Ubuntu 19.04 high power consumption with intel integrated graphics

Question

Aero 17 laptop w/ 9750H processor, nvidia gtx 1660ti, 1080P 144hz monitor

Windows 10 reports 8 hours of battery life Ubuntu 19.04 reports 2 hours

In Ubuntu 19.04, reporting sky-high 30-40 watt discharge at idle with integrated graphics.

Tested: kernel 5.0.x vs. 5.1.x

Tested: Brightness to lowest setting

Tested: 144hz vs 60hz refresh

Tested: Airplane mode

Tested: powertop --auto-tune

Still consistently between 30-40 watt discharge at idle

Here is the kicker... if I switch to nvidia graphics via prime-select, the power consumption drops to 16-22watts at idle. Almost seems like the high power consumption lies with intel integrated graphics, but that sounds a bit crazy.

I tried to disable the nvidia graphics card in the bios, but doesn't seem to be an option in the bios interface.

Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Powerstat output

  Time    User  Nice   Sys  Idle    IO  Run Ctxt/s  IRQ/s Fork Exec Exit  Watts  pch_ca iwlwif acpitz x86_pk  CPU Freq  GPU W
22:48:01   0.3   0.6   0.2  98.9   0.0    1    532    370   14   12   25   -nanE  48.00  40.00  27.80  45.00  1.61 GHz   0.01
22:48:11   0.2   0.0   0.1  99.7   0.0    1    367    217    0    0    2  33.86   47.00  39.00  27.80  45.00  0.80 GHz   0.00
22:48:21   0.6   0.0   0.2  99.2   0.0    1    980    553    0    0    0  34.88   48.00  40.00  27.80  43.00  1.37 GHz   0.08
22:48:31   0.4   0.0   0.2  99.4   0.0    1    823    473    1    0    0  34.09   48.00  38.00  27.80  44.00  0.80 GHz   0.01
22:48:41   0.2   0.0   0.1  99.7   0.0    1    542    337    2    0    8  35.59   48.00  40.00  27.80  43.00  1.31 GHz   0.01
22:48:51   0.2   0.0   0.2  99.6   0.0    1    713    459   11    1   12  34.29   46.00  39.00  27.80  43.00  0.80 GHz   0.00
22:49:01   0.4   0.0   0.1  99.5   0.0    1    541    389    1    0   22  34.82   46.00  40.00  27.80  43.00  1.52 GHz   0.01
22:49:11   0.2   0.0   0.1  99.6   0.0    1    560    328    3    0    0  33.84   46.00  39.00  27.80  43.00  0.80 GHz   0.00
22:49:21   0.2   0.0   0.1  99.7   0.0    1    442    262    0    0    2  34.42   46.00  40.00  27.80  42.00  1.42 GHz   0.01
^C-------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ---- ---- ------  ------ ------ ------ ------ --------- ------
 Average   0.3   0.1   0.2  99.5   0.0  1.0  611.1  376.6  3.6  1.4  7.9  34.47   47.00  39.44  27.80  43.44  1.16 GHz   0.01
 GeoMean   0.3   0.0   0.1  99.5   0.0  1.0  585.9  362.8  0.0  0.0  0.0  34.47   46.99  39.44  27.80  43.43  1.11 GHz   0.01
  StdDev   0.1   0.2   0.0   0.3   0.0  0.0  182.0   99.9  4.9  3.7  9.2   0.53    0.94   0.68   0.00   0.96  0.33 GHz   0.02
-------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ---- ---- ------  ------ ------ ------ ------ --------- ------
 Minimum   0.2   0.0   0.1  98.9   0.0  1.0  366.7  217.4  0.0  0.0  0.0  33.84   46.00  38.00  27.80  42.00  0.80 GHz   0.00
 Maximum   0.6   0.6   0.2  99.7   0.0  1.0  979.5  552.9 14.0 12.0 25.0  35.59   48.00  40.00  27.80  45.00  1.61 GHz   0.08
-------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ---- ---- ------  ------ ------ ------ ------ --------- ------
Summary:
System:  34.47 Watts on average with standard deviation 0.53  
GPU:   0.01 Watts on average with standard deviation 0.02  
Note: Power calculated from battery capacity drain, may not be accurate.


C-State    Resident      Count Latency 
C10         96.677%      30301     890
C9           0.106%        539     480
C8           2.261%      10202     200
C7s          0.002%         18     124
C6           0.271%       4707      85
C3           0.011%        782      70
C1E          0.027%        943      10
C1           0.027%        439       2
POLL         0.000%         41       0
C0           0.619%

PowerTop Output

The battery reports a discharge rate of 36.8 W
The power consumed was 0.00 J
The estimated remaining time is 1 hours, 37 minutes

Summary: 796.7 wakeups/second,  0.0 GPU ops/seconds, 0.0 VFS ops/sec and 9.1% CPU use

                Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
            316.5 µs/s     170.6        Timer          tick_sched_timer
             21.9 ms/s     124.6        Process        [PID 4719] powertop
              0.0 µs/s      0.00        Process        [PID 1954] /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no
              5.8 ms/s     114.1        Interrupt      PS/2 Touchpad / Keyboard / Mouse
              8.3 ms/s      65.2        Process        [PID 1886] /usr/bin/gnome-shell

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestions @Raffa. It helped me discover this solution, which brought my power consumption from 30+ to 10 watts. Definitely has to do with Nvidia gpu drawing power even when Intel integrated is selected.

Source: https://askubuntu.com/a/1145796/1002029

1. make sure Intel integrated is enabled using prime-select intel, then execute:

sudo -i
modprobe bbswitch
sudo tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFF