Power Options/P4G Screwy clock speeds

I am having a clock speed crisis when running my laptop on battery power.
I have the asus m50sv-a1 running windows xp service pack 3 perfectly in AC mode - cpu clock speed around 2.5ghz on my penryn t9300 reported by cpu-z

However when I switch to battery mode my computer downclocks my cpu and gpu speeds (Normal I know) to save battery. My issue with it is this: despite which battery management profile I use in either power 4 gear or just the windows power options (with power for gear off and profile not applied) I get the same low gpu clock speed and one of two cpu clock speeds (either 1.2ghz or 1.6 ghz). Ironically the cpu speed is often set higher when I set it to one of the more intensive battery saving options. For example with windows power options set to max battery cpu is clocked 1.6ghz and with always on cpu is clocked at 1.6. Then I try power4gear profile, load up power4gear and get similar results with its very own power profiles. These speeds were reported by cpu-z and NVIDIA's powermizer is turned off.

I'm confused something else seems to be changing my clock speeds as for a split second it seems my speeds jump to 2.5ghz occasionally when changing profiles. I'm almost sure no battery management program besides the 2 above are running.

 

The cpu settings and spikes you're seeing are probably the result of Speedstep management of the clock speed (i.e. dynamic switching in RMClock or NHC) - the spike up happens when the OS sends a demand to the cpu and the load forces a switch up from idle, then it falls back to idle when the request is complete. The new Penryn chips also have capability (I think) built in to go into even lower power states depending on load.

If I'm correct and this is what's happening (as compared to the cpu being locked down on the minimum multiplier and can't go above 1.6 at all) you should see cpu speeds near 2.5 when under full load with wPrime or something -- try that and see, if it does then you have nothing to worry about and it's normal.

I'm not sure whether the NV gpu is always able to detect AC/battery status and downclock automatically whether Powermizer is on or off - someone around here should know that answer.

 

That's actually a really cool ability if that is indeed the case I'll check on that -- thanks
I was thinking it must have been a bios thing, and was getting frustrated because the bios (AMI version 207)
that came with this m50sv is really sparse and I cant even find a battery calibration option just to give you an example of how little there is

 

^^^
I tested it and you were right as soon as I used wPrime the clocks jumped back up to its normal 2.5ghz and 12.5 multiplier

I still don't know about gpu clocks however, this is still cut in half I tried running the 3d view on ati tool to provoke the speeds to go back up but no results - maybe this is a vga bios thing?

 

Hi. Please note that GPU power profile control in Vista is an illusion, at least with NVIDIA cards. I tried it a lot, and no matter what the power profile, it still adjusts the clock speeds dynamically according to the load (I don't remember now the differences between battery and AC power, but it is able to detect and change the behavior. I think on battery power, the highest-power profile is not being used). See my W7Sg thread and the links to the power management tests.

As to CPU speeds, the Power4Gear profiles are very unintuitive, and indeed it sometimes happens that the CPU spends time with lower clocks in profiles like Quiet Office, than in Battery Saving profiles. I recommend RMClock for full control of the CPU speed -- just make sure it properly supports the CPU you have, for instance I know that Penryn support is not great, that's the reason for which I'm not using it on the W7Sg.

And yes, the spikes, like ClearSkies says, are due to CPU adapting to the load.

 

I have xp sp3 and I'm guessing its a similar case for me as well

 

Yeah, in XP with the newer versions of NVIDIA drivers, PowerMizer options are also very, very limited. Basically you can only cap the speed of the GPU on battery. On AC power, it will still do automatic frequency control.

 

Well thanks for the info !

and I was searching on how to uncap gpu while on battery -- maybe its just the dynamic clock thing but sets it lower to begin with on battery?

 

It may be so. If you enable powermizer in XP driver versions that support it, you will get an option to uncap it, but I think that uncapped is the default? I don't remember exactly and it may also depend on the particular driver version, so you should definitely check.

 

My powermizer is off and the clocks are down on battery regardless of profile, but I will turn it on and see

 

turned powermizer on and set my battery profile to the least battery saving option and tested it with cs: source. The gpu stays downclocked no matter what, the only think powermizer did was cut it down even further when not in use. It seems if I am on battery I have no choice but to sacrifice video performance to some extent maybe a gpu bios problem.


EDIT: I may have answered my own question with a post from the hardware and gaming forum http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273276