power4gear clock speed control

i've got a w3j and i run power4gear for my power management.
is it me or do the different cpu control settings do nothing? when i set it to "battery saving" at 25% cpu speed, cpu-z reports that when idle it runs at 999MHz(basically 50%). it never goes down to 500MHz.
also, on AC power and on "super performance," it still does speedstep, and clocks it down to 999 on idle. is there any way that power4gear can do a better job of controlling it? the only setting that seems to make any difference is cpu at 75%, then it does sometimes run at 1500MHz. other than that, it just alternates between 999 and 2000.
i imagine NHC would be one solution, but i've heard of problems with it on a core duo system, and this laptop needs to be absolutely stable because its used for all my college stuff.

thanks in advance

 

There are several things to keep in mind. First, modern processors and speedstop are pretty smart. If you are using your computer for something simple (word processing, moderate surfing) then your computer doesn't need to cores of a 2 Ghz processor, infact most of the time the 999 Mhz in two cores is overkill, but powering down past that point isn't a significant enough change. If you are on battery at 50%, then you still have processing power, but don't ened to go lower and may not want to. The other thing to consider is that on super performance, if you aren't using the computer and don't need full power, why run it, but when you need the power, you get it. Unless you are doing some serious over clocking or are trying to squeak a few more minutes out, P4G should be enough.

 

yeah for sure, i knew all of that and i'm very confident in speedstep's ability. the only thing that bothers me is the control aspect, it irritates me that it claims 25% speed and doesn't give it. i like having more absolute control, which is probably what nhc would give me. i'm not going to worry about it though, power4gear's served me well so far and the screen brightness makes a bigger difference than clock speed anyway.

 

there is a new patch for Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors over at the NHC web page. www.pbus-167.com

insane

 

I think (I'm pretty sure) the speed doesn't go lower than 1GHz because the minimum multiplier is for 1GHz.

To go lower than that, you need to use throttle control. RMClock can do that, I'm unsure whether NHC can also. But, as someone else above said, I don't think you will get a significant decrease in power consumption/heat emanations by doing that.

P4G is a pretty c_appy piece of software in my experience... so I'm not surprised that it says 25% and doesn't give it (because it can't). In fact, I didn't even consider this to be an issue on my V6J. Then again, I stopped P4G on the first day of my Windows installation

 

maybe i'll give nhc a shot when i finish this semester, thanks for the replies everyone.

 

Well its intresting. The System Properties page in Windows shows a clockspeed of 500mhz, when in battery saving mode. CPU-z reports 1ghz....
Screenshot provided.

 

lol, i was just going to let the topic die, but...
you're very right. i just tried this on mine, and system properties shows up as 498MHz, and CPUZ never drops below 999. who do i trust more, microsoft or cpuz? i would be inclined to trust cpuz more, except i can't believe that system properties would just pull the 498MHz figure out of thin air.

my theory at the moment is that cpuz itself uses enough processor cycles that speedstep decides that its a threat. it therefore clocks the chip up to 1GHz as long as cpuz is running. feel free to disagree or post up ideas.

 

The funny thing is I have noticed exactly this same "phenomenon" and also read that core duo's cant be clocked lower than 999Mhz or something like that. However, i simply did tests with the same brightness level and wifi-on and battery saving(400 odd Mhz) vs quiet office(866- 900 odd Mhz) while running on battery and battery saving mode gave me more battery life. So I dont know what exactly is going on, but whatever its doing works

Edit: Oh and the cpu takes longer to reach 49 degrees when teh fan kicks in on battery saving mode as well

 

Maybe BattSaving is also using CPU throttling besides the multiplier? I'm pretty sure that on a Core Duo from the T2x00 series you can't go lower than 1GHz from the multiplier...