Alienware G-Mode / Game Shift is a feature designed to “enhance gaming performance” on select Dell/Alienware laptops with the press of a key. But at least under Linux with select laptop models it can actually regress performance compared to just running the laptop in the “performance” platform profile.
Earlier this year with Linux 6.15 the Alienware G-Mode support was merged for Linux 6.15 initially with the Alienware M16 R1 gaming laptop model. But now merged for Linux 6.16 and set to be back-ported for Linux 6.15 is disabling the feature. Reverting the feature is coming since at least under Linux and for this hardware it can actually hurt performance compared to the “performance” platform profile.
So much for this convenient key on Alienware gaming laptops that is supposed to boost performance…
Merged yesterday as part of this week’s x86 platform driver fixes was reverting the Alienware G-Mode functionality that was introduced to that open-source driver for the Alienware m16 R1.
The revert patch explains:
“Although the Alienware m16 R1 AMD model supports G-Mode, it actually has a lower power ceiling than plain “performance” profile, which results in lower performance.”
There was also the comment on the patch last week on the LKML:
“Contrary to (my) intuition, imitating Windows behavior actually results in LOWER performance.
I was having second thoughts about this revert because users will notice that “performance” not longer turns on the G-Mode key found in this laptop. Some users may think this is actually a regression, but IMO lower performance is worse.”
That revert landed ahead of Linux 6.16-rc3 this coming weekend and should work its way into a Linux 6.15 point release in the coming days.
