notebook cpu throttling

[Ghirai]

Hello Ian,

Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 5:08:19 PM, you wrote:

> On Tue, 22 May 2007 00:56:08 +0300 Ghirai <ghirai at ghirai.com> wrote:
 >> Hello Roland,
 >> 
 >> Monday, May 21, 2007, 11:08:13 PM, you wrote:
 >> 
 >> > On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 09:52:22PM +0300, Ghirai wrote:
 >> >> Hello list,
 >> >> 
 >> >> I'm running 6.2-RELEASE, SMP, on a
 >> >> Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro v3205 (Core Duo).
 >> >> 
 >> >> Everything works fine, except the cpu throttling,
 >> >> which makes the fan start quite often.
 >> >> 
 >> >> Is there any way to fix this?
 >> 
 >> > You need to do three things (as root);
 >> 
 >> > 1) Load the cpufreq module 'kldload cpufreq'.
 >> > 2) Put 'powerd_enable="YES"' in your /etc/rc.conf
 >> > 2) Start powerd: '/etc/rc.d/powerd start'
 >> 
 >> > Roland
 >> 
 >> Thanks for the hint.
 >> 
 >> I did that, but now xorg constantly uses 20-30% CPU.
 >> 
 >> CPUs were running cooler indeed, but everything ran jerky,
 >> because of the xorg cpu usage.
 >> 
 >> Note that i haven't upgraded to 7.2 yet,
 >> but i don't think this is the problem.

> This might not really indicate any problem.  Firstly, what are your
> # sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels

> Try watching the current cpu speed (dev.cpu.0.freq) while running under
> powerd.  You can watch it shift under various loads by running 'powerd
> -v' in foreground, show it by running a script sleeping for eg a minute,
> or use (say) gkrellm with gkfreq plugin to display cpu speed constantly.

> Point being, if powerd has selected your lowest cpu frequency because
> load is less than default (or as specified by -i and -r switches) and
> this is (say) 1/4 of full speed, then something that normally showed 5%
> cpu will now show as using 20% (of available cpu cycles at that speed)

> You can tune your powerd idle levels more towards performance, and/or
> you can set a higher minimum cpu freq with sysctl debug.cpufreq.lowest
> from among your available levels.

> powerd's default shiftpoints work on my T23, but it's only a 2-speed :)

> Cheers, Ian

I suspected this; xorg just reporting to use 20-30% cpu doesn't bother
my, what bothers me is the fact that mouse cursor and everything moves
jerky.

I'll try to raise the min. freq., maybe powerd lowers it too much..

-- 
Best regards,
Ghirai.