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Does anyone know how to underclock a graphic card while using linux?
My laptop gets quite hot and I suspect the graphics card has it's share of fault so I would like to underclock it. Any help will be appreciated.
The card in question:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 2400 [1002:94c9] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Packard Bell B.V. Device [1631:c109]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
I/O ports at 8800 [size=256]
Memory at fd8f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at fd8c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
I'm using the radeon driver because the catalyst driver sort of hangs while watching videos.
R00KIE
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I don't know if this is what you want, but with the catalyst drivers in a terminal type "aticonfig --lsp" to list the different powerstates for you graphics card and to set the powerstate use "aticonfig --set-powerstate=#" where # is your desired energy level. This has cooled down my laptop, but I set the powerstate back to the default when I watch videos, otherwise it would be too slow.
Also the hanging from the catalyst drivers can usually be solved by adding nopat to your kernel in you grub menu.lst.
This is what mine looks like:
Before:
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/8ee9237b-5a2f-4ae8-a020-38adf7f203d2 ro vga=791
initrd /kernel26.img
After:
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/8ee9237b-5a2f-4ae8-a020-38adf7f203d2 ro vga=791 nopat
initrd /kernel26.img
If you use lilo to boot then the page in the archwiki may help you to configure the nopat option.
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Great, thank you for your tips, I will try the catalyst driver again and add the nopat to the kernel line.
I suspected the ATI drivers would be able to underclock the card (either by the power states like you say or using the overclock feature to adjust the frequencies) but like I said I wasn't using them because of the hangs while watching videos.
R00KIE
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For the radeon driver there is a tool called rovclock, which can do overclocking, but also underclocking. You might want to try that out, it works perfectly with my
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
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I'm using the catalyst drivers things seem to run a bit cooler now but no powerplay or overclock settings o_O ... maybe I have missed something in the configuration of xorg.conf. Video playback seems to work fine now, even without the nopat kernel option .
Unfortunately rovclock doesn't work with my card
Here's my xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "xtrap"
Load "freetype"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "RadeonHD 2400"
Driver "fglrx"
#BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen"
Device "RadeonHD 2400"
Monitor "Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection
Last edited by R00KIE (2008-12-07 21:00:57)
R00KIE
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What is your output for "aticonfig --lsp"?
Also, I do not notice anything wrong in your xorg.conf.
Last edited by CursedMonkey (2008-12-07 21:15:04)
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No powerplay and no overdrive o_O
I have even slimmed down my xorg.conf, everything works as it should but no change in powerplay or overdrive.
$ sudo aticonfig --lsp
Error: POWERplay is not supported on your hardware.
$ sudo aticonfig --odgc
ERROR - ATI Overdrive(TM) is not supported on the Default Adapter - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400
R00KIE
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The xorg.conf does not affect the POWERplay options.
I am not sure if you graphics card is capable of using POWERplay, in which case I am not sure if there is a way to underclock it with aticonfig.
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Thats a big bummer
The Catalyst Control Center says ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 as you can see here
But no Powerplay
R00KIE
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just a question, but why would underclocking your video card may video jerky?
since there's no hardware acceleration anyway, shouldn't it not matter?
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I could restore the clocks if I wanted to watch a video but for normal use I'd rather have lower clocks and less heat, besides even if I underclock the gpu and memory to half the speed I guess videos wouldn't be a problem anyway and I would have half the heat, even less if I could find a way to reduce the voltages slightly while keeping the system stable.
R00KIE
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ROOKIE: Where is the Catalyst Control Center from? Is it included with catalyst from AUR?
Archlinux 32b and 64b
Login manager: SLIM, Window manager: Openbox (plain)
HP ProBook 4710s
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