Software utility for Sagers! - Page 6

Hi all, long time no see to say the least, this is my first post in a very long time. To make a long story short, I have been away from all kind of work generally and computers particularly. My doctor told me I'm burnt out, I guess thats what happens when you love your work and are self-employed like me. I've decided to write this message to clear things up, since I can see people still make posts in this thread and therefore have an interest in the utility I was planning to make. Unfortunately I didnt have the time to make a full blown utility out of it. I have however succeeded in adjusting my own fan speeds with it. Maybe I will make the utility available public later on, in that case I will post it in the forums. What also contributed to the fact that I kind of lost interest in this project was that for some of the real goodies I was planning to incorporate in the product, like REAL downclocking to save battery (not throttling), GPU clocking/temp probing (???), PAT enabling and other stuff, I needed a 5680 (or 5690/8890/8790) instead of my 5660. Since my 3.06 GHz HT 5660 is more than enough for my needs today I have no plans buying a new laptop.

I was planning something along the lines of making it possible to run your 2.8 Ghz 5680/8890/8790 at 1.4 GHz and disabling all unnecessary powerconsuming hardware to double your batterylife when you just surf the web, and run it at max speed (maybe oc'd to 3.4 GHz?) when you wanted to. All with care taken to the extra heat of course with fan speeds on high and automatic downclocking when needed.

Well, like ryanniedz wrote, it simply wont happen, as long as I dont have my hands on a 5680. Out of curiousity I mail corresponded with Adam too see if PC Torque possibly would be willing to donate or lend me a laptop, but I can understand their stand on this, PC Torque and/or Sager can in no way endorse a program like this that fiddles around with the thermal characteristics of their products. The only solution left I dont want to go myself is to make business out of it (Maybe a battery-doubling utility is worth the price of an extra battery?). The reason for I dont want to sell it, is because it was all a hobby project to start with, and I have my hands full of work anyways. On top of this, I'm sure there are many legal reasons for me not to sell a product like this, and I dont want Sagers lawyers to tell me about it.

Still, it has been fun to tweak my computer to a degree noone thought was possible, who would have thought the 5660 was HT capable, and oh, I remember when everyone thought it was impossible to monitor the temperature in our computers. It seems like long time since then, but once again, my brain isnt working as it should.

Hi Zach, the battery saver isnt really a downclocking utility, it merely makes use of the built in throttling capability in the P4's. My own primarily reason to make it in the first place was to reduce extra heat, when I enabled hyper threading on my 5660, which it officially doesnt support. I do however believe that you can squeeze some extra battery time with it, even though not so much as I had hoped for. Its interesting to note that when you set your power scheme to 'Max battery' in windows XP then the throttling sets to 50% by windows itself, in order to save battery time. I havent really measured the effects from the utility myself, simply because I almost never run on battery. I have got reports via PM's from some people that states that it indeed gives them longer battery time. I guess it depends on what kind of work you are doing on your computer.

It would be very interesting to find out how much extra battery time it would be possible to gain if you used _real_ downclocking, which would be possible on the 5680. This would be very much like 'speed stepping' that some of intels mobile cpu uses. It would also be possible to adjust down the brightness of the screen and make use of other power saving goodies. Well, I guess we never will found out, unless someone send me a 5680

Robert, I think you are correct in every way. There is a possible way to make a processor use less power without slowing it down, and that would be if its possible to lower the voltage to the cpu. I have still to find out if this is possible on our computers programmatically.

Brn2Crz, thanks for the thanks, its appreciated. I am sure that Clevos engineering staff have given very much thought into making the battery time as long as possible. They have not had an easy task considering all power hogging stuff in those laptops. But like in automotive industry where the engineers have to make sure that their cars can handle every different thermal zone, altitude, weather conditions, good and bad roads and so on it sums up to a good compromise. In our case, if you are willing to sacrifice for instance cpu speed and screen brightness you can gain battery time. Every person has his own individual preferences and needs, and therefore its nice to have the tools to tweak your computer. This wasnt supposed to be a long speech :-) To answer your question, I dont really know, it depends on the hardware but I believe if I would put some effort in it there are always new ways to tweak the computer some more.

infamous_pb, yes please

dread090 and all you other interested, I have in this very moment just finished a small application to make the fans going max speed all time. I am going to make it available for download after I have had some fellow sagerites to test that it works. It will be interesting to see on which models it works.

Dread090, I have known for some time, since I started this thread, how to adjust the fan speeds manually. And everything you mention is possible, but not in this little app. I havent had the time to make the full blown utility I have planned. I am also a little bit reluctant to make it all together for different reasons. To mention an obvious one, you use it completely on your own risk. This little utility does nothing else than set max fan speed. It also is a proof of concept. If this works on your computer, then I can adjust your fan speeds manually.

Thats correct, I dont know how much it affects battery time though


Thanks, its encouraging to read posts like this


Thanks

Its the same coding teqnique used, the problem is that the utility you used isnt made for exactly your PLL chip, which means you can get some strange behaviour and/or misleading/erronous measures. Also, there is ways to only downclock the FSB separately without affecting other systems clocks that this utility doesnt do.