[ltp] T60p idle GPU temperature?

[Alex Deucher]

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 2:24 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
<hmh@hmh.eng.br> wrote:
> 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*.
>
>> 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).
>
> You must do a near-perfect job of removing the old compound and applying the
> new one, though.  And if you're going to use anything other than Arctic
> Silver 5, make SURE to get an AAA+ compound that can deal with rapid
> temperature cycles, doesn't go fluid in its hot phase _and_ which is
> completely non-reactive to metals and non-conductive.  They're all quite
> expensive (Arctic Silver 5 included).
>
> Messing with the heatsink on some thinkpads is not for the faint of heart,
> though.  My T43 required minor surgery with bladed tools to detach the old
> thermal compound from the GPU when the time came to replace the fan.  The
> T60p should be about the same, so make sure you have the proper tools, a
> clean workbench, lots of time, search the webs for relevant tips and photo
> guides, AND review the T60/p hardware maintenance guide beforehand.
>
>> 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.
>
> For the ATI GPU, just mess with the power method/profile in
> /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
>
> 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...

The radeon KMS and non-KMS pm support is mostly identical.  If you are
experiencing differences, it's probably due to the fact that KMS
utilizes the GPU more readily than UMS did.

Alex


>
> --
>   "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
>   them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
>   where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
>   Henrique Holschuh
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