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Date:      Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:45:06 -0700
From:      John Long <fbsd2@sstec.com>
To:        Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        FreeBSD-STABLE Mailing List <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: Powerd and est / eist functionality
Message-ID:  <5.2.1.1.2.20100324134153.032459d8@mail.sstec.com>
In-Reply-To: <4BA85F46.9010306@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <1269310984.00232724.1269300005@10.7.7.3> <1269310984.00232724.1269300005@10.7.7.3>

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At 11:27 PM 3/22/2010, Alexander Motin wrote:
 >John Long wrote:
 >>    Hello, I am putting together a couple update servers. Went with c2d
 >>    E7500 on gigabyte G41M-ES2L boards. fbsd 8.0 release generic (so far)
 >>    amd64, 1g mem, 1tb wd cavier blk, fresh system.
 >>    My Kill-a-watt shows 41 watts idle and when I enable powerd then it
 >>    climbs to 43 watts idle.
 >>    It shows that the freq is controlled well, goes down to 365 mhz but
 >>    the tdp is not decreased, rather it increases.
 >>    If I disable eist, c1 and c3 helpers in bios, as per suggestion in
 >>    mail archive, then it adds 1 watt to both figures. I was hoping to get
 >>    this total tdp down to a very low amount, and it is but it should
 >>    theoretically go lower with powerd, right?
 >>    The bios reports 1.268V and 26C temp. I was hoping that the voltage
 >>    would go down to .85 or so when powerd lowered the freq to 365 etc.
 >>    Healthd does not seem to know what monitoring chip it is and I have no
 >>    idea unless I install xp (ugh) and run something from cpuid.com on it.
 >>    What is a good/better/best monitoring program, mbmon and bsdhwmon are
 >>    untried for they are not current I see. Or what do I do from here to
 >>    fix this problem?
 >>    thx,
 >>    John
 >>    dmesg shows
 >>    cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
 >>    est0: <Enhanced SpeedStep Frequency Control> on cpu0
 >>    est: CPU supports Enhanced Speedstep, but is not recognized.
 >>    est: cpu_vendor GenuineIntel, msr 6160b2506000b25
 >>    device_attach: est0 attach returned 6
 >>    p4tcc0: <CPU Frequency Thermal Control> on cpu0
 >>    cpu1: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
 >>    est1: <Enhanced SpeedStep Frequency Control> on cpu1
 >>    est: CPU supports Enhanced Speedstep, but is not recognized.
 >>    est: cpu_vendor GenuineIntel, msr 6160b2506000b25
 >>    device_attach: est1 attach returned 6
 >>    p4tcc1: <CPU Frequency Thermal Control> on cpu1
 >>    powerd -v
 >>    powerd: unable to determine AC line status
 >>    load   0%, current freq 2926 MHz ( 0), wanted freq 2834 MHz
 >>    load   0%, current freq 2926 MHz ( 0), wanted freq 2745 MHz
 >>    .......
 >>    load   3%, current freq  365 MHz ( 7), wanted freq  365 MHz
 >>    load   0%, current freq  365 MHz ( 7), wanted freq  365 MHz
 >
 >Your ACPI BIOS seems not reporting tables required to control EIST. So
 >powerd probably uses only thermal throttling, which is not really
 >effective for power saving on modern CPUs. You should check your BIOS
 >options or may be update BIOS.
 >
 >If you have no luck with EIST - try to use C-states if BIOS reports at
 >least them. It also can be quite effective.
 >
 >--
 >Alexander Motin

Thanks for the info, I did try to kick it to C3 and that helped poquito 
amount. Everything is enabled in bios that matters to this, that does help 
a little too but powerd actually raises tdp a little. See other recent 
reply for more info.

Thanks,

John




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