Alternative Freeware Power Managment. Which is Best?

Which works well with Acer's more recent Models.

 

you can try notebook hardware control
http://www.pbus-167.com/

 

I tried NCH, kind of overkill on the tray icons though i think.
what about RM Clock, is that any good?

 

you can adjust what is shown in the taskbar with NHC, look under advanced options.

--ssx--

 

Why do people don't use Power Management???

What is so bad about it,it gets the job done.

 

Didn't like Acer's ePowerManagement so I just uninstalled it.

Now I use the standard WinXP power management - works just fine for me.

 

I uninstalled everything from Acer.

Now I'm using NHC just for tray CPU temps and CPU mode switch.

If You guys know simple program that is able to switch just CPU power modes then let me know please
It's the only thing that I need and standard windows management doesn't have.

UPDATE:

I've found great alternative, SpeedSwitchXP: http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

Looks like it was not tested on Turion/X2 but works without the problem and is less resource hog than NHC (which used to start even 20sec after windows bootup)

 

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

does that application have any option to show temp of CPU/s, i can't see it anywhere, it would be handy.
speedswitch does seem to work, although for me.. it only seems to show actual CPU speed detecting with Windows XP, not when the realtime calculation is selected.

any other decent management software that any of you experts know bout? thats similar to speedswitch. something that is kept up to date perhaps?

 

I've not uninstalled Acer epowermanagement yet but I am liking the RMClock utility. It is mainly the "undervolting" capability I like (saves battery) along with the battery monitoring bits. How much of a resource hog it is compared to the Acer software I dunno.

Jules

 

RMclock is causing my 5102 to hang randomly every time I launch a game.
No matter if I play with settings or not, undervolted or not.

BTW: I always use "dynamic switching" CPU feature.

 

I installed NHC and I like it,it seems more complete than Acer ePower management.

But what confuses me is that when I change profile to Battery optimized or Max battery my CPU clock is still 1,6 Ghz ( I have Turion 64 X2 - 1.6 Ghz).
It should be 600 Mhz or less shouldn't it,why does it still say 1,6 Ghz??

 

I use RMClock on my Aspire 9302, it works fine and my turion works stable at 0.950V, 5 °C less than at stock 1.1V, and the fan don't start often now. The only thing is that it can't manage the screen brightness, although this option is present in the program... Still searching a solution to OC it now...

 

So are you saying that I have to lower Voltage in order to lower CPU clock and save battery?
I am complete noob when it comes to under/overclocking.

I thought that NHC or Acer ePower Management should do this for you just by setting the profile to Battery optimized/CPU speed Medium.
So you have to lower the CPU clock and save battery by underclocking CPU by yourself is that it??

 

Hi Max. I'm not speaking of underclocking but undervolting. The Turion comes stock with a Vcore at 1.1V when at 1.6GHz, but it can easyly run at this frequence with less voltage. At 800MHz, when on battery, I've set it at 0.775V in place of 0.8V stock, lower voltage and it becomes unstable.... The nterest when on AC is not to save power but lower temperature, the fan becomes noisy at 55°C, but now at 0.95V it quitely never get so hot, so I got more silence and I think a little more cpu lifetime. When undervolting, you must do it step by step (0.025V less each time) and find the lower voltage your cpu will run stable, by testing with SuperPI and those kind of cpu stressing apps. So as I think you now may hahe understood, RMClockis an alternative program to Acer ePower and windows management, that adds a voltage control ability and other interisting options. Just take a look at this :


Consider that my cpu is 100% load since hours, without this undervoltage ability, it would be near 60°C with fan at max, but actually I can't hear it.

 

Hi LeDuc,thanks for a great answer.
But what is still confusing me is that when on battery mode I set CPU speed with Acer EPower Management to Medium CPU-Z is still showing 1.6Ghz clock.

The same thing with NHC,when I set profile to Battery optimized CPU should work on 600Mhz clock but it is still showing 1.6Ghz.

I don't get this,I am not sure am I saving battery at all with lowering CPU speed,if I am lowering it at all with ePower Management
You are saying "At 800MHz, when on battery".How do you lower your clock and save battery???

 

in RMClock you can set up profiles and for each one a multiplier (4, 5, 6, 7, 8x for my amd turion) and a voltage. Then you tell the program which profile to use when on battery or ac. At 4x & 0.775V it saves about 30mn. I think cpu-z is reporting the nominal frequence of your cpu and not the current one, seems to be a bug... I've noticed that when I open settings/system, it appears 1,6GHz, when on battery, but RMClock indicates real time the true frequence.

 

Does windows xp default power management allow for lcd brightness control? epowermanagement has it but not nhc.

 

I searched for it too, and the answer is no. that would be a quite good update for winxp, RMClock and nhc, although tests show that doesn't save that much on our acers...

 

Yes that's what I need,real time frequence.
I'll try RMClock out and then report .
Thank you very much LeDuc...

 

I tried out RMClock and it's great.I lowered CPU clock to 800Mhz and set voltage at 0.950V and my CPU temp is under 50C for the first time.

Everest 2007 is showing 47C and RMClock 44C but it's under 50C, that's important. It was 53C/54C all the time when idle before.
And what's also great is that I don't see change in performance at all,everything is working great, even in games (Far Cry,CS 1.6).I thought that games will not work so good at 800Mhz clock but I was wrong.

Only thing that bothers me is that I can't change VID in profiles,it's always set to 1.125V.So I must keep No management profile all the time and then change FID manualy.
I also don't understand why is CPU0/CPU1 load showing 33%/45% and I am doing nothing at all,maybe it's some kind of a bug.

With LCD brightness control RMClock would be perfect,must keep ePower for some time still I guess .
LeDuc post here when you find a solution to OC our Turion X2

 

RMClock

You can set the Voltages for each Multiplier in the Profile Tab. You need to click on a x8 or whatever setting, and then uncheck Auto-Adjust Intermediate states VID's. Then you can choose for each Multiplier what their VID is.

I myself am unsure of what the proper or 'good' VID states for each Multiplier are for my Processor.

In my Profile list it shows the Multipliers available and a VID, but what VID's are proper for each multiplier?

0 - 6x VID ?.. whats a safe voltage .950v
1 - 7x ? ..1.000v
2 - 8x ?.. 1.012v
3 - 9x ?.. 1.075v
4 - 10x ?.. 1.137v

1.137 is the highest voltage available.
anyone out there have their Core2 Duo T5500 setup safely, please reply.

 

Also NHC allows to set VID for any multiplier... I don't know much in detail RMclock, but I'm happy with NHC and I think they are similar.

 

Thanks man,missed that one completely.
I can't make my own profile now,am I missing something again ??

It would be great if someone could explain what does Performance on Demand really do,what are all those Performances and Power Saving levels?
And that _Advance CPU setting_ Tab also confuses me,what are those ACPI state to view/modify,Clock divisor...

 

I'm new to this forum and would like to start off by saying Hi to everyone.

I've been reading this thread for a few days as the ePower Management app. doesn't work on my Acer anymore.

I gave NHC a try and really liked it, but for some reason it always crashed when the laptop came out of hibernation mode.
The switchXP utility worked great on AC power, but in battery mode... the fan went non stop and barely gave me 2 hours on the battery.
The Rm Clock utility is my last choice. I seems really great and powerful, but like Max I have no idea what all that stuff means. I tried following the documentation but it didn't help a lot.

Anyway, I'm going to give RM another shot and hopefully I can figure out all those settings. BTW, I'm using an Aspire 5112WLMi.

 

there is a new RM Clock Release Candidate out atm, seems to work fine...
using Performance on Demand, my notebook sits at 998MHz, 6x 850v .. when i do some stuff that requires processing that goes up of course.

RM Clock seems the best software atm.

 

Thanks, looks like there are some new options in there. At first I had a problem with this new version as the maximum FID was set to 5x and that made my processor jump from 800MHz to 1GHz. I managed to fix that issue so all works great now.
So far I have found RM Clock to be really good, I hope to find some utility that can control fan speed and LCD brightness.

 

RMClock is great !!! But curiously it can't manage brightness, emanagement from acer's can do it.... I hope this wil work some day... Managing fan on an acer seems to be impossible, but this would be great !

 

RMClock is the only power management utility I use, forget that rubbish epower... whatever it is called that acer installs on their machines and use this. If you got a problem with brightness do what I do and just use the fn + < > keys to control the brightness as needed! Fans unfortunately cannot be controlled.

I often use RMClock to lock my processor @ 800mhz while I am just cruising the web and listening to music(keeps CPU temps well under control) and if I feel like I need max power I just change the profile and there it is. Undervolting is also quite easy using this utility it is even made easier with the auto-adjust intermediate state VIDs option so when I change one voltage it updates all the rest. Overall excellent program and I recommend it all the time over NHC.