Athlon XP-M/PowerNow for desktop system?

[Stefan Walter]

Bruno Ducrot in gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hardware:

>> I'm currently thinking about replacing the Athlon 900 in my desktop
>> machine with a more recent CPU, and I'd be interested in getting one of
>> these Athlon XP-M "Low Power" CPUs. I think the mainboard - a MSI KT4AV-L
>> (MS-6712) with VIA's KT400A chipset - supports those CPUs, but I'm not
>> sure if I would be able to use their energy saving features with FreeBSD.
>> I know about the powernow_k7 module [1], but not enough to say if it
>> should work in this case or if there could be problems with desktop
>> mainboards.
>> 
>
> Generally, for an ATX motherboard, you may be able to change the
> multiplier of the CPU but not the voltage, the latter requiring a
> VRM mobile part.  If this is a concern, you should consider an ITX form
> but you have to be sure that one do have a VRM mobile part.

As the mainboard is less than a year old, I didn't want to exchange that,
too.

I considered an Athlon XP-M because it consumes less energy and should be
cooler than the desktop variant. If you can't change the voltage of the
CPU on an ATX board, that's OK, but I'm not sure if it's really worth
buying it if I possibly can't throttle the frequency when it's idle.

> Of course, you may consider another kind of CPU if you need ATX form
> (amd64 class, maybe sempron, if you want to stick with AMD, comes to
> mind).

If I had to buy a new mainboard, too, I'd probably take an Athlon64 now.
(BTW: Does Cool'n'Quiet work well with FreeBSD?) There are desktop boards
for the Pentium M now, too, but they're still too expensive, and there's
no AGP support for the i855 chipset, so they're not an option.

Stefan
-- 
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