Make Nvidia GPU performance mode settings permanent on Linux

nvidia-persistent-powermizer-mode.md

As many may already know, proprietary nvidia drivers for Linux are far from being perfect, with many options limited or even not present at all. One different case is PowerMizer performance mode, which is present in Linux driver, but its value gets purged after every system reboot and returns back to "Auto".

Fix

In order to fix that it's necessary to create systemD unit that will enroll new setting every time the system is booted. To do that make sure first that your systemD user configuration directory does exist or create one:

$ cd ~/.config/systemd/user/

If instead you get an error saying that the directory does not exist, create it by typing:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/

And create nvidia-powermizer-fix.service file inside it with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Enforce Nvidia PowerMizer performance mode on startup
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a "[gpu:0]/GpuPowerMizerMode=<VALUE>"

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Where instead of <VALUE> you must insert one of the following numbers:

• 0 - Adaptive
• 1 - Prefer Maximum Performance
• 2 - Auto

Then make sure to reload systemd units and enable your newly created one by running those two commands:

$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
$ systemctl --user enable nvidia-powermizer-fix.service

And reboot your system.

Verifying

To verify that everything worked as expected run the following command:

$ systemctl --user status nvidia-powermizer-fix.service

Expected output should be similar to:

nvidia-settings[584]:   Attribute 'GPUPowerMizerMode' (hostname:0[gpu:0]) assigned value <YOUR VALUE>.