New Asus Notebooks with Power4Gear+

More popular than ever, but some are still very noisy.

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fouster
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:01 am

New Asus Notebooks with Power4Gear+

Post by fouster » Fri May 13, 2005 12:30 am

Well I am searching for an almost silent laptop and i found that.
These new notebooks from Asus have a technology called Power4Gear+.
The notebook itself has on it's case some power management buttons so you can drop the cpu frequency,power consumption(and I suppose fan's rpm) according to what are you doing in 2 ways .
1) Manually not according to Cpu Load
2) Automatically according to the CPU LOAD .
That's what I have understand!
My question is :
If I use the Manual Control and let's just say I drop my CPU Clock to 1 Ghz and I'm under full load will the fan be activated?? I think that the fan activates after a certain temperature!
To be more specific.
If the fan turns in in 50C , is there any possibility for the
CPU to reach this temperature(under FULL LOAD) when it's clocked in 1GHZ.
Suppore we have a normal room temperature!

If that can work I think we have someting great here , because and the specs of the laptops are very good at least for me!!!!

JanW
Posts: 296
Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:38 pm
Location: France, Europe Folding for SPCR

Re: New Asus Notebooks with Power4Gear+

Post by JanW » Sat May 21, 2005 3:33 pm

fouster wrote:If the fan turns in in 50C , is there any possibility for the
CPU to reach this temperature(under FULL LOAD) when it's clocked in 1GHZ.
Only someone with the specific model you intend to use can tell you that. FWIW, I have defined custom voltages for each multiplier setting of the Pentium-M 730 (1.6GHz) in my Samsung X20, and running Prime torture test at 1GHz, the fan stays off (it triggers at around 53°C). At stock voltage, it will come on.

EDIT: you don't need to buy Asus to get tools like that. If you intend to buy a Centrino-based Notebook, look at Centrino Hardware Control. It allows you to define either a fixed multiplier or use dynamic switching based on load, and lets you set custom voltages for each multiplier. For some notebooks you can even choose the temperature that triggers the fan!

fouster
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:01 am

Post by fouster » Sun May 22, 2005 5:49 am

Well that's been very interesting!!! I didn't know it .
I've read that controlling the fan works with SOME Centrino-based notebooks.
All the other featurew of the Centrino Hardware Control work with EVERY Centrino based notebook??
Again thanks very much.

JanW
Posts: 296
Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:38 pm
Location: France, Europe Folding for SPCR

Post by JanW » Sun May 22, 2005 6:30 am

Let's see. The functionality of the soft is grouped in seven tabs:

Status: This one displays the state of the CPU, the battery, temperatures and the status an ATI graphics card. Most of this should work everywhere. For me it doesn't show the case temperature (I suspect I only have a single temperature sensor for the CPU), and I don't have an ATI graphics card.
CPU Speed: choose mode of operation (max performance, battery optimized, max battery or dynamic switching) for external and battery power conditions, choose the min and max multiplier to be used, sho current state. This should work on every Centrino Notebook.
CPU Voltage: Set voltages for each multiplier and run CPU stability checks after changing voltages. Should work on every Centrino Notebook.
Battery: I don't know about this one, but it works for me. Shows model, manufacturer and serial number of the battery, its full capacity, design capacity and wear level, battery voltage and remaining capacity in mWh, the battery status and the remaining battery life time (which I find to be somewhat less reliable than the battery manager that came pre-installed).
Hard Disk: Display HD model and all the S.M.A.R.T. info, lets choose HD standby time (after which it spins down if not used). Lets choose Acoustic Management settings (seems to work for me, but doesn't produce any audible difference) and Advanced Power Management (some disks support reducing rpm to save power, greyed out for me).
ATI & Temp: All about an ATI graphics card (which I don't have so nothing to be seen or done for me there). Shows ACPI thermal zone info (I can only make sense of the actual temperature here), and allows to enable Notebook Fan Control (Fan OFF Temp, Fan ON Temp, greyed out for me, I gather this part is based on code from Speedfan).
Settings: This is about appearance and whether to autostart the soft.

So some of the features are not actually about the Centrino chips themselves (HD, Graphics), and availability will depend on the actual hardware installed. But the core functionality of CPU multiplier and voltage management seems to work for every Centrino notebook - I haven't seen notes to the contrary in the documentation.

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