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I don't know how much power my system consuming and My UPS also behaves in a strange way. So I googled and stopped at Ubuntu Power Management. Installed powertop and everything is fine.

As mentioned in wiki documentation if I use sudo pm-powersave true it will enter into low power mode, so because of doing like this I can save some power but is there any type of problem I am going to face?

Bottom line, is there any disadvantage now or in future if I turn on low power mode?

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Raja G
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    I am confused. Your title asks about powertop but your question asks about pm-powersave. – N.N. Dec 29 '12 at 19:12
  • @N.N. well , I think you probably need a eye on wiki doc link I have placed in there my friend . Thank you . – Raja G Dec 29 '12 at 19:14
  • But your question seems to be about pm-powersave and not about powertop even though they are related. It is confusing that your title and your question does not match. Maybe you could clarify it with an edit? – N.N. Dec 29 '12 at 19:19
  • @N.N. friend How about now ? – Raja G Dec 29 '12 at 19:21
  • Your question still seems to be solely about low power mode and note about powertop. Maybe you should have the title reflect that? – N.N. Dec 29 '12 at 19:24
  • @N.N. yes you are right . – Raja G Dec 29 '12 at 19:25
  • http://askubuntu.com/questions/285434/is-there-a-power-saving-application-similar-to-jupiter/285681#285681 – Qasim Jun 14 '13 at 14:29

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I don't turn on low power mode in case something depends on reported/base clock versus actual clock with power save. Example: VMWare will warn you if the two are different.

This is also a good reason not to underclock video cards and whatever else. You can get "weird" problems that you can't pin down.

That being said, you're probably fine.

If you wanted to do gaming or high performance computing/number crunching, anything that tries to absolutely utilize hardware, then it's probably best not to use it.

In the case of multimedia there may be highly optimized decoders that experience bugs under power saving modes.

So low power mode is best only for general operations.

RobotHumans
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  • Is there any relevant reference on this topic you could link? – N.N. Dec 29 '12 at 19:30
  • @N.N. It's a personal experience thing. Really intense game engines like Cryengine performed worse overclocked/underclocked. Some Lucasarts games experienced weird tearing issues with underclocked video. I can screenshot the VMWare warning if you want... – RobotHumans Dec 29 '12 at 19:36
  • A screenshot would make your answer even better. – N.N. Dec 29 '12 at 19:37