Software utility for Sagers! - Page 3

obg, yes it might be interesting to know how much the hard drive is used in percentage just like the cpu. The max throughput can be measured by for example sisoft sandra.

ni79, I guess you are referring to this http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php . It doesnt work on the sagers because the pll chip used is ics 950201. This pll cannot be programmed to change fsb, the fsb is fixed and is set according to the values of the BSEL pins of the cpu sampled on system start.

Great, dread090, youre on the list

And yes, there actually is a way to see the present battery drainage. So by calculating a running average for say, the last 5 minutes, you can tell an estimate of how much time you have left. Good thing!

The cpu throttler doesnt make the idle temp any lower because windows xp issues HLT commands to the processor when idleing in order to reduce power, which in effect is the same as throttling. This is why the computer is running cooler in xp than in dos.

You dont have do disable acpi to run the battery saver, so its possible for you to see the battery.

The cpu throttler clearly didnt have that much effect on battery time as I had hoped for. But it will have some effect, this is how it works. If you have the power scheme in control panel on "Max battery" windows itself throttles the cpu to 50% in order to save battery. So throttling is a way to save battery. However, if you use my program to throttle downto 12,5% then windows will periodically set it to 50% again. This is clearly not wanted. I havent investigated really much into this subject because I almost never run on battery myself. But in version 1.1 I added the functionality that my program will set the selected throttle state every 5th second. Try to do like this: Set the power scheme to "always on", adjust the turn off time for the monitor and hard drive to the lowest possible, then use the battery saver to set the throttling to 12,5% and do NOT exit the battery saver, just minimize it. Now see if it give you some more battery time.

You are correct about throttling, it isnt like speedstep that actually lowers the cpu frequency. The purpose of throttling in the pentium 4 chip is that it is used to lower the temp when it has reached a trip point. This combined with the safety shut off at 135 (and the bios shut off at 85) makes our computers safe from overheating. I simply make use of the heat-downthrottling on-demand. My originally use for it was to lower the temp and it works. When I downclock my 3.06GHz HT to 62.5% it runs like a 2.4GHz cpu and also a lot cooler, approximately 15 degrees lower max temp. The battery saver thing was only a selling point

I have been investigating into lowering the voltage a lot. We have a interesting combination with a mobile chipset and a desktop cpu. I have tried to program the chipset with speedstep commands but the computer hang. I checked my cpu and its multivid-rated which means that the cpu itself changes voltage which makes the whole thing a bit more interesting. I still have some more ideas to try, I did however concentrate my efforts on the fan control instead. BTW, you arent required to lower the voltage when underclocking, thats just a myth. It may seem logical because you sometimes have to raise the voltage when overclocking, but its always safe to run the cpu at its rated voltage, even if you clock it at 1 Hz.

tadpole, I already have a beta-tester for the 8890. Dont worry about it, the beta stage is just a matter of days, I just want to confirm that the program works as it should before I let everyone use it.

Nandro, you are the first to report that it doesnt work, others with 8890 have reported that it works. However -274 isnt so strange as it may seem. The EC reports the temp in tenths degrees Kelvin. 0 degrees Celsius = 273.3 degrees Kelvin. So I divide by 10 and subtract with 274 to get the temp in Celsius. So in your case the EC must report 0 and my calculations get -274. I guess I have to check for 0 which probably means that there havent been a valid temp reading yet. Does the other temp readings seems to be valid? 35 is cool, does it rise when you do anything cpu intensive?

On a sidenote to this, the actual hardware temp reading are made in Celsius and are converted to Kelvin by the EC. When I disassembled the EC firmware I saw that the EC makes my calculations backwards, but are using 273 instead of 274, which means that the cpu always are 1 degree celsius warmer than what my program reports. I intend to fix this in the new program.

Nandro, that was very interesting, you must be using a different EC/Keyboard bios than 1_of_9 who wrote this post. I was hoping that they wouldnt change these things between keyboard bios versions. Pardon me for being cynical, but I wouldnt be surprised if this was a deliberate broken feature. Lets hope not.

However, this really doesnt matter, because in the new version I'm using a different approach. I'm using the EC debug ports to communicate with the EC, which also means you dont have to disable ACPI. Of course they can change those things also, we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.

Nandro, how old are your computer? Have you updated the system bios or the keyboard bios? What versions do you have, you can see both while booting.