Need help controlling clock speed in Mandrake 10.0 AMD64 (Cool & Quiet)

  • Thread starter General Schvantzkoph
  • Start date
G

General Schvantzkoph

Is there any way to control the CPU clock speed of the Athlon64 in
Mandrake 10.0 AMD64 version? If the system comes up from a cold boot the
CPU is in Cool and Quiet mode (897MHz) which is where it stays no matter
what the load. It's nice and quiet but the performance isn't great. I've
been able to get it to run at full speed by booting into XP and using the
Windows power control panel to set it to desktop mode. If I then do a
reboot into Mandrake it remains at full speed and the performance is
fabulous. Is there any way to control the clock speed directly from Linux?
Obviously it would be better if the kernel did it dynamically but even a
manual switch would be better than having to boot XP. I've tried it with
the ACPI and ACPI daemons both enabled and disabled, makes no difference.

The system is a Compaq R3000z laptop with an Athlon64 3400+. The BIOS has
no control for anything except for boot order so I can't use that.
 
R

Robert McKee

General said:
Is there any way to control the CPU clock speed of the Athlon64 in
Mandrake 10.0 AMD64 version? If the system comes up from a cold boot the
CPU is in Cool and Quiet mode (897MHz) which is where it stays no matter
what the load. It's nice and quiet but the performance isn't great. I've
been able to get it to run at full speed by booting into XP and using the
Windows power control panel to set it to desktop mode. If I then do a
reboot into Mandrake it remains at full speed and the performance is
fabulous. Is there any way to control the clock speed directly from Linux?
Obviously it would be better if the kernel did it dynamically but even a
manual switch would be better than having to boot XP. I've tried it with
the ACPI and ACPI daemons both enabled and disabled, makes no difference.

The system is a Compaq R3000z laptop with an Athlon64 3400+. The BIOS has
no control for anything except for boot order so I can't use that.

I found this on Google. Seems to be what you are looking for.

http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.6/7/Documentation/cpu-freq/amd-powernow.txt
 
R

Robert McKee

General said:
Is there any way to control the CPU clock speed of the Athlon64 in
Mandrake 10.0 AMD64 version? If the system comes up from a cold boot the
CPU is in Cool and Quiet mode (897MHz) which is where it stays no matter
what the load. It's nice and quiet but the performance isn't great. I've
been able to get it to run at full speed by booting into XP and using the
Windows power control panel to set it to desktop mode. If I then do a
reboot into Mandrake it remains at full speed and the performance is
fabulous. Is there any way to control the clock speed directly from Linux?
Obviously it would be better if the kernel did it dynamically but even a
manual switch would be better than having to boot XP. I've tried it with
the ACPI and ACPI daemons both enabled and disabled, makes no difference.

The system is a Compaq R3000z laptop with an Athlon64 3400+. The BIOS has
no control for anything except for boot order so I can't use that.

Hello,
I know there are modules for the Kernel for use with laptops that perform a
similar function. I think one is called cpufreq.

Robert
 
G

General Schvantzkoph

Is there any way to control the CPU clock speed of the Athlon64 in
Mandrake 10.0 AMD64 version? If the system comes up from a cold boot the
CPU is in Cool and Quiet mode (897MHz) which is where it stays no matter
what the load. It's nice and quiet but the performance isn't great. I've
been able to get it to run at full speed by booting into XP and using the
Windows power control panel to set it to desktop mode. If I then do a
reboot into Mandrake it remains at full speed and the performance is
fabulous. Is there any way to control the clock speed directly from Linux?
Obviously it would be better if the kernel did it dynamically but even a
manual switch would be better than having to boot XP. I've tried it with
the ACPI and ACPI daemons both enabled and disabled, makes no difference.

The system is a Compaq R3000z laptop with an Athlon64 3400+. The BIOS has
no control for anything except for boot order so I can't use that.

Thanks to all who tried to help. I've got clock speed working now. I built
a 2.6.8.1 kernel and selected the CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_USERSPACE=y
option. To change the clock speed all you have to do is change the value
in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed

For a 2.2GHz clock
echo 2200000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed

For an 800MHz clock
echo 800000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed
 

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