OT: AMD Cool'n'Quiet and Intel Speedstep

[RJK]

Just got around to further monitoring my PC's with a mains electricity "Plug
in Mains Power and Energy Monitor",
(with a "plug in" mains power monitor similar to
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343 - can't find the "TCH"
brand one that I own but, have tested it with calibrated meter and it's very
accurate - amazing what's coming out of China these days).

....and the results IMhumbleO are rather interesting !
My 2nd PC which has recently been having money and parts lavished on it,
with a view to one day swapping it into the position of my main PC, is using
79 watts whilst idling - e.g writing this post, (that includes 17" LCD
monitor btw). And whilst running the benchmark function in "Hot CPU Tester
Lite," (which pushes the machine to run full speed for the duration of the
benchmark tests), shows that it's pulling around double the current - and
consuming 150 - 160 watts.

....hardware in that box is
Seasonic 380w SII psu
Asrock ALiveNF6G-VSTA motherbaord
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor (2x3.0ghz 2x1mb L2 cache) CPU
Nvidia 7300LE pci-e x16 graphics card
2 x PC2-5300 Kingston 512mb's RAM, ...must get around to fitting PC2-6400 !
2 x 80gb Seagate hard disks
1 x dvd rewriter
3 1/2@ card reader bay
120mm Arctic Cooling case rear fan, 92mm case front fan, 92mm fan on Arctic
Cooling pro 64 cpu cooler, Zalman VF700-AlCu 'fan'

My "old" "main" PC reads 142-144watts at idle - cpu at 2396.0 mhz,
multiplier at x12, and when running the benchmark test, (as above),
166-168watts cpu at 3194.6 mhz multiplier at x16.
(APC 650 | Belkin F5C100u | Linksys WAG354G | and a few small consumption
devices are also on that supply but, for the reasons of these ramblings are
not relevant).

Hardware in that is:-
Seasonic 430w SII psu | Asrock Conroe 865pe | D935 | 4 x 512 Corsair |
2x80gb + 1x160gb Seagate hd's | 2 optical drives cd rw, dvd rw | floppy
drive | card reader bay | 5 fans | Nvidia AGP 6200 graphics card

So, Intel Speedstep on my old D935 | Conroe 865pe is only saving me 24watts
whilst it's at minimal load,
and the AMD Cool'n'Quiet technology is saving me around 76 watts whilst that
machine is not under heavy cpu load !!

SO THERE you are ! ...the moral of this story, is, IF you have a reasonably
recent AMD based machine, make sure that you have "Cool'n'Quiet" enabled in
the bios, and for XP platforms at least, make sure you install the necessary
AMD cpu optimization ...Cool'n'Quiet driver/s etc.
Intel Speedstep AFAIAA doesn't require any drivers to be installed.

regards, Richard

 

[M.I.5¾]

Just got around to further monitoring my PC's with a mains electricity
"Plug in Mains Power and Energy Monitor",
(with a "plug in" mains power monitor similar to
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343 - can't find the "TCH"
brand one that I own but, have tested it with calibrated meter and it's
very accurate - amazing what's coming out of China these days).

I would be interested to know how you calibrated this wattmeter. This is
not an exercise that can be done in the home. Even if you have the phase
shift transformer required to do the job, it still requires a three phase
supply to power it, not something normally found in the home. In any case,
it is necessary to open up the type of wattmeter that you describe because
it is necessary to break a connection inside before it can be calibrated.

 

[RJK]

oops, you got me ! ...my excuse - this was late at night and I admit
careless use of the word "calibrated", (although my multimeter was
calibarted a little while ago),
....a little while ago I did check the amps reading on the "power monitoring
plug" and found that it was pretty accurate.
Quite how the "plug" displays watts - I don't know - ...it's probably got a
little circuit in it that plays around with Ohms triangle

regards, Richard

 

[M.I.5¾]

oops, you got me ! ...my excuse - this was late at night and I admit
careless use of the word "calibrated", (although my multimeter was
calibarted a little while ago),
...a little while ago I did check the amps reading on the "power
monitoring plug" and found that it was pretty accurate.
Quite how the "plug" displays watts - I don't know - ...it's probably got
a little circuit in it that plays around with Ohms triangle

It's not quite that simple. Put simply, it takes the mean of the
instantaneous voltage multiplied by the mean of the instantaneous current
integrated over several cycles of input. The sample rate will affect the
acuuracy (If you know anything of Simpson's Rule, you will understand this).