Powersaving in WinXP

Hi, I just got my laptop and reinstalled it to WinXP Pro SP2. I was wondering whether anyone uses any trick to saving power (and lower heat) without anything too advance. I use SpeedSwitchXP on my old laptop but for this one it always report 2ghz op even when WinXP says 1 Ghz. I currently have the powerscheme set to laptop, which I think means adapt for both ac and dc power.

 

Undervolt it with Rmclock or NHC. That the best option (this includes vastly superior power management)

 

Is that done automatically depending on load or do you have to keep on enabling it and disabling it?

 

NHC has something called dynamic switching so under load it'll use full speed and when not it'll go to 1ghz and it can be configured to start automatically on startup. Check CPU-Z and see what it says, maybe speedswitch isnt reading the CPU in realtime.

 

I gave NHC a try, works great. Only thing is that I think the CPU temp it detects is the north bridge on, the one speedfan calls "temp1". But it seems to be the only reading it detects from the drop down list. Wierd. Thanks though.

 

The Core 2 Duo only switches between 1Ghz and 2Ghz. On my old laptop, the Pentium M could throttle down to 60Mhz (though it's normal two speeds are 600Mhz and 1.6Ghz) when on Max Battery mode. Is the only way to go lower is to reduce the voltage?

 

you cant go lower that way, reducing voltage just reduces temperature and power consumption

 

If you try RMclock, you will be able to set up all the possible multipliers. I don't know for NHC but it should be the same. I recommend you give undervolting a try.
Temps may differ due to the different ways to detect them, that's true.

 

RMClock works mainly to reduce your Temp, not battery. In normal setting, Windows power control will set your CPU to lowest speed whenever you are on battery mode. Also, the undervolting won't buy you much at lowest speed. But at the highend speed, lower the voltage will give you a lower temp.

Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, and Turion have pretty much fixed lower end voltage. P-M holds the best record, but it is obsoleted.