Linux

Auto-cpufreq only changes the CPU governor based on your preference for load and power source. In my experience you need to disable the intel_pstate driver to see real gains in the powersave/conservative governors. That's true for all three options.

Tlp can also manage power to radios, ports, devices. Gains are small over auto-cpufreq, and it can be a bit finicky not to lose some part you actually wanted to keep powered on.

I'm not very familiar with power-profiles-daemon, but I think it sets governor and rules for screen/sleep timeout. You'll probably see better gains without intel_pstate there, too.

I would also like to know, I heard from somewhere that power profiles deamon is the modern solution and the other 2 are older, but all 3 are still supported so I think its personal preference. Tlp has more finegrained contol, and ppd has better defaults and "just works" for me, no idea about autocpu-freq.

I can’t speak on which is the best. I haven’t compared them on modern systems.

But what I will say is make sure you’re not artificially limiting your power levels or clock speed too much. Big fat Intel CPUs like that are power hogs when active. They need to reach an idle state. I have a laptop with an i9 11950h which is the same thing. But with the power plan on the lowest I get worse battery life and performance than if I just left it on balanced. But it depends on the workload. If there is no idle then power save might be best. But if you’re browsing the web and not constantly scrolling then balanced might just be better.

power-profiles-daemon vs autocpu-freq vs tlp, which is better?

Yes.

(Edit: It's a meme reply, as I don't have a clue.)

Is use tlp because i feel like it's available on most distros. I'm not sure if one of these tools is better than the others though.

I prefer tlp, as it gives me more granular control than autocpu-freq, which I have also used. It allows me to retain control over certain things like USB auto-suspend behavior (a problem with some power utilities like powertop), and the audio powerdown on the headphone jack when on battery, but which was causing popping and audio cutting in after a delay whenever I started a video or application with audio.

Best you can do for the battery is turning down the screen brightness to the lowest setting where you can still see what's on the screen. Mine is ususally at 20-30% brightness.