[Solved] Intel laptop wifi high power draw with newest kernel/iwlwifi

[ChiefBigFeather]

Dear Community,

since I updated to the backported 6.11.x kernel and updated to the backported intel wifi drivers (because wifi wouldn't work without them), wifi (AX211) shows noticeably higher power draw in powertop. It seems that some powersaving features were disabled or do not work properly anymore.

Do you experience the same? Is there a fix?

Thanks in advance!

Chief

[arzgi]

Hello!

Usually questions are how to enable wifi, and how to disable wifi's powersave, I think you are the first to ask how to cut down power wifi uses.

I have no answer, maybe fill a bug report.

[Aki]

Hello,

since I updated to the backported 6.11.x kernel and updated to the backported intel wifi drivers (because wifi wouldn't work without them), wifi (AX211) shows noticeably higher power draw in powertop. It seems that some powersaving features were disabled or do not work properly anymore.

Do you experience the same? Is there a fix?

What is you wireless device exactly as per lspci -vnn output ?

Can you report figures from powertop ?

You may see here:

• Linux Wireless documentation - iwlwifi:

  Power management
  
  Starting from 3.17, power management has been disabled in iwldvm because users reported it improved the behavior and was a valid work around for issues. The commit that disabled power management is here.
  
  To enable manually power management, you can set the following module parameters to these values: iwlwifi.power_save=Y and iwldvm.force_cam=N.

• iwlwifi: dvm: disable power save by default

Hope this helps.

[ChiefBigFeather]

Thank you for the insights!

Here is what lspci -vnn returns:

Code: Select all

00:14.3 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi [8086:51f0] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz [8086:4090]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
	Memory at 6078194000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
	Kernel modules: iwlwifi

Powertop often reports 1.2 to 1.5 W, it depends a little on the network I'm in. After changing PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_BAT=low-power in TLP, the reported iwlwifi power draw is higher then the reported battery discharge rate.


I'm pretty new to Linux, if I want to enable or disable the powersaving features of my wifi card (and maybe see if they are enabled/disabled), how would I best go about it?
After enabling PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_BAT=low-power in TLP I think the reported battery discharge rate when idling went down quite a bit. From ~1.5W to ~0.9W with display backlight on the lowest setting, that seems quite good.

[Aki]

Hello,

After enabling PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_BAT=low-power in TLP I think the reported battery discharge rate when idling went down quite a bit. From ~1.5W to ~0.9W with display backlight on the lowest setting, that seems quite good.

Thanks for reporting back.

I'm glad you sorted it out.

Please, mark the discussion as "solved" manually adding the text tag "[Solved]" at the beginning of the subject of the first message (after other tags, if any).

Thanks.

[ChiefBigFeather]

Such things are hard to tell without rigorous testing tbh. Lots of variables to control and knowledge gaps on my side....

I will mark it as solved. If someone knows how to enable the powersaving features for the iwlwifi drivers, I'd still love to know (and maybe a way to easily check if they are enabled).