[ltp] T60p idle GPU temperature?

[Alex Deucher]

On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Richard Neill <rn214@richardneill.org> wrote:
> 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.

Don't use rovclock.  It was written for r100 asics and even for them,
it didn't properly take into account the post dividers on the sclk and
mclk plls.  The KMS radeon kernel driver has code to set the GPU
clocks and voltages.

>>
>>
>> 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).

You have to disable the output in the driver otherwise the CRTC and
TMDS encoder are still on drawing power as they are still driving the
connected monitor.

Alex

>
>
>>
>> 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
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