power consumption (was: xorg +XGI Volari XP5)

Andreas Hauser andy at splashground.de
Wed Apr 27 07:57:16 PDT 2005


dillon wrote @ Tue, 26 Apr 2005 15:57:45 -0700 (PDT):
> 
> :On Tue, Apr 26, 2005, Matthew Dillon wrote:
> :
> :>     above and beyond basic cpu frequency controls, and I'm fairly sure
> :>     that the Turion just has the basic stuff.
> :
> :What about Cool&Quiet? (you might remember that I asked before
> :whether it's supported in DragonFly to which the answer was "No"
> :(not yet); it seems only FreeBSD 5.x supports it; setting it in
> :the BIOS does not have an effect).
> 
>     Not sure what you mean.   The fan controls are automatic.  Cpu
>     frequency is controlled by ACPI.  It's possible that FreeBSD 5 has
>     some support in there that we could port beyond the frequency
>     controls we already have, so the question is... in what way does 
>     FreeBSD 5.x support cool and quiet?

Well it might be wished for that the BIOS exports the PowerNow!
features via ACPI but i've yet to see one Notebook that does that.

I have written a PowerNow! driver for dragonfly for my Notebook
that uses the BIOS legacy interface to set the frequencies.
But i did not submit it since FreeBSD 6 will have a unified
framework "cpufreq" by Nate Lawson which has it's own powernow!
driver, which i want to import as soon as it has stabilized and
been tested.

Andy





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