Power optimizing the Pentium-M

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1206/

I want to hug this guy for writing it down and having it published

Optimizing it for power usage was the first thing i did when i got my new laptop and the battery life extended from 2.5hrs to 3.5+ when mobile...everybody should know about it!

Now we just need an AMD equivilent guide. I think if you set power options to always on, it disables AMD throttling but I'm not sure.

One of the most useful articles I've run across in some time. Looks like my Dothan 1.5Ghz may be able to run full speed at under 1.0v!

Now i'm wondering..*hehe* will it also work with Dothan's on desktop boards? (see link in sig)

Sjaak said:

Now i'm wondering..*hehe* will it also work with Dothan's on desktop boards? (see link in sig)

Click to expand...

No reason they shouldn't, as long as the boards support Speedstep. What I'd do though, is to overclock the snot out of it. Then, you can use some kind of quiet hsf and never hear an overclocked computer

moz_21 said:

No reason they shouldn't, as long as the boards support Speedstep. What I'd do though, is to overclock the snot out of it. Then, you can use some kind of quiet hsf and never hear an overclocked computer

Click to expand...

Thats what im going to do, but if i can run it underclocked + undervolted when idle, that would be sweet.

neo1999 said:

One of the most useful articles I've run across in some time. Looks like my Dothan 1.5Ghz may be able to run full speed at under 1.0v!

Click to expand...

My 1.733 Sonoma can run at 0.972V at full speed and 0.700V at 6x and 7x multiplier. Too bad 0.700V is the lowest we can reach, bet my chip can run at at a much lower voltage when it's at 6x.

It sounds like a useful article. I see the author is running 2000 Pro.

I've got XP, and I think SpeedStep can't be disabled? It's no longer an add-in provided by Intel. It's built into the OS.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Ty Bower said:

It sounds like a useful article. I see the author is running 2000 Pro.

I've got XP, and I think SpeedStep can't be disabled? It's no longer an add-in provided by Intel. It's built into the OS.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

moz_21 said:

Now we just need an AMD equivilent guide. I think if you set power options to always on, it disables AMD throttling but I'm not sure.

Click to expand...

I think that would work the same? Can anyone verify this works at all though?

My banias...

I'm using XP on my Banias, and I can't find any mention of SpeedStep inside my XP Pro installation. However, there is an option to turn of SpeedStep inside my bios, which I did. Before the article, I wasn't even AWARE that speedstep was running on my laptop, I had simply manually switched power modes with "Power4Gear."

The thing I noticed is that I can significantly decrease the voltages used at the 3 different multiplier settings. However, when I let my computer "run free", as in, without forcing it to a specific multiplier, Prime95 gets a little crazy. Usually, when you finish 2 - 4 "calculations", Prim95 would tell you that it had completed that particular test. However, Prime 95 no longer does that on my cpu, with Crystal activated. It runs very quickly through the tests, thousands of them in fact, without indicated that a test was successful. The computer doesn't crash though. Anybody else have this issue?

On the other hand, the burn-in with Sandra crashes my comp. I will try the burn-in through Sandra with the default settings. I'll like to note that my laptop has never hanged prior to this point. NEVER.

Also, do people actually see Speedstep working through CPU-Z on an XP installation? I've never ceen CPU-Z vary it's processor rating with speedstep on.

Anybody else have problems with Prime95 after following the protocol?