RMClock vs Power4Gear

Gidday guys.

I seem to see RMclock mentioned a lot, with people stripping Power4Gear off and replacing it. What are the advantages of RMclock? My main concern with my W3J is battery life, so anything I can do to improve that would be good. My screen was staying black, so I set the HDD time-out to never, hopefully that will fix that problem, as I see a lot of comments about the screen not coming back on, and people saying get rid of Power4Gear.

Any thoughts?

I see RMclock 2.2 is out, if it's worth it I'll try it?

 

I like that it actually works-Power4Gear resets my profiles randomly and seems to have odd side effects like not letting my monitor turn back on.

It's also useful for underclocking and has an easy to use interface that displays exactly what you want it to.

Someone will point out that the lowest multiplier voltage is fixed, but you can take down the higher voltages for lower power consumption at higher speeds. I know some people get their highest speed to work at the same voltage as the lower speed. My 2400 works at 1.000V at 1.83GHz while the lowest speed, 1GHz, is just 0.050V lower at 0.950V. Basically my fan will never spin up from its minimum speed, even when dual prime95 stress testing for 2 hours straight. And it is very cool.

 

Is the power profile hotkey compatible with RMClock ??

Cheers.

 

Not to my knowledge, and I don't see how it could be. You really don't need it since there's settings within RMClock that will detect when you're on battery and do things like underclock/change power management settings. I never need to change the profile; since my voltages are so low I just keep it on "Performance on Demand" without noticeable impact on battery life.

 

A bit offtopic... I sort of gave up RMClock, Power4Gear, NHC and the rest of the bunch...

Reason? Well, main reason is that I doubt the ACPI firmware on my notebook.

But more general reasons, applying to all notebooks, are:
1. Intel Speedstep is able to handle the speed of the CPU just fine, without overhead from any additional software.
2. For Core Duos, undervolting doesn't help. Yes, I know that

However, I'm willing to bet that if you don't artificially stress your CPU with prime95 or whatever, it will stay at the min multiplier at least 95% of the time. E.g., my fan never speeds up from the first gear either, and I'm not undervolting at higher multipliers. Which basically means that during normal usage, the effect of undervolting at higher multipliers is almost nil.

[ This doesn't apply of course during gaming, so if you do that often, undervolting will be useful. But I'm not sure how many people play games regularly on their notebooks. ]

What I'm trying to say is, don't add RMClock to your system just because it's cool, you may be adding useless overhead only. Yeah, I went with the hype and ran it for half a year also, but I'm cured. Maybe try for a few months without any kind of additional underclocking software, and see how it does. And if it's not satisfactory, then install RMClock. Or, run it for two weeks w/o RMClock, two weeks with RMClock, see which does better.

 

In response to E.B.E., RMClock takes up less memory than P4G and is far less buggy from my experience. I use it as a replacement, not as a supplement.

And while you're right that my processor stays at min voltage most of the time, I do game a fair bit and even if I'm ripping music or something the silence is much appreciated (EAC takes a looong time, after all).

What I'm saying is, if you're ok for switching to RMClock/NHC for the reasons that I've outlined above, there is no harm to underclocking if you don't push it to the point of instability (in which case you just up the voltage a bit), and I'll take even a small benefit that comes without cost any day.

Edit: Also, if you game on your laptop, undervolting will reduce overall system temperatures under load and might give you a bit more leeway with overclocking the GPU.

 

There can be coexistence. I use both RMClock and P4G... I keep P4G mostly because of its screen brightness controls on certain profiles, whereas I keep RMClock for the undervolting. It's possible to use the P4G power profiles (screen saver, sleep/hibernate timers) while keeping the CPU undervolted, but the CPU profile will be controled by RMClock. That's fine for by my standard...

I use a previous generation Centrino notebook... and I do notice the battery life difference when undervolted.

 

I agree there's no harm except the overhead to your system. Even if you do drop the voltage too low, the worst that can happen is that your computer will freeze or reboot.

If you're using Pentium-Ms there's definitely an advantage to undervolting. Battery+heat, 100% of the time.

 

Thanks for your input E.B.E, I also don't use any of these after removing P4G (still believing it was causing my stand-by issues) and the system seems to be happy now, was wondering if I should install one of these others, but think I will just hold off for now.