia-powerd, for several reasons.
That service is there to raise GPU power limits in case the total system power usage is still not exhausted, for example because the CPU is not fully loaded and there is headroom left. The usecase is usually with laptops (as above articles say) because they are pretty limited on power delivery and pulling too much might cause damage to power regulators.
But then, that’s not your problem but the card locking down to 5 W.
Disabling nvidia-powerd would have no effect for you as it was already dead.
What does nvidia-smi -q -d POWER show?
For me it’s (+ inline comments):
$ nvidia-smi -q -d POWER
==============NVSMI LOG==============
Timestamp : Tue Nov 26 11:06:40 2024
Driver Version : 565.57.01
CUDA Version : 12.7
Attached GPUs : 1
GPU 00000000:01:00.0
GPU Power Readings
Power Draw : 18.64 W <-- what it's currently pulling when not in D3cold or drained
Current Power Limit : 65.00 W <-- that should be around the default and can be modified by a running nvidia-powerd on a laptop (like mine is)
Requested Power Limit : N/A <-- you can modify the power limit with "sudo nvidia-smi -pl <watt>" - that is, if the platform, the card and the driver supports it (which is not the case for me)
Default Power Limit : 60.00 W <-- default after driver initialization on boot
Min Power Limit : 1.00 W <-- minimum
Max Power Limit : 75.00 W <-- maximum; is this your 5 W?
Power Samples
Duration : Not Found
Number of Samples : Not Found
Max : Not Found
Min : Not Found
Avg : Not Found
GPU Memory Power Readings
Power Draw : N/A
Module Power Readings
Power Draw : N/A
Current Power Limit : N/A
Requested Power Limit : N/A
Default Power Limit : N/A
Min Power Limit : N/A
Max Power Limit : N/A
sorry for the late reply, it took awhile for the issue to reappear
this is during the issue occuring
nvidia-smi -q -d POWER
==============NVSMI LOG==============
Timestamp : Wed Nov 27 21:27:33 2024
Driver Version : 565.57.01
CUDA Version : 12.7
Attached GPUs : 1
GPU 00000000:01:00.0
GPU Power Readings
Power Draw : 5.17 W
Current Power Limit : 5.00 W
Requested Power Limit : 50.00 W
Default Power Limit : 50.00 W
Min Power Limit : 1.00 W
Max Power Limit : 50.00 W
Power Samples
Duration : Not Found
Number of Samples : Not Found
Max : Not Found
Min : Not Found
Avg : Not Found
Ugh, hm. So it’s not possible to change the power limit.
Wonder how it got there in the first place.
Maybe the folks at NVIDIA Developer Forums > Linux can help.
Another idea: You could try both open and closed nvidia kernel drivers to see if it makes a difference:
$ pacman -Ss linux-cachyos-nvidia
cachyos-v3/linux-cachyos-nvidia 6.12.1-2
nvidia module of 565.57.01 driver for the linux-cachyos kernel
cachyos-v3/linux-cachyos-nvidia-open 6.12.1-2 [installed]
nvidia open modules of 565.57.01 driver for the linux-cachyos kernel