AMD Athlon64 qool'n quiet - how?

[Jonathan Berry]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 19:48:43 +0100, Zoltan Kota <zoltank at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 14:04:50 +0100, Alexander Dalloz <ad+lists at uni-x.org> wrote:
> > From the error message it seems the powernow driver tried to throttle
> > down the core voltage from value 0x4 to 0x3 and failed. So we can guess
> > that you edited /etc/cpuspeed.conf to set the powernow-k8 driver active?
> > The module is loaded (lsmod)?. Anything you can change in the BIOS?
> 
> from dmesg:
> 
> powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e)
> powernow-k8:    0 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV)
> powernow-k8:    1 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x8 (1350 mV)
> powernow-k8:    2 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12 (1100 mV)
> cpu_init done, current fid 0xc, vid 0x4
> powernow-k8: vid trans failed, vid 0x3, curr 0x4
> powernow-k8: transition frequency failed
> ACPI wakeup devices:
> ...
> 
> restarting cpuspeed:
> 
> Mar 19 19:44:52 localhost kernel: powernow-k8: vid trans failed, vid
> 0x3, curr 0x4
> Mar 19 19:44:52 localhost kernel: powernow-k8: transition frequency failed
> ...
> 
> /etc/cpuspeed.conf:
> VMAJOR=1
> VMINOR=1
> OPTS="-i 2"
> #DRIVER="powernow-k8"
> #OPTS="-a /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/*/state -t
> /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/temperature 75"

Why is the DRIVER line commented out?  You might try uncommenting it
and seeing what happens.

> lsmod dosn't show powernow-k8 running.

I think it is built into the FC3 kernel.  lsmod doesn't show it on my
system either, but frequency scaling is definitely working.
You might check out powernowd if you cannot get cpuspeed to work. 
http://www.deater.net/john/powernowd.html
I find it works well for me.  I have it set to poll every 100 ms and
that works really well.  The CPU jumps up to 2 GHz when I need it, and
then steps down through 1600 MHz to idle at 800 MHz (it's a clawhammer
core, AMD must  have changed the frequencies; you running a
winchester?).

Jonathan