Re: PROBLEM: Celeron Core

From: Robert Hancock
Date: Mon Jan 21 2008 - 19:00:24 EST


Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
Clock throttling is not likely to save your battery, unless you have tasks that are running at 100% CPU for an unlimited time or something, and you force your CPU to throttle. Normally most people have tasks that run and then the CPU idles - loading an email, displaying a web page, etc. Clock throttling will just make these tasks utilize the CPU for a longer time proportional to the amount clock throttling and therefore negate any gains in battery usage.

Aren't you forgetting about CPUfreq governors? Which mean: use the maximum CPU frequency when the system is busy, throttle down (or lower voltage) when the system is idle.

So yes, throttling will save the battery.

We are talking about throttling (i.e. P4 clockmod) not CPU frequency scaling. Clock modulation does not reduce the clock speed, it just basically forces the CPU to halt on a certain duty cycle. If the CPU is already idle this has no effect and won't save any power.

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Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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