[ltp] T60p idle GPU temperature?

[Richard Neill]

Thank you very much for your helpful message.


> On Sat, 07 Jul 2012, Richard Neill wrote:
>> What temperature are other people getting for their GPU? Mine is
>> running at about 76 degrees.
>
> ...
>
>> The 4th one is the GPU temp, and it will climb to 80+ if allowed to.
>
> If it is overheating, your thinkpad is expected to alarm, and thinkpad-acpi
> should scream blood murder at LOG_ALERT or even LOG_EMERG level.  Make sure
> you do pay attention to the kernel log, especially if you run Gnome, which
> *refuses* to alert the user that his box is about to get damaged, *ON
> PURPOSE*.

What would you consider too hot? I'd suggest that 70 degrees is too hot 
iff the laptop is on my knee; but when working on a table, I'm quite 
happy to idle at 90.

>> Do I have heatsinking problems? I know the GPU heatsink on these
>
> Most likely you have thermal compound problems.  Technically speaking, a
> cracked thermal interface between chip and heatsink.  It is an easy fix:
> remove lint, remove the heatsink, clean old thermal grease, apply Artic
> Silver 5 properly, replace heatsink (and *make sure* it is pressing down on
> all ICs).

I already did this: I've changed the heatsink/fan, removed the horrible 
2mm thermal pad (typically these have a thermal-conductivity that is 
200x lower than copper), and used arctic silver and the "penny mod" to 
put pressure in the right place. I'm going to try again with a 
copper-shim instead.

It's annoying how badly the heatsink works: the GPU can hit 80+ while 
(if the CPU is idle), the fan emits only slightly warm air.

>
>> machines is quite poor. Is there any way to throttle GPU power
>> consumption further? I don't mind if the GPU is really slow; all I
>> want is for my text-editor to run silently!
>
> You can run ATI and nVidia GPUs downclocked, and even reduce voltage
> levels.  Intel GPUs can have some optional compression features enabled
> that are supposed to let it run cooler.

I tried using rovclock: it doesn't seem to work properly.
>
> For the ATI GPU, just mess with the power method/profile in
> /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method


I've got the ATI Mobility FireGL V5200
I tried:
echo mid > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
This helps by about 3 degrees. Using "low" is too slow: the display 
doesn't update properly (I have a 2048x1536 panel).

It also helps (again about 3 degrees) to turn OFF the DVI output in the 
docking station (either unplug the DVI cable, or use Fn-F7; simply 
powering off the monitor doesn't help).

>
> The Linux ATI framebuffer/DRM power management is crap, at least for the
> X300/X600/X1500/X1600 ATIs, so it really runs the GPU a lot hotter (and
> wastes a lot more power) than what non-KMS X.org used to do, and let's not
> even compare it to what fglrx could do...

So, which is the best driver? Should I install fglrx, or is the default 
one (with Ubuntu Precise) going to be good enough. I mostly care about 
power management and using the dock; as for performance, as long as the 
text-editor scrolls smoothly, I'm happy with minimal 2d accel.)

Also, I've just ordered one of these: http://tpfc.mywo.org/
because at the moment (with quite aggressive fan-reduction settings), my 
T60 idles with then fan off for 3 seconds and level 1 for 3 seconds; 
level 1 is surprisingly loud (I already have an SSD in it).


Thanks once again for your help,

Best wishes,

Richard