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Date:      Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:34:15 -0500
From:      "Jud" <judmarc@fastmail.fm>
To:        "Matthew Seaman" <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD and AMD power management
Message-ID:  <20030109213415.00C454087B@server2.fastmail.fm>
In-Reply-To: <20030109204920.GA15135@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>
References:  <20030108232002.G61746-100000@whitetower.gambrl01.md.comcast.net> <20030109085442.GA10394@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> <200301091915.H09JFUJ16660@asarian-host.net> <20030109204920.GA15135@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>

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On Thu, 9 Jan 2003 20:49:20 +0000, "Matthew Seaman"
<m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> said:
> On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 08:15:15PM +0100, Mark wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Matthew Seaman" <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>
> > To: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
> > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:54 AM
> > Subject: Re: FreeBSD and AMD power management
> > 
> > 
> > > Try the ports/sysutils/fvcool port ---
> > > http://www.nt.phys.kyushu-u.ac.jp/shimizu/
> > >
> > > Using it has cut the average CPU temperature on my system from
> > > about 70C to about 50C.
> > 
> > It looked interesting; so I checked it out. Then it turns out this
> > power-safe mode on your AMD CPU is disabled by default for a good reason: it
> > makes your system unstable, and/or causes it to hang. Then cool is suddenly
> > not so cool anymore. :(
> 
> I've never experienced any problems like that.  I suspect it's
> probably one of those things that shows up under load.  As my desktop
> box spends quite a lot of the time sitting pretty much idle, then
> fvcool does it's thing without problems.  If it was a hard working
> server then I suspect that a) the sort of problems you mention would
> probably show up and b) there wouldn't be that much point running
> something like fvcool anyhow, as the CPU would be active much of the
> time anyhow.

YMMV, but I have fvcool running while building world, compiling ports,
etc., and have never had the slightest difficulty.  (However, Matthew's
exactly right about there being little or no cooling effect when CPU
utilization is running 97%.)  The Windows equivalent of fvcool, VCool, is
installed on my W2K partition.  The only problem I've noticed there is
that it screws up the sound from my Creative SB16 PCI sound card, though
not the onboard sound (Asus A7V333 board - I'm not at home and don't
recall the precise designation of the onboard sound chip).  No problem
with the SB16 on FreeBSD 4-STABLE with fvcool, however.

Jud

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