High Idle Power - Toggle power profile & OK?

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Fri May 23, 2008 11:29 am

I have a problem with my AMD 690G + BE-2350 build. I didn't notice it until I plugged in a power monitor, but on average my system idles at 55W. When I plugged in a power monitor, I found that it would sometimes be idling away at 70W. This was with zero CPU load.

Toggling the power profile to/from Minimal Power Management and/or Maximum Battery then takes it down to the normal 55W immediately. After doing something else I will at some point discover that it has returned to idling at 70W. Flipping power profiles once again fixes it.

Has anyone else seen this behaviour?

Motherboard: MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital

Edit: I've been watching the CPU clock in Everest and it seems that the clock speed can ramp up but it never ramps back down.

Edit2: It appears directly related to playing video files. After playing any kind of video in any application, CPU remains at full speed until profile is toggled. I'm using the onboard AMD X1250 video.

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:43 pm

Weird... driver bug? Have you installed/updated your video and CPU drivers?

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:57 pm

Thanks. I hope that it would be as simple as that, but unfortunately not.

The behaviour remains even with the latest drivers installed.

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Sat May 24, 2008 1:58 am

It does appear to be directly related to using the onboard X1250 video. If I put in a Radeon HD 3650 card, the CPU correctly goes to idle clocks. I wonder if it's a BIOS bug with the MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital? Could the BIOS control behaviour like this? Cool'n'Quiet is certainly working, it's just not working correctly when onboard video is enabled.

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Sat May 24, 2008 7:41 am

Sounds like a driver bug, you should report it. Might also be worth updating the BIOS too.