Software Multiplier Control in Linux?

intx · Post by **intx** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:49 am

What motherboards or applications support motherboard control within linux?

TIA

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:59 am

I am a total noob at this, but I was planning on changing that somewhere in the near future.

I found this thread at the Gentoo Forums. It's not a complete answer, but it might get you started. Good luck and please report back if you find something that works.

hvengel · Post by **hvengel** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:16 pm

The answer is that if you have a motherboard and processor combination that will allow cpu speep scaling in Windows it will almost for sure work in Linux. In some ways the support in Linux is more advanced than in Windows as it is build directly into the kernel. The only place were Windows is ahead is when it comes to fancy GUI user interfaces to configure this. In linux you are mostly stuck with editing config files to get this setup the way you want.

I am running an ABit AV8 on Gentoo 2004.3 that was boot strapped for the amd64. This has cpu speed scaling setup with the ondomand govenor. Works great. I am running kernel 2.6.9-r14. You will want one of the newer kernels to get the best support for this. So at least 2.6.8 or later.

ckolivas · Post by **ckolivas** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 2:14 am

Actually later versions of kde allow you excellent control over the cpu frequency scaling policy from the kde control centre and a systray icon. On my dothan laptop I can choose one of "performance", "powersave", "ondemand" and "userspace", and cpu throttling from 10-90% as well. These can all be linked to different profiles of battery, ac and battery level and so on. Generally the "ondemand" option is the most versatile because it scales cpu speed to load and makes it not even noticeable that you are running a powersave mode except for the fact that the fan comes on under load only because it responds so quickly to load change.

All of this assumes you have support for cpufreq built into your kernel, and vendor kernels (included in distributions by default) usually do.