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NoOneImportant

Member

From: Deep Southern California

Registered: 2007-02-13

Posts: 178

speedstep question

Although I use a desktop, my cpu had speedstep support and I have a question (since I would like to save power by using speedstep).

I tried the cpufrequtil method from the wiki page and got cpufreq to work fine, but how can I get it to scale my cpu frequency dynamically? cpudyn?

Fatsobob

Member

From: Colorado

Registered: 2006-06-27

Posts: 126

Re: speedstep question

cpufreqd should do the same as cpudyn, though I have never used either of them so I am just speaking from descriptions. I have always just manually stepped my system whenever needed.

NoOneImportant

Member

From: Deep Southern California

Registered: 2007-02-13

Posts: 178

Re: speedstep question

no, cpufreq likes to keep it at 375hz even when try to do something demanding (and yes, I am using the ondemand governor)

oli

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2006-02-07

Posts: 164

Website

Re: speedstep question

You have to set the boundaries in /etc/conf.d/cpufreq for proper use of the ondemand governor.

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NoOneImportant

Member

From: Deep Southern California

Registered: 2007-02-13

Posts: 178

Re: speedstep question

I did

What I want it to do is step down to the minimum when the pc is idle and back up to the maximum when I go back to using it again.

Even if I set the boundaries, it stays at 375mhz.

Last edited by NoOneImportant (2007-12-24 01:37:57)

elliott

Member

Registered: 2006-03-07

Posts: 296

Re: speedstep question

I've had much more luck by setting the userspace governor and using powernowd.

pelle.k

Member

From: Åre, Sweden (EU)

Registered: 2006-04-30

Posts: 667

Re: speedstep question

Eh, i just load acpi-cpufreq (my driver), and cpufreq-ondemand (governor), and set the speed in rc.local with

cpufreq-set -g ondemand -c01

-c01 is because i have two cores.
Everything is now taken care of by the governor, and by that i mean i get more speed when i need it dynamically. You don't need anything special to do that.

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Mantaar

Member

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 70

Re: speedstep question

I'm doing something similar, although I usually use the conservative governor and set it via

echo "conservative" >| /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Cpufreqd and friends are only for special cases, where, for example, cpufreqd would load another governor when you start MPlayer or something like that. Otherwise it's pretty useless (at least for me).

Last edited by Mantaar (2007-12-24 14:22:22)

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slackhack

Member

Registered: 2004-06-30

Posts: 738

Re: speedstep question

cpufreqd works for me with the ondemand governor and powernow_k8 (Athlon 64).

what you're describing doesn't really sound like ondemand, anyway, but some kind of powersave mode. ondemand keeps my cpu at around 1000Mhz pretty much at all times, unless I open a program or do something else demanding, video encoding, etc. I think one of the powersave modes would downshift it when in idle mode, but really why not just use ondemand since it ramps up the power when you need it anyway.

So if you have a AMD cpu, I think you need the powernow_k8 module loaded,  or probably some other module for intel, but I could be wrong. All I know is that I need it for my athlon or the cpufreq doesn't govern.

NoOneImportant

Member

From: Deep Southern California

Registered: 2007-02-13

Posts: 178

Re: speedstep question

nah, my cpu is a p4 so I load p4-clockmod

I tried using the conservative governor, but that seems to keep my clock speed at 375mhz

powersave actually worked the way I wanted it to for a while, but it refused to step back down when I left my pc idle. Lately, I have been switching to the conservative governor when idle and using ondemand when I'm back.