FWIW when running a stress test boot options might affect performance. For my current session i915 has got low priority. It might be of worth to care about this or similar pitfalls. $ grep Threadirqs /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg -A5 | head -5 LABEL Threadirqs MENU LABEL Arch Linux ^threadirqs LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux APPEND root=LABEL=s3.archlinux ro threadirqs INITRD ../intel-ucode.img,../initramfs-linux.img $ uname -rm 5.3.0-arch1-1-ARCH x86_64 $ rtirq status PID CLS RTPRIO NI PRI %CPU STAT COMMAND 202 FF 90 - 130 0.0 S irq/16-ehci_hcd 205 FF 90 - 130 0.1 S irq/28-xhci_hcd 208 FF 89 - 129 0.0 S irq/23-ehci_hcd 393 FF 85 - 125 0.0 S irq/16-snd_hdsp 422 FF 80 - 120 0.0 S irq/16-snd_ice1 124 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/9-acpi 138 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/8-rtc0 201 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/1-i8042 209 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/29-ahci[000 319 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/5-parport0 355 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/30-mei_me 406 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/18-i801_smb 452 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/32-i915 ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ 471 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/33-snd_hda_ 578 FF 50 - 90 0.0 S irq/31-enp3s0 9 TS - 0 19 0.0 S ksoftirqd/0 21 TS - 0 19 0.0 S ksoftirqd/1