From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 12 00:26:38 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C043A16A41F for ; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:26:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mikej@rogers.com) Received: from smtp101.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com (smtp101.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com [206.190.36.79]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 33A3643D45 for ; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:26:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mikej@rogers.com) Received: (qmail 86990 invoked from network); 12 Jan 2006 00:26:37 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=rogers.com; h=Received:Message-ID:Date:From:User-Agent:MIME-Version:To:Subject:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=E7qsNUsLUYB2UzUy3lLtfFVUhdMRHODzOA3qZDUDO3iWr1X3TME6AiUzd41w0+5NjHVDUSpNmkaS14mQsxa3zo66pzKKTt7yKpQNbaBwDS4yCq936SlDOc4sBN5t2DeujvKUA0JQTB5uJ6XCKHh2K1KZd3DbFp84DnED4lOnVs0= ; Received: from unknown (HELO ?70.30.133.184?) (mikej@rogers.com@70.30.133.184 with plain) by smtp101.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; 12 Jan 2006 00:26:37 -0000 Message-ID: <43C5A261.1020407@rogers.com> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:27:13 -0500 From: Mike Jakubik User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: stable@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: powerd effectiveness X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:26:38 -0000 It seems that powerd does very little in terms of reducing heat, and sacrifices performance while doing so. Am i wrong to assume that lowering the cpu's frequency should reduce consumed power, and therefore reduce the amount of heat produced? I have tested with mbmon and i see no difference between an idle system running with powerd at 75mhz, and at full rate without. Also, while testing the speed of a php script, i found myself refreshing it quickly in the browser to see the results of the timers. I was getting sporadic results, on an otherwise idle system. I noticed that if anything cpu intensive ran in the background, my script would execute quicker. I disabled powerd and restored the frequency, at this point i got more consistent results, and the script would execute over 100msec faster. It seems like its not adjusting the clock fast enough. Are these problems with powerd or just my hardware? It is an old athlon system, running on the via133 chipset . --- CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor (1210.79-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x642 Stepping = 2 Features=0x183f9ff AMD Features=0xc0440800,MMX+,3DNow+,3DNow> real memory = 536788992 (511 MB) avail memory = 520237056 (496 MB) npx0: [FAST] npx0: on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface acpi0: on motherboard acpi0: Power Button (fixed) Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000 acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0xe408-0xe40b on acpi0 cpu0: on acpi0 acpi_throttle0: on cpu0 acpi_button0: on acpi0 pcib0: port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0 pci0: on pcib0 pcib1: at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: on pcib1 isab0: at device 4.0 on pci0 isa0: on isab0 atapci0: port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xd800-0xd80f at device 4.1 on pc