Semi-OT: How to throttle a AMD Turion?

[Joerg]

Hello Folks,

Has anyone succeeded in reducing the power consumption of the "AMD
Turion 64 Mobile" processor? I've got one in a laptop and it gets hot
even when the computer does nothing. Not only does this consume battery
juice but most annoying is that the rather loud fan comes on all the
time. In meetings people turn around to see whether some microscopic
Learjet has landed.

I was hoping that this "AMD PowerNow!" scheme would at least come close
to what my old early 90's laptop had. That one offered three user
selectable clock speeds. Full blast, half, and next to nothing. Not so
here in the oh so modern world of 2007. Looked up and down the web and
usenet. All one can get is a kind of meter applet from AMD that shows
voltage and speed. But I'd like some handles and buttons here ;-)

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Hello Folks,
Has anyone succeeded in reducing the power consumption of the "AMD
Turion 64 Mobile" processor?

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/682001948731

?

 

[Joerg]

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/682001948731

?

Thanks, Jan. Looks like a new CPU driver is needed. A scary thought but
might have to be done. Slowly getting goose pimples here...

 

[Robert Latest]

Has anyone succeeded in reducing the power consumption of the "AMD
Turion 64 Mobile" processor? I've got one in a laptop and it gets hot
even when the computer does nothing.

Crazy, innit? My wife's laptop now starts shutting itself off because
of overheating while doing nothing (like waiting, in a CPU's timeframe,
eons for keystrokes during word processing). Need to get that dust out of
there, but all laptops are design nightmares in this regard. What became
of micropower or at least power-aware design? These things are mobile,
battery operated devices for christ's sake!

robert

 

[Eeyore]

Hello Folks,

Has anyone succeeded in reducing the power consumption of the "AMD
Turion 64 Mobile" processor? I've got one in a laptop and it gets hot
even when the computer does nothing. Not only does this consume battery
juice but most annoying is that the rather loud fan comes on all the
time. In meetings people turn around to see whether some microscopic
Learjet has landed.

I was hoping that this "AMD PowerNow!" scheme would at least come close
to what my old early 90's laptop had. That one offered three user
selectable clock speeds. Full blast, half, and next to nothing. Not so
here in the oh so modern world of 2007. Looked up and down the web and
usenet. All one can get is a kind of meter applet from AMD that shows
voltage and speed. But I'd like some handles and buttons here ;-)

You already have the PowerNow software V3.04 ?

It looks like you may need a driver for some CPUs too.

Graham

 

[Joerg]

Joerg wrote:




Crazy, innit? My wife's laptop now starts shutting itself off because
of overheating while doing nothing (like waiting, in a CPU's timeframe,
eons for keystrokes during word processing). Need to get that dust out of
there, but all laptops are design nightmares in this regard. What became
of micropower or at least power-aware design? These things are mobile,
battery operated devices for christ's sake!

Yes, fully agree. IMHO the design engineers on those teams are not ....
no, no, I am not going to say it. <biting tongue>

Anyhow, I do a lot of micropower designs and my clients would have me
flogged if I delivered a "performance" like "modern" laptops. Heck, why
can't they cajole some of the old Compaq engineers out of retirement?
They know how to do it. I have an idea: Why don't we start an assisted
living place for engineers? Nicely decked out with a CAD room, bingo
games, a small lab, big screen TVs, Weller solder irons etc. When I see
what comes out of universities these days I bet we'll need that.

 

[Joerg]

Joerg wrote:




You already have the PowerNow software V3.04 ?

I'll have to check into that. The PowerNow downloads I've come across
were all just for looking at power consumption. That would only be
rubbing it in, seeing the leaks. The laptop's manufacturer (Twinhead)
told me that the CPU clock speed cannot be lowered. But that may not be
the last word.

 

[SioL]

It looks like you may need a driver for some CPUs too.

Graham

Last time I installed the one from AMD I almost had to reinstall xp.
It would not boot and it took a lot of tinkering with registry to bring it
back to life. On the bright side, IE was partly broken in the process and
I'm now using firefox, much better.

Stay away from AMD CPU driver, I say.

SioL

 

[Joerg]

Last time I installed the one from AMD I almost had to reinstall xp.
It would not boot and it took a lot of tinkering with registry to bring it
back to life. On the bright side, IE was partly broken in the process and
I'm now using firefox, much better.

Stay away from AMD CPU driver, I say.

That's exactly why I am a bit skittish here. I don't want to wreck the
PC and have to spend hours to resurrect it. Sounds like muscle car
tuning. Another quarter turn and poof, gone is the engine.

 

[Jim Thompson]

That's exactly why I am a bit skittish here. I don't want to wreck the
PC and have to spend hours to resurrect it. Sounds like muscle car
tuning. Another quarter turn and poof, gone is the engine.

You mean your laptop does not have the clock slow-down feature
built-in?

...Jim Thompson

 

[Joerg]

You mean your laptop does not have the clock slow-down feature
built-in?

No idea. According to the mfg it's "automatic", whatever that means, and
there is no user interaction possible. The docs with laptops these days
are so skimpy. Just a wee PDF file. Lots of pages of legalese (don't
swallow the USB stick or whatever), another few pages of glitz. My first
laptop even had the BIOS explained in great detail. A whole big chapter.

Other than that this machine is great. Tons of RAM, beat all the other
more expensive ones in compile speed at the Cypress PSoC seminar, metal
case. Really nice, I can go to a client this afternoon yet still keep up
the back and forth chats with my layouter while there. Battery life is
better than I thought, north of 2.5hrs.

 

[SioL]

No idea. According to the mfg it's "automatic", whatever that means, and there is no user interaction possible.

Just found this:

http://www.geardigest.com/2005/08/30/the_turion_64_inside_story/page5.html
It seems its automatic and can be adjusted via "power options properties".

Another reference:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815624/en-us
This article suggests that the driver installs automatically with windows update
so you must have it already.

I also found my problem driver, it was amd dual core optimizer.
Here's a reference to this problem:
http://planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t29273.html
It may have been fixed in the mean time, but I'm not going to try, it was
a major headache to get rid of it.

SioL

 

[jasen]

Crazy, innit? My wife's laptop now starts shutting itself off because
of overheating while doing nothing (like waiting, in a CPU's timeframe,
eons for keystrokes during word processing). Need to get that dust out of
there, but all laptops are design nightmares in this regard. What became
of micropower or at least power-aware design? These things are mobile,
battery operated devices for christ's sake!

It seems that people want AMD and iNTEL inside their laptops.
VIA does some nice little GHz X86 processors that run with Vcore below 1V
and only need a few watts, but I've never seen one in a laptop. Can't
run the lastest Microsoft "productivity" suite with acceptable speed I
guess...

Bye.
Jasen

 

[SioL]

It seems that people want AMD and iNTEL inside their laptops.
VIA does some nice little GHz X86 processors that run with Vcore below 1V
and only need a few watts, but I've never seen one in a laptop. Can't
run the lastest Microsoft "productivity" suite with acceptable speed I
guess...

I've got one VIA cpu here for assembler / win98 / dos tasks, its slow like
hell, but quiet and does the trick for these simple tasts.... just barely.

SioL

 

[Joerg]

Just found this:

http://www.geardigest.com/2005/08/30/the_turion_64_inside_story/page5.html
It seems its automatic and can be adjusted via "power options properties".

Ah, this might explain what's going on. It seems that the clock cannot
or at least does not drop below 800MHz. That's still a whole lot of MHz
when doing mundane things such as layout checks. This is what I use my
laptop for most. There, I can't see much difference between the old
Compaq throttled to 25MHz or so and the new screaming fast laptops.
Except that the old Compaq's enclosure crumbled and I can no longer
enjoy 6hr runtimes because "modern" design don't deliver that :-(

Why don't they allow a drop to, say, 100MHz or less? Many laptops are
routinely used as document displays during meetings. That requires close
to zilch in horsepower.

Another reference:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815624/en-us
This article suggests that the driver installs automatically with windows update
so you must have it already.

Thanks. According to driver info in their first source link
"12-Feb-02 18:42 5.1.2600.28 32,896 Amdk7.sys"
I must have it. But I'll check.

I bought this laptop on purpose just a month before Vista rolled out,
being a bit worried that mfgs might be "discouraged" to sell XP after
that. Worries that, as it has turned out, were not unfounded after all.

I also found my problem driver, it was amd dual core optimizer.
Here's a reference to this problem:
http://planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t29273.html
It may have been fixed in the mean time, but I'm not going to try, it was
a major headache to get rid of it.

I'd rather stay away from messing with processor drivers. I was hoping
there was an easy trick. A hidden routine or something. But if 800MHz is
really the minimum for the AMD Turion then there isn't much that can be
done anyhow. That's a wee bit disappointing.

Now imagine me the next time when buying a laptop. After garnering
disbelief when asking whether an older OS was still available the next
question would be "Do you have a model with a slower processor clock rate?".

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Ah, this might explain what's going on. It seems that the clock cannot
or at least does not drop below 800MHz. That's still a whole lot of MHz
when doing mundane things such as layout checks. This is what I use my
laptop for most. There, I can't see much difference between the old
Compaq throttled to 25MHz or so and the new screaming fast laptops.
Except that the old Compaq's enclosure crumbled and I can no longer
enjoy 6hr runtimes because "modern" design don't deliver that :-(

Why don't they allow a drop to, say, 100MHz or less? Many laptops are
routinely used as document displays during meetings. That requires close
to zilch in horsepower.

I get about 4-1/2 hours on my 2-1/2 year old Thinkpad T42P, and you can
get second batteries that go into the DVD drive slot that will give
another 2 hours or so, so that would get you back up there. You have to
get the 9-cell battery and not the 6-cell one--the good ones stick out
the back of the machine by an inch or so.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

 

[Joerg]

I get about 4-1/2 hours on my 2-1/2 year old Thinkpad T42P, and you can
get second batteries that go into the DVD drive slot that will give
another 2 hours or so, so that would get you back up there. You have to
get the 9-cell battery and not the 6-cell one--the good ones stick out
the back of the machine by an inch or so.

Maybe this mfg (Twinhead) has those, too. But it's weird. Instead of
making machines more efficient or at least as efficient as those from
the early 90's it's like this: We've bloated our OSes and programs,
therefore you need 1GB of RAM and 1GHz of clock to write "Hello World",
and the solution is to just buy bigger batteries.

I still don't see any reason why the processor should run anywhere
above, say, 10MHz while I am staring at Gerber files. It just doesn't
make any sense to me.

 

[SioL]

I still don't see any reason why the processor should run anywhere above, say, 10MHz while I am staring at Gerber files. It just
doesn't make any sense to me.

Well, competition is forcing AMD/Intel to roll-out one racing engine
after the other. The question is, how do you go shopping or take kids
to school etc (in fact what you do 90% of the time) with, say, Porsche 911?

Good well-kept old laptops with decent displays are well worth keeping and
downright precious sometimes.

SioL

 

[Joerg]

Might be like the DRAM vs Static RAM Problem. To get the smallest Trans
Cells they have to be quasi-dynamic.

I've just heard of various attempts over the years of making truly Static
Microprocessors. They were never the larger ones.

That might be the case. My 2nd laptop had a 486 and that must have been
static. AFAIR the lowest clock speed it could do was 1MHz. Absolutely
great if you had to write a lengthy module spec in MS-Word. I sat there
typing away on a transatlantic flight and the old NiCd in there was
still cranking after 5 hours. The guy next to me with his fancy Thinkpad
was in utter disbelief because his had quit two hours before that.

 

[Robert]

That might be the case. My 2nd laptop had a 486 and that must have been
static. AFAIR the lowest clock speed it could do was 1MHz. Absolutely
great if you had to write a lengthy module spec in MS-Word. I sat there
typing away on a transatlantic flight and the old NiCd in there was still
cranking after 5 hours. The guy next to me with his fancy Thinkpad was in
utter disbelief because his had quit two hours before that.

Perhaps you might keep an eye open for something like these:
http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/wce/21/dreamwriterit.htm

Or the old Tandy T100 & T200 series. Battery lasts quite a while if you just
want to write on a long trip.

http://www.club100.org/

Robert