attn: folders on linux; you might not be folding with all your MHz!

I don't think it's been brought up before, at least not that I found on a search, but users with a modern linux running a laptop might be folding under reduced processor speeds. Some background, I'm running a centrino-based system under ubuntu linux, with the powernowd governor to manage cpu frequency based on demand. I've noticed that with just FAH, it doesn't get as hot as when, for example, gcc was running. When I cat'ted /proc/cpuinfo, I found that my cpu was only running at 600MHz, the minimum speed when powernowd determines that nothing demanding is going on. I thought that maybe it was because of the 19 niceness that the core is given, so I reniced it to 15, but no change. I continued lowering the niceness to 10, 5, and finally 0, at which point I heard the fans speed up. /proc/cpuinfo confirmed that I was now running my max of 1.5GHz. renice 5 brought it back to 600.

I don't know if this also affects the desktop, though I suspect that it might, given that most modern processors employ dynamic frequency scaling. So check your cpuinfo, and act accordingly (me, I'm keeping the 19 niceness, but that's because my laptop gets ridiculously hot; I'm thinking of getting some AS5 to see if applying it helps).

If you don't have the powernow drivers installed, or switched on in BIOS, then this doesn't affect you.

The following users are not affected:
* Users using a desktop system with PowerNow disabled in BIOS
* Users using a system that does not support CPU Frequency Throttling

So basically it's you mobile folks that need to be worried

Ah, well, I guess that's the price you (or in this case, I) pay for mobility. Mind you, I'm not complaining, I happen to need it. It's too bad I can't afford a dedicated folding box

you could try and bump up the folding priority but this would interfear with other apps unless you bumped them too fah uses "idel cycles" cycles where the only lower process is halt/cpu idel your power management provides user apps more power not FAH because FAH is considered to run at low/idel priority.

I thought about disabling powernowd, but the truth is that right now I don't want to risk it. Bottom of the thing gets much hot when it goes into high hear, much hotter than I'm comfortable with. I want to first see if opening her up and applying AS5 is gonna help any; if not, I'll probably either have to buy a laptop cooler, or just keep folding at 600MHz.