Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:51:23 -0500 From: "Gabriel Lavoie" <glavoie@gmail.com> To: freebsd-acpi@freebsd.org Subject: EST (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep(R) Technology) on amd64 Message-ID: <d05df8620901081551j5572b45aqbed51e2955efccc8@mail.gmail.com>
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Hello, I recently built a small home server using an Inten 45nm E5200 @ 2.5 GHz. With FreeBSD 7.0, the "est" driver had problems pooling for the CPU frequency/voltage pairs and automatically disabled itself. It left the CPU at the frequency the BIOS put it after startup, 1.25 GHz because I have EIST enabled. I had to manually change the frequency or use powerd to put it at maximum. Now I upgraded to FreeBSD 7.1 and everything in my systems seems supported correctly. The est driver now recognize the CPU and load the correct information. Also, after bootup, the frequency of the CPU is at max (2.5 GHz). What I would like is to get the behaviour of EIST found under Windows and Linux where the CPU is automatically downclocked to 1.25 GHz when the system isn't under any load, but comes back to 2.5 GHz as soon as there is some load. I also get this behaviour under Linux on my Core 2 Duo and I really like it. What I found interesting is that it seems the Intel 45nm CPUs use under 5W of power when they are idle and EIST downclocked them. I would really like to take profit of this low power consumption. I found about "estctrl" on this page http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-est/ but it seems outdated and when I try to build the port, it tells me that it is only supported on the i386 architecture. Why not amd64? Thanks Gabriel -- Gabriel Lavoie glavoie@gmail.com
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