CPU frequency scaling problem on amd64 laptop

[dangertools]

I have some problems with cpu frequency scaling on my aspire 1501lmi, don't know if it ever worked like it should but i have recognized it a few days ago. I have tried every userland tool now (cpudyn, cufreqd, speedfreq and powernowd) and all have problems in holding the speed up at maximum when it is needed. the cpu has three states, 800, 1600 and 1800 mhz, it is an amd64 3000+. i have compiled something and the cpu first jumped up to 1800 mhz and after some while, although the cpu was 0% idle, it fell down on 800mhz again. i recognized this problem a few days ago when i had opened about 15 windows (needed them for the moment) and compiled something in 2 of them, one was eclipse which eats cpu-power too. but the cpu ran at 800 mhz. it looked like that the userland tool boosted up the freq when starting the compilation but after some time the freq fell down on 800 again (so it is at the moment when making emerge -uD world, gkrellm shows a cpu-usage of 100%) of course i have all the things in kernel, like all governours and powernow-k8. i am using 2.6.9-rc4. Any ideas or suggestions? before i forget: i have tried around with the values of cpudyn etc. to boost up the speed earlier than the default was which worked but it fell down after some time again. i get the speed value from /proc/cpuinfo but the value in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_frequency is the same

dangertools


here the output of powernow-k8 in dmesg if someone needs it:

[Earthwings]

Can you run speedfreq once again and monitor it with "speedfreq -m" - what does it report?

[dangertools]

i have tried speedfreq -m and it tells me the same as /proc/cpuinfo. Sure i have disabled powernowd and then started speedfreq with dynamic in /etc/conf.d/speedfreq. I have started an emerge -uD world which compiles at the moment and the speed ran up on 1800 mhz but after max. one min it fell down on 800 again which it runs now. any suggestions

[EDIT] Looks like i had somewhere a problem. speedfreq -m doesn't show the same speed as /proc/cpuinfo but the fan spins down which, i think, tells that the speed is down too[/EDIT]


dangertools

[malloc]

Some kernels don't like to update /proc/cpuinfo. ck-sources is one of them to my knowledge. You need to set userspace as your default governor and use powernowd (of course you can use any other but powernowd is more tweaked for amd64's).
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--> Linux ### 2.6.11-ck2 #1 Sat Mar 12 20:21:30 WET 2005 i686 GNU/Linux <--

[dangertools]

but fan is spinning down when /proc/cpuinfo tells this low speed too. So this let's me think that the speed is the wrong one. and my kernel is vanilla, no patches. my laptop makes much more noise when running on full speed than it does at the moment although speedfreq tells me it runs at full power

dangertools

[bverheg]

You can not tell the cpu speed from the fan running or not. The fan is controlled by temperature. I remember it switched off as well when I was running without speed control at 1800MHz all the time.

Now my 1501LMi with cpudyn seems to switch speed just as expected. Right now I am doing an emerge -Du world, while watching CPU load on gkrellm and watching speed in a console with

[moltonel]

I had similar problems : cpu scaling working fine after boot, then after a few minutes the frequency would get "stuck" at 800Mhz. Not a cpudyn/powernowd/whatever problem since scaling by hand (with "echo freq > file") wouldn't work either.

Go to the bios and disable "cpu power saving" (in the "power" section of award bioses). (do not disable "powernow!"). I think that this option tells the bios to do the frequency scaling himself, bypassing and confusing the OS.

[dangertools]