Is it expected that Intel Arc dGPU consumes 10W even when not used (Fedora 41 laptop)?

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I recently installed Fedora 41 (KDE) on a Lenovo laptop with integrated Xe graphics and Arc discrete graphics. Battery life seemed to take a hit and powertop reported ~20W power draw while idle at the desktop. I confirmed (I think) that only the iGPU was being used with the following terminal command:

xxx@fedora:~$ glxinfo | grep -i "OpenGL"
OpenGL vendor string: Intel
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (ADL GT2)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 25.0.0
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
...

Next, in the BIOS, I disabled the discrete GPU (set BIOS to UMA graphics) and observed no change in the glxinfo output but powertop reported a 10W decrease in power consumption.

This is enough of a savings to nearly double the expected battery life.

It it normal/expected that a dGPU will consume that kind of power when not used? If not, can anyone advise on how to better determine what is keeping the dGPU in a state that is consuming that kind of power – and prevent it from doing so unless something is run that really needs some discrete acceleration?

Thanks.

System details:

Operating System: Fedora Linux 41
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.11.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700H
Memory: 15.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor 1: Mesa IntelÂŽ IrisÂŽ Xe Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: Mesa IntelÂŽ Arc
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 82VB
System Version: Lenovo Slim 7 16IAH7

GPU hardware:

xxx@fedora:~$ sudo lshw -numeric -C display
Identified face as xxx
  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] [8086:46A6]
       vendor: Intel Corporation [8086]
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 0c
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: iomemory:610-60f iomemory:400-3ff irq:154 memory:6101000000-6101ffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:3000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff memory:4010000000-4016ffffff memory:4020000000-40ffffffff
  *-display
       description: Display controller
       product: DG2 [Arc A370M] [8086:5693]
       vendor: Intel Corporation [8086]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       version: 05
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: iomemory:600-5ff irq:155 memory:5f000000-5fffffff memory:6000000000-60ffffffff

intel_gpu_top (Xe graphics):

intel-gpu-top: Intel Alderlake_p (Gen12) @ /dev/dri/card1 -    5/ 140 MHz
    80% RC6;  0.03/ 3.95 W;       13 irqs/s

         ENGINES     BUSY                                MI_SEMA MI_WAIT
       Render/3D    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
         Blitter    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
           Video    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
    VideoEnhance    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%

   PID              NAME  Render/3D    Blitter      Video    VideoEnhance
  4164      kwin_wayland |▏         ||          ||          ||          |
     1           systemd |          ||          ||          ||          |
  3923         kwalletd6 |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4255   maliit-keyboard |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4289          Xwayland |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4340         ksmserver |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4343             kded6 |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4380       plasmashell |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4437           kaccess |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4441   polkit-kde-auth |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4443   xdg-desktop-por |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4585       kdeconnectd |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4703   xwaylandvideobr |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4732   DiscoverNotifie |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4734        kalendarac |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4850   akonadi_control |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4972   akonadi_archive |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4973   akonadi_birthda |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4974   akonadi_contact |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4977   akonadi_followu |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4978   akonadi_ical_re |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4979   akonadi_indexin |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4980   akonadi_maildir |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4981   akonadi_maildis |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4982   akonadi_mailfil |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4983   akonadi_mailmer |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4984   akonadi_migrati |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4985   akonadi_newmail |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4986   akonadi_sendlat |          ||          ||          ||          |
  4987   akonadi_unified |          ||          ||          ||          |
  5716           konsole |          ||          ||          ||          |
  6731       baloorunner |          ||          ||          ||          |
 10840            chrome |          ||          ||          ||          |
 10890            chrome |          ||          ||          ||          |

intel_gpu_top (Arc graphics):

intel-gpu-top: Intel Dg2 (Gen12) @ /dev/dri/card0 -    0/   0 MHz
   100% RC6;        0 irqs/s

         ENGINES     BUSY                                MI_SEMA MI_WAIT
       Render/3D    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
         Blitter    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
           Video    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
    VideoEnhance    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%
       [unknown]    0.00% |                            |      0%      0%

   PID              NAME Render/3D Blitter   Video  [unknown]

powertop (reporting A370M utilization while intel_gpu_top does not):

The battery reports a discharge rate of 25.2 W
The energy consumed was 380 J
System baseline power is estimated at 24.6 W

Power est.    Usage     Device name
... (redacted) ...
            100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
... (redacted) ...
             55.6%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation DG2 [Arc A370M]
4

It is not a crazy amount. The lowest I have seen a dGPU run at idle is 7w, for a Nvidia 1650 in a desktop.

Why is it using energy without ‘doing anything?’ I don’t know.

5

Many hybrid systems share gpu memory so that means they still need to have power to detect when need more compute power and memory.

I have intel UHD iGPU and RYX 3050TI and dGPU mostly “off” but uses 7watt and monitoring shows intel gpu shares nvidia memory etc

6

Thanks for corroborating my findings. I had assumed a term like “switchable” graphics was more akin to an on/off switch than this sort of warm standby model. It’s unfortunate that it works this way, since 7-10W is such a large chunk of the power budget for this laptop.

In the meantime I have disabled the dGPU in BIOS. I spent an hour gaming with Moonlight Streaming and still had 5 hours estimated remaining battery life. So, at the least, I think the Xe graphics will cover my use cases.

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