[arch-general] powertop vs archlinux vs ubuntu

[Stefano Z.]

no, my dual celeron su2300 dosen't support speedstep, it stay fixed to 1.2ghz
but i have found the problem, i think this problem have to do with KMS...
I have istalled kernel26 2.6.31.6-1 and the problem disappered but obviously
this is not the solution i want ;-)
If i install 2.6.32+ kernel the problem reappear.
Another thing that happens is that the cpu(s) Temperature with kernels
>2.6.31 stay
about on 53+C while with kernel <2.6.32 stays on 42C...



On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Andrea Fagiani <andfagiani at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/22/2010 04:53 AM, Brendan Long wrote:
>>
>> On 02/21/2010 04:55 PM, Xavier Chantry wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 12:42 AM, Stefano Z.<mie.iscrizioni at gmail.com>
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> hi
>>>>
>>>> i've bought a new notebook (hp pavilion dm1-1150sl) and installed
>>>> archlinux.
>>>> i have see a strange thing with powertop, i'm running the vanilla arch
>>>> kernel26,
>>>> and i have see this behaviour:
>>>> Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
>>>> C0 (cpu occupata)      (31,6%)
>>>> C0                0,0ms ( 0,0%)
>>>> C1 mwait          0,1ms ( 0,7%)
>>>> C4 mwait          0,0ms (67,8%)
>>>> Wakeups-from-idle per second : 31483,5  interval: 10,0s
>>>> ---
>>>> as you can see, i have a LOT of wakeups per seconds very low c1 states
>>>> lot of c0 and c4 states,
>>>> a wattmeter tell me that archlinux consume about 25/26watt
>>>> Then i have boot a live ubuntu distro and see this:
>>>> Cn                permanenza media    P-state (frequenze)
>>>> C0 (cpu occupata)      ( 0,6%)
>>>> polling           0,0 ms ( 0,0%)
>>>> C1 mwait         26,7 ms (68,6%)
>>>> C4 mwait          1,2 ms (30,8%)
>>>> Wakeup-da-idle al secondo: 281,3        intervallo: 15,0s
>>>> ---
>>>> as you can see  the wakeups are a LOT lower than on arch and we have
>>>> lot of c1 and c4 state,
>>>> power consumption is about 20W, the same that i have with win7 (about
>>>> 18/20w).
>>>> For meaning about cX state see here:
>>>> http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/powertop.php
>>>>
>>>> thanks!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> You didn't give enough information so we will need to check the basis :
>>> - which cpufreq driver and governor are you using in both cases (check
>>> cpufreq-info)
>>> - what processes does powertop show as causes for wakeups ?
>>> - what processes does top show in term of cpu usage ?
>>>
>>> Here is what I got in the last few minutes when i was writing this :
>>> C4 mwait          3.4ms (92.5%)          800 Mhz    98.0%
>>> Wakeups-from-idle per second : 279.4    interval: 10.0s
>>>
>>> I have a core 2 duo with acpi-cpufreq loaded and conservative governor.
>>> $ grep cpufreq /etc/rc.conf
>>> MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq)
>>> DAEMONS=(syslog-ng net-profiles crond dbus hal alsa cpufreq
>>> storage-fixup)
>>> $ grep governor /etc/conf.d/cpufreq
>>> # valid governors:
>>> governor="conservative"
>>>
>>>
>>
>> They may just not have cpu-freq-utils installed maybe? I'm using
>> laptop-mode-tools with compiz and GNOME running (but not doing anything)
>> and it's saying 99.2% C4, 0.8% C0. This is with another Core2 and
>> laptop-mode is set to use the powersave governor on battery (which is
>> how I tested). When I plug it in, it jumps up to 25%, but I don't really
>> care how active the processor is when it's on battery.
>>
>>
>
> Be sure to have cpu-freq-utils installed, as well as loading the right
> modules (acpi-cpufreq, cpufreq_ondemand, if you plan on using the same
> governor as ubuntu does), and add `cpufreq` to your DAEMONS array in
> rc.conf.
> On my system, with laptop-mode-tools the powertop output is very similar to
> what Brendan said. Also, the 31k+ wakeups definitely mean there's some issue
> on your config.
>