Hello @irqbalanceIsEvil, while I can see the point you're trying to make, distro packaging and what they decide to install by default or run as a service is outside the scope of this project. Indicating that you're also affected on the relevant bug reports on the distro's issue tracker is the right way to increase visibility of the issue. Discussing the matter here will not expedite a distro change.
Closing as not-our-issue.
Now, you should see better performance out of your system
@irqbalanceIsEvil I'm curious as what amount this is measured at and under what kinds of loads (especially single core and massively multi-core cases) with what kind of interrupts? Specifically I don't use a laptop and down powering cores is not an issue for me (as they tend to be quite busy with other tasks most of the time).
@OvermindDL1
Here, let me spell it out for you:
Any user-space application (like games, compilation…) can not get 100% of CPU resources on any thread because it’s always sharing this resources with IO tasks.
What has this fact got to do with laptops or even powering down CPU cores?
If you are still running irqbalance, you are not getting the maximum performance your system is capable of!
Also, here's a hint:
You don't need irqbalance to get Linux to distribute the interrupts among all your cores; the days of having CPU0 handle all incoming interrupts are long over!
Check with cat /proc/interrupts
I already don't have it, but something like Any user-space application (like games, compilation…) can not get 100% of CPU resources on any thread because it’s always sharing this resources with IO tasks. does not detail anything about 'how' and by what percentages of cost does it have one way or the other in a variety of conditions. I'm asking what measurable effect this has, not just what someones guess of an effect it may have. Numbers is what matters, and a quick Google'ing did not reveal any such benchmarks, and without such information then telling people to make a change to their system like that is unwarranted.
Nothing extracted yet.
First of all, the reason why I'm opening this issue here is because I hope to reach as many users as possible & ultimately would like to see Canonical removing "irqbalance" from their default install of Ubuntu and therefore all its derivatives, too! Even though there is already an open bug report for this, (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1833322) it is being ignored by Canonical! However, I strongly believe Valve has the necessary power & self-interest to get this through, especially now that 20.04 LTS is coming up next!
Therefore, I would very much appreciate it if this could be kept open or even pinned until the situation is resolved! (Similar to the 'fsync' issues.)
And since Ubuntu users compromise (EDIT: comprise! ;-P) the largest userbase of Proton, I believe that Valve would also like to see their software performing better 'out-of-the-box'!
So, to try to keep this as short as possible:
Please remove 'irqbalance' (
sudo apt remove irqbalance) and reboot!Now, you should see better performance out of your system! (Bonus points if also switching over to the "lowlatency" Linux kernel!)
This is true for a number of my systems & here are also further references I found on the internet:
Source: http://konkor.github.io/cpufreq/faq/#irqbalance-detected
Source: https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/81#issue-278801148
Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1067866/ubuntu-18-04-steam-games-frame-rate-drop
Source: https://github.com/konkor/cpufreq/issues/48#issuecomment-350495576
I really hope that Valve can once again achieve this for the greater good of a majority of Linux users!