Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Laptop slows down /increased CPU consumption when connected to power


I came across this issue in my dell laptop (linux) where the laptop slowed down as soon as I was putting it to charging. This is generally counter-intuitive where you would expect the performance to increase on connecting it to power. I believe Windows OS even has settings where your laptop can move to high performance if plugged to a power source.

On searching the internet and going through my system logs, I was finally able to resolve the issue.

The solution turned out to be pretty simple:


Open the local.conf file, typically in the location-> /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf

Edit the file and add the following line:

drm_kms_helper poll=N  

You need to save the file and restart your computer.
It worked like magic for me :)


Have come to know from a friend that the problem is not restricted to Linux OS but also extends to windows. We are trying to investigate the issue and will post if we get a solution to it.