Arch Linux

demian

Member

From: Frankfurt, Germany

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 709

ALC889 power consumption

Hello,

i'm running a little media server on clarkdale basis (MSI H55M-ED55, Intel i3-530) with sound chip ALC889.
Kernel is 2.6.32.9-1-ARCH and architecture is x86 Archlinux.
The hardware is supported nicely so far however there's one thing i'm not very happy about.
When playing music the power consumption climbs from 20 Watts (idle) to 28 Watts although the workload of the CPU is only 1%.
Enabling power_save for the chip alone saves 2 Watts when idling.
Compared to the consumption of the audio chip in Windows 7 which is 1 W at most the 8 Watts are unusually high for a sound chip. Is that a known issue or do you know if it can be resolved somehow? I've tried kernel 2.6.33 but the high sound consumption remains.

I assume it's just a kernel driver thing which i can't do anything about but I'd be glad to hear different.

Regards,
demian

Last edited by demian (2010-03-08 13:20:53)

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