Cx states not working on Dell Inspiron 8600 (Pentium M)

[Nate Lawson]

Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> On Thu, 26.08.2004 at 09:37:33 -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> 
>>The cx_usage is limited to C1 or C2 if USB is loaded. It's polling of
>>the bus for changes prevents the state from dropping to anything really
>>useful. If you don't always need USB, build a kernel without it and load
>>it as required.
> 
> Ah, that explains it then. Is there anything that can be done about
> that? Does that mean, that even Windows is not using C3 and C4 if there
> is a USB mouse plugged in?

USB needs to be improved to poll more delicately.  I don't intend to 
work on this any time soon but it's on the acpi todo list:

http://www.root.org/~nate/

>>What do you have in your rc.conf? The default for economy_throttle_state
>>is "HIGH" which is probably not what you want. Not knowing how fast your
>>CPU is or how you use it, I don't know where you want to set it.  
>>
>>Try experimenting with:
>>sysctl hw.acpi.cpu.throttle_state=n
>>setting 'n' to values in the range of 1-8 and see where you think it's
>>reasonable to get work done without draining the battery. I use:
>>economy_throttle_state=4. Any lower and things start to get painful for
>>me. 
> 
> 
> Ah, I thought this was a dynamic setting, meaning that I change it to a
> "wanted" value and it adjusts itself, depending on if there is work to
> do or not.

economy states are set when off AC line, performance when on AC line. 
For throttling, it is an absolute value, not dynamic.

> I'm using colin's est.ko and estctl and it is working very nice, but it
> doesn't give me the battery lifetime or temperature level that Windows
> does. What else am I missing then, to get the same cool temperature as
> in Windows?

If you're using EST, throttling, and C4, that's the best Windows can do 
too.  See how it compares after disabling USB.

-- 
Nate