[Dynamicpower-devel] Strange behavior: with KDE running less power consumption than with console only

[Patrick B. <der...@gm...>]

Hi all!

I' experimenting a quite strange behavior with my laptop, maybe someone could 
give me some clue!

I'm running kernel 2.6.22.2 with all stuff enabled to match powertop 
requirements and satisfy powertop's tips. When KDE is running all is fine: 
about 90% on C3, 5ms avg residency and 150 wakeups per second (WPS). Laptop 
mode is running too.
If I switch to battery the ACPI estimated consumption is of about 26W... no 
great but that's what I achieve by default just rebooting with the new 
kernel.

The strange stuff happens when I do that experiment: in order to reduce even 
mode the WPS and so improve the avg residency on C3 I switch to a console and 
I stop all services/daemons and applications not needed.
The situation is that:

70% on C3 with an avg residency of 239ms, an avg long term residency of 44ms 
and only 4 WPS!!!... it seem great... it seem... except for the estimate ACPI 
power usage that is now alwasy over 35W... my fan start running fast and 
never noising!

I guess there's some issue related to hardware management. May be is the 
graphics card (ATI X1600) power state? When running KDE i slow it down to low 
voltage... but I suppose that when I switch to console stopping Xorg its 
configuration should not change: it isn't?

Can any body give any clue?

Thanks
Regards
Patrick



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                                                  DERKLING
                                    LRU 338214 (http://counter.li.org)

  Coltiva Linux che tanto windows si pianta da solo.
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   Patrick Bellasi <derkling at users dot sourceforge dot net>
   PhD Student on Computer Science at Politecnico di Milano
   
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