Arch Linux

tr0nic

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2005-05-02

Posts: 15

AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

Hello,

everything is now working on my Arch workstation, except c'n'q.
First, I searched the forum for information and tried quite a lot of things, yet it is not working.

The following modules are loaded:

* powernow-k8
* cpufreq_ondemand

As for the daemons:

* acpid
* cpufreqd

The CPU is always up running at full speed. In other distros I was used to daemons like powernowd who did the frequency scaling, and so I went on and pacman'ed powernowd (pkgbuild), yet it does not work. Of course c'n'q is enabled in BIOS. Btw, I also tried athcool.

I'd be glad for any help.
Vic

sud_crow

Member

From: Argentina

Registered: 2003-06-30

Posts: 546

Website

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

I cant make it work even in Windows... but i will keep an eye on the thread just in case i can use it for my own benefit

---

Leonardo Andrés Gallego
www.archlinux-es.org || Comunidad Hispana de Arch Linux

tr0nic

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2005-05-02

Posts: 15

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

Under windows, you'll need the AMD CPU driver, but I think you already know this And of course you have to activate "minimal power management" under Display Properties/Power Settings.

Now back to the topic please

johnisevil

Member

From: Hamilton, ON Canada

Registered: 2003-08-07

Posts: 221

Website

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

[*] CPU Frequency scaling
<*>   CPU frequency translation statistics
      Default CPUFreq governor (performance)  --->
---   'performance' governor
<*>   'powersave' governor
<*>   'userspace' governor for userspace frequency scaling
<*>   'ondemand' cpufreq policy governor
<*>   CPU frequency table helpers
<*> AMD Opteron/Athlon64 PowerNow!

These are all the options I have enabled in my kernel to handle CPU frequency scaling and I added this to /etc/rc.local

echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Under normal usage, this is my /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 31
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 1001.731
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 pni syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow lahf_lm
bogomips        : 1966.08

Under heavy usage...

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 31
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 1803.116
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 pni syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow lahf_lm
bogomips        : 3538.94

Cool n' Quiet works perfectly for me.

tr0nic

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2005-05-02

Posts: 15

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

So do I have to recompile the kernel?
I want to use the stock kernel configuration (just adding frequency scaling), can I save the current config to a file, and then reload it into the new kernel config? Sorry, but I'm not used to recompiling kernels...
Further, I have another question: What modules have you loaded?

i3839

Member

Registered: 2004-02-04

Posts: 1,185

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

I know someone who got it working with cpudyn with default Arch, more or less following the instructions on cpudyn's webpage.

johnisevil

Member

From: Hamilton, ON Canada

Registered: 2003-08-07

Posts: 221

Website

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

So do I have to recompile the kernel?
I want to use the stock kernel configuration (just adding frequency scaling), can I save the current config to a file, and then reload it into the new kernel config? Sorry, but I'm not used to recompiling kernels...
Further, I have another question: What modules have you loaded?

Everything needed I have compiled into the kernel.  If you're using the default Arch kernel I believe the module you'll need to load is powernow-k8.  You'll also want to check your dmesg for this.

powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e)
powernow-k8:    0 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
powernow-k8:    1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV)

Which should show up after loading the powernow-k8 module.

tr0nic

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2005-05-02

Posts: 15

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

Hello again,

I've tried what you said, and the result is quite ambiguous.

First, I was happy that 'cat /sys/devices/.../cpuinfo_cur_freq' showed 1000 Mhz while the system was idle.
However, 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' still shows 2200 Mhz, so I think it is still not working.

powernow-k8, cpufreq_ondemand are loaded as modules, and ondemand was echo'ed into scaling_governor.

i3839

Member

Registered: 2004-02-04

Posts: 1,185

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

You can't always trust /proc/cpuinfo, so if cpuinfo_cur_freq says that it is 1000 MHz then that's most likely true.

robot5x

Member

Registered: 2004-01-26

Posts: 266

Re: AMD Athlon 64 Cool and Quiet - not working

I followed johnisevil's post - works fine for me....
thanks!