Weblog entry #5 for emeitner
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#5
Additional power savings for FGLRX drivers
Posted by emeitner on Sun 4 Jun 2006 at 05:09
On my IBM T42 work laptop running Ubuntu "Drake"(FGLRX drivers from the xorg-driver-fglrx package) I found that the GPU temperature was at 120F when idle. First, I did not like that the fan was running all the time(now that it is summer) just to cool an idle chip. Second, I did not like this additional drain on the batteries.
Using info gleaned from here[thinkwiki.org] I did the following:
Created /etc/acpi/ac.d/fglrx-powersave.sh:
ATICONFIG=/usr/bin/aticonfig
if [ -x $ATICONFIG ] ; then
getXconsole
su $user -c "($ATICONFIG --set-powerstate=2)"
fi
And /etc/acpi/battery.d/fglrx-powersave.sh
ATICONFIG=/usr/bin/aticonfig
if [ -x $ATICONFIG ] ; then
getXconsole
su $user -c "($ATICONFIG --set-powerstate=1)"
fi
It helps somewhat. The fan still runs continuously but now the GPU only runs at 115F when idle. There is always Rovclock[thinkwiki.org]. Maybe I'll try that later.(it seems to me that a "powernowd" for the GPU is what we need. How would one gauge the load on the GPU though?)
Comments on this Entry
Posted by Utumno (211.22.xx.xx) on Tue 6 Jun 2006 at 18:07
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I am curious as to how did you detect the temperature of your GPU? I also have a Thinkpad T42 running Debian etch, and although I very much like the machine ( pretty much everything works out of the box ;) one thing I am annoyed by is that I cannot (?) install lm_sensors on Thinkpads ( last time I checked, there was this EEPROM problem that prevented lm_sensors from working - see the scary README.thinkpad! )
So, is there a way to read hardware sensors ona Thinkpad?
So, is there a way to read hardware sensors ona Thinkpad?
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Posted by emeitner (216.153.xx.xx) on Tue 6 Jun 2006 at 18:25
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Provided by the ibm_acpi kernel module, i think:
$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal temperatures: 44 44 31 50 32 -128 28 -128Install GNOME Sensors Applet and you'll get a nice way to display these temperatures on your panel.
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