Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop performance - setting CPU frequency governor to performance

Solution 1:

You had 3 questions:

Should I be changing the governors like this?

Sure, if that is what you want to do. The cost is higher energy consumption. Note that even using the performance governor the CPU itself can backoff the pstate (performance state) under very low load.

Some further research said that you shouldn't force performance with the intel_pstate driver. Is this true?

One shouldn't notice a great lot of difference between the powersave and performance CPU frequency governors using the intel_pstate CPU frequency driver. However, and apparently, you seems to have some sort of unique work flow that accentuates the difference. To answer your question: You can do whatever you want and whatever makes sense for your application.

If it's ok, how do I permanently set the governor to performance? I tried making a systemd service that set it at boot, but I'm not sure if it's working. It sets the governor to performance at boot, then changes it to powersave after a few minutes. This is when using the intel_pstate driver.

Ubuntu uses a script, /etc/init.d/ondemand, to change the governor to ondemand (or powersave if there is no ondemand) after 1 minute. So you'll have to delete, or modify it, or add some other boot script that sleeps for more than 1 minute before changing the governor back.

The default, defined by the Ubuntu kernel configuration file, is the performance governor during boot.