[ltp] Re: controlling Fire GL power levels on T43p

[Nir Tzachar]

> Unfortunately the original "powerplay" stuff contains tricks like
> disabling memory bus lanes and stuff and nobody except ati know how to
> do that. Speculations are that ATI doesn not open the source because
> they are afraid of being sued for infringing on patented stuff like
> speedstep[tm] and the like. Thank the US government for "freeing" the
> world with their shoddy software patents shit.

:(

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> The open r300 driver can be told to save power by enabling the
> "DynamicClocks" option in xorg.conf, which turns down the clock speed of
> the radeon chip when it is idle.
> On my system the difference between fglrx and r300 is not as big as I
> expected. I have not taken exact measures though, I just watched the
> temperature readings and the difference is about 1-2=B0C max.

i am using the DynamicClocks options, however, i dont see any improvement=
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in battery life. in contrast, when using powerplay, i can squeez about 45=
=20
minutes from my battery.

> Additionally, there is an open tool named "rovclock", designed to
>   overclock radeon chips in linux. It can, however, be used to=20
> your card, too. Try to set a gpu clock rate of 95MHz and memory clock to
> 120MHz. (powerplay sets both to about 200 at minimum). Dont hesitate to
> experiment a bit - if you go too low, you will see random pixels on the
> screen first - the GPU does not crash right away.

i came across this tool while searching for a solution.
it does lower my gpu clock speed, with good effects, however the effects=20
are not as noticeable as powerplay ;(=20

i still want to get an open implementation of powerplay going, even if it=
=20
means reverse engineering the closed source driver.
i would appreciate any help in this, if anyone is interested / have ideas=
=20
on how to get started.

cheers,


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nir.