From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751285AbWJPCSO (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:18:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751304AbWJPCSO (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:18:14 -0400 Received: from [203.26.40.81] ([203.26.40.81]:54151 "EHLO boo.knobbits.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751285AbWJPCSN (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:18:13 -0400 Message-ID: <4532EBE2.6090709@knobbits.org> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:18:10 +1000 From: "Michael (Micksa) Slade" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060216 Debian/1.7.12-1.1ubuntu2 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Inspiron 6000 and CPU power saving Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I recently discovered that my Inspiron 6000 uses about 50% more power idling in linux than in windows XP. This means its battery life is about 2/3 of what it could/should be. I guessed it might be the CPU, and did some tests. The results strongly suggest as much. These are the results I got for power consumption in various situations. linux idle at 800MHz: 27W linux idle at 1600MHz: 36W linux raytracing at 800: 30W linux raytracing at 1600: 42W windows idle (presumably 800MHz): 16W windows raytracing (presumably 1600MHz): 36W I've tried ubuntu dapper and ubuntu edgy, and RIP 10 (rescue disk) and BBC 2.1 (rescue disk), and they all appear to have the same issue. The machine's BIOS has no APM so I can't try it for comparison. I've tried noapic and "echo n > /sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate", where n is 1 thru 4. Neither appear to have any affect. I need help digging deeper. I guess /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/power could give some insight but I'm not sure how to read the numbers. That and "learn about ACPI" is all I can figure out so far. So where to from here? I am prepared to spend a significant amount of time researching and resolving the issue, so feel free to suggest reading the ACPI spec or whatever if that's what it's going to take. Mick.