Comment 10 for bug 1188647

I switched from Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS with 3.80 kernel to Manjaro. The reason is Ubuntu enables nvidia optimus technology via the latest 319 drivers. In practice Ubuntu is among the few distros where the current implementation of works well. The frame rates with games go more than twice than with Bumblebee and optirun command. All this is fine if your intention are to use your laptop as a gaming machine. Sadly on my i7 ivybridge laptop, this also meant added heat to the tune of +10C and more at idle as compared to Bumblebee as well as very low battery life, I lost close to one and half hour.

I decided to try out Manjaro as it brings me to Arch minus the headaches. Manjaro implements latest nvidia 325 drivers during install with choice of kernel 3.4, 3.10 and latest 3.11 This also gave me a chance to try out Intel's Pstate driver. In 3.11 it has matured greatly. In practice compared to non Pstate kernel 3.4 the CPU at idle ran around 50C average whereas with 3.4 kernel they would run at 45C going down to 39c sometimes. This was kind of disappointing but I saw the cores getting better utilized and system response snappier than cpu freq ondemand. I then decided to install Intel Thermal Daemon and something wonderful occurred. The idle temps didn't go down but peak temps under full load never ever exceeded 60C with max of 68c under full load. Without the daemon under full load they would touch up to 75, still lower than close to 90c I was getting with Ubuntu and kernel 3.8

The temp average now puts Windows machine to shame, its lower under load and also battery life with TLP is as good as Windows machine. So looks like good things are in store for Linux in future. The kernel 3.11 is a beauty, rock stable and very efficient with far lower memory consumption. Time for Ubuntu to get into action on this.