Shiny Doom Forum

[Mogri]

For the WTF factor:

[fate]

Reg:

Yea... and nuclear power is 'saving' us billions of tons of emissions and natural fuels. But that money and energy that they're saving us is the exact same money and energy that they've been wasting for the last 100 years.

In 10 years... the fusion power plants will be 'saving' us billions of dollars of nuclear fuel containment, lives lost in meltdowns, and from pollution. But that money and energy that they're saving us is the exact same money and energy that they've been wasting for the last 20 years.

Not to mention that most of the components in a computer cannot be power controlled. Only recently has (significant) power controlled cpu and gpu been available.

Microsoft bashing has hit a new low.
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People's whole lives do pass before their eyes before they die. The process is called living.

Most of the time its easier to get along with people before you get to know them.

[Jastermereel]

Its a shame when people attack the great satan for less than valid reasons. After all, there's never a shortage of great reasons to dislike them: http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/147048,CST-FIN-Andy23.article
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Trool]

Plus these "bugs" they mentioned are fairly lagitamate features for the time. I personally never trust any of my machines to run in powersave mode simply because it's not really there yet, maybe in vista....or os X.5...who knows...
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

[rklee]

If you have a laptop with a good mobile chip; it is easy to save power and prolong battery life.

Windows XP has a decent power saving mode for good laptops. You can set chips like the pentium m to its lowest setting which can save you tons of power. However, 3rd party programs are much more customizable to save more power for higher performance.

In fact my latest personal laptop can run on about 10 watts of power with custom settings and lowest screen brightness. At standard performance mode it uses over 50 watts. That's all due to a good processor (not just the model but I luckily got a good chip in the batch) coupled with a motherboard with good software controllable multiplier voltage systems.
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie

[Trool]

yah, but that's my point exactly you need a custom app to get the performance you want, it'll be nice if these things were already in the os. In fact it would be cool if the OS knew the tradeoffs for each app so that it could switch to the correct power mode for each one. Like if you know that the cpu speed does not matter for a certain app, you could just tune it down when that app is running and tune it bak up when something more intensive is running. But that's just me hoping for a nifty and automated OS, we still need to figure out a way to take really good advantage of all the new cores we're getting....
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

[rklee]

I think the standard windows xp power saving mode does do that (again in capable hardware only). It switches between the processor's default modes to save power. However, if you're lucky and get a good chip... you can further save power by further decreasing the supplied power to the chip. In order to determine that specific chip limit... you'll need to test it til it crashes... I doubt windows will build that in.

Although... video card manufacturers are now building in auto overclocking software that are similar. It keeps testing the chip to higher clocks/voltages until it causes errors then backs it down. Although a main processor error is generally more detrimental than a video card error
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie

[rklee]

Also,

The dynamic switching isn't application based but I think it's just as good. It's a stepping system.

If processor usage <30% drop to lower performance mode
If processor usage >80% increase to higher performance mode

which ideally wouldn't cause much of a decrease in performance as compared to 100% at highest performance mode (there is a slight... unnoticable lag due to switching). What I do to customize it is adjust the %'s as well as the speed/voltages of each mode. You can also have it jump 2 levels or drop 2 levels. Default for my processor is this (determined by intel):
Lowest mode: 1.14V @ 600mhz
Highest mode: 1.4V @ 1.6ghz
I forget if there's a middle mode

I was able to tune it to:
Lowest mode: 0.7V @ 800mhz (lowest Voltage mobo can handle)
Middle mode: 1.0V @ 1.2ghz
Highest: 1.1V @ 1.6ghz

I've tested these same settings on other laptops with the same processor and have not been able to come close to these settings... I think windows is playing it safe by using the stepping chosen by Intel.
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie

[Trool]

That's pretty cool,
How long is the switch lag and what does it do to processing? Like how many times could one switch in a second and see any useful results. Just curious about the granuality of the whole power mode thing....
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

[rklee]

I'm not exactly sure but I would assume it's on the order of single digit milleseconds at most.
I guess for things like... clicking IE every second you might loose a second every dozen IE windows.... I mean it switches to max (maybe medium only for IE) almost instantly but (depending on settings) right after it is done, it will switch back down. But for one time thing or like opening up programs... running large processes; you really won't notice the difference.
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie