performance-tweaks

performance-tweaks is a settings package with the description “Tweaks to improve performance”. It pulls in services that tune process priorities, interrupts and application preloading. It also ships config files that set the CPU, GPU, PCIe and disk power settings to performance.

The Dr460nized Gaming edition ships it, in the settings section of its Packages-Desktop list. No other edition includes it. For tuning on top of it, see Gaming optimizations.

Package

Field	Value
Version	2.2.0
Arch	`any`
Depends	`ananicy-cpp`, `cachyos-ananicy-rules-git`, `hdparm`, `irqbalance`, `preload`
Conflicts	`powersave-tweaks`, `tlp`, `auto-cpufreq`, `thermald`

sudo pacman -S performance-tweaks

Services

The install script runs these commands on install and on every upgrade:

systemctl enable ananicy-cpp
systemctl enable irqbalance
systemctl enable preload

The services are enabled, not started. They start on the next boot.

Package	Role in this package
`ananicy-cpp`	Daemon that adjusts the nice levels of processes by rules. Enabled.
`cachyos-ananicy-rules-git`	The CachyOS rule set for `ananicy-cpp`. It replaced `ananicy-rules-git`.
`irqbalance`	Enabled.
`preload`	Enabled.
`hdparm`	Used by the udev rule for rotating disks below. Not enabled as a service.

The rules live in /etc/ananicy.d/00-default/. Custom rules are covered in Ananicy rules.

Config files

All files are installed under /usr/lib.

tmpfiles.d

These files write values to sysfs at boot.

File	Target	Value
`tmpfiles.d/cpu-governor.conf`	`/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor`	`performance`
`tmpfiles.d/energy_performance_preference.conf`	`/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy*/energy_performance_preference`	`performance`
`tmpfiles.d/pcie_aspm_performance.conf`	`/sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy`	`performance`
`tmpfiles.d/power_dpm_state.conf`	`/sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state`	`performance`
`tmpfiles.d/power_dpm_force_performance_level.conf`	`/sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level`	`high`, commented out. The file has no effect.

udev rules

File	Matches	Sets
`udev/rules.d/30-amdgpu-pm.rules`	`card0` with the `amdgpu` driver	`power_dpm_state` to `performance`. The lines for `power_dpm_force_performance_level` and `power_profile` are commented out.
`udev/rules.d/30-radeon-pm.rules`	`card0` with the `radeon` driver	`power_dpm_state` to `performance`. The same two lines are commented out.
`udev/rules.d/50-sata.rules`	SATA hosts (`scsi_host`, `host*`)	Link power management policy to `max_performance`.
`udev/rules.d/60-ioschedulers.rules`	NVMe disks	I/O scheduler `none`.
	SATA SSDs and eMMC (`sd[a-z]`, `mmcblk*`, not rotating)	I/O scheduler `bfq`.
	Rotating disks (`sd[a-z]`)	I/O scheduler `bfq`.
`udev/rules.d/69-hdparm.rules`	Rotating disks (`sd[a-z]`)	Runs `hdparm -B 254 -S 0 /dev/<disk>` on the disk.

See udev for how rules are applied.

modprobe.d

File	Sets
`modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf`	`options amdgpu ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff`, the PowerPlay feature mask of the `amdgpu` driver with all bits set.

The package ships no sysctl files.

Turning off a single tweak

A package update restores the files in /usr/lib, so editing or deleting them does not last. Mask a tmpfiles entry with a link to /dev/null of the same name in /etc/tmpfiles.d/. For example, for the energy performance preference:

sudo ln -s /dev/null /etc/tmpfiles.d/energy_performance_preference.conf

This file conflicts with sched_ext CPU schedulers. See Gaming optimizations for that case.

Removing it

sudo pacman -R performance-tweaks

The install script has no removal step. ananicy-cpp, irqbalance and preload stay enabled until you disable or remove them.