cpufreq in the power manager

[Liviu Andronic]

Hello

On 9/15/09, Brian J. Tarricone <brian at tarricone.org> wrote:
>  > I have to find the right balance between
>  > required performance and heat/power draw that eventually spins up the
>  > PSU fan.
> A user should not have to bother with these things.  While a knob to
>  turn in xfpm would "fix" the problem for you, it just needlessly
>  clutters the interface for something that should be fixed in the kernel.
>
This is not  necessarily a kernel-related issue. In the case of my
laptop, the issues are similar on both Linux and Windows. With
"performance" governor on Linux, in the temp hovers around 75C idle
time, nowhere near the 110C reported as critical. However the fan
works full throttle (thankfully so), and gets real loud, making it
difficult to work calmly on the station. Also, the temp can quickly
spike towards 100C in intensive usage. The "ondemand" governor has the
temp around 60C in idle, and it rarely gets past 85C during intensive
usage, keeping my laptop safe and quiet. Perhaps a messy solution, but
it mitigates the issues quickly and easily, making it acceptable to
me.

These problems arise on a brand new HP laptop using a 64bit AMD
processor. To me this seems more like sloppy laptop/processor design
rather than faulty/ageing hardware (or kernel bug). Also, looking on
distributions mailing lists, similar issues concerning laptops are not
that rare.

Otherwise, the governors are related to power options, and xfpm is all
about power management.
Regards
Liviu