Performance Modes

The performance-mode/performance profile controls the power-management strategy. It is currently unclear what exactly this includes, but one aspect is the fan-profile: On the default performance-mode it can happen that the dGPU (and possibly also CPU in models with a CPU fan) cannot reach it's full potential due to the fans not ramping up appropriately. Setting a higher performance-mode solves this problem.

On recent (v5.13+) kernels, the performance profile is controlled via the ACPI platform profile interface. This can, for example, be changed with by the power-profiles-daemon in use by Gnome. Alternatively, you can also us the surface-control command line utility by running

surface profile set <profile>

where the available profiles can be listed via surface profile list. See surface profile --help for more information.

The profiles map to Windows modes as follows:

Name (Linux)	Name (Windows)	Notes
low-power	Battery Saver	Only accessible on Windows when AC disconnected.
balanced	Recommended	Default mode.
balanced-performance	Better Performance
performance	Best Performance