From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 12 02:56:29 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-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 8D38D16A41F; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:56:29 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from cain.gsoft.com.au (cain.gsoft.com.au [203.31.81.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D8D6A43D46; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:56:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from inchoate.gsoft.com.au (inchoate.gsoft.com.au [203.31.81.21]) (authenticated bits=0) by cain.gsoft.com.au (8.13.5/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k0C2uMKd064567 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NO); Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:26:22 +1030 (CST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) From: "Daniel O'Connor" To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:25:57 +1030 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.3 References: <43C5A261.1020407@rogers.com> In-Reply-To: <43C5A261.1020407@rogers.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart1367710.h4BoA2S3SE"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200601121326.18384.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Spam-Score: -1.36 () ALL_TRUSTED X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.54 on 203.31.81.10 Cc: Mike Jakubik , stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 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 02:56:29 -0000 --nextPart1367710.h4BoA2S3SE Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:57, Mike Jakubik wrote: > 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 If you want to test how much heat your system draws for a given clock speed= =20 you should dispense with powerd and just set the frequency by hand, ie.. sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq=3DXXX powerd won't run your CPU at a specific clock frequency - it varies the CPU= =20 frequency based on current load conditions. Do you have thermally controlled fans? If so I wouldn't expect the temperat= ure=20 to vary with clock speed very much at all. > 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 The powerd defaults do not change frequency that quickly - every 500ms by=20 default. I run it with '-p 200' and it seems fine although you do notice it= =20 'stick' sometimes (where the CPU change doesn't happen quickly enough). You could try what I do but there are some systems which are very slow to=20 change clock speed so this could be an impediment. > clock fast enough. Are these problems with powerd or just my hardware? > It is an old athlon system, running on the via133 chipset . I'm suprised a system this old even supports a clock speed as low as 75Mhz. =2D-=20 Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C --nextPart1367710.h4BoA2S3SE Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBDxcVS5ZPcIHs/zowRAl+jAKCYATIA/T2oLfSVWs8cPDT5arHTyACeLIkm GHDG2DLfP5ja2VHF3nHlS0k= =rsk4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart1367710.h4BoA2S3SE--