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Processor Throttling In Windows XP

Posted by kdawson on Sun Sep 30, 2007 01:04 PM
from the why-are-they-doing-that dept.
Operating Systems Software Windows Hardware
TomSlick writes "Michael Chu, a former Intel employee, has written up a fairly interesting and readable summary of Windows XP power schemes as they relate to Intel processor throttling. An old topic, but one still relevant as many business notebooks still use XP."
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Submission: Processor Throttling in Windows XP by TomSlick (517056)
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  • For a second there, I read "Professor Throttling in Windows XP"

  • Nice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by teebob21 (947095) on Sunday September 30 2007, @01:28PM (#20802807) Journal
    Now I know why my laptop burns my legs whenever I use it...it literally IS always on...so that's what my power management was set to. I had no idea that affected the CPU frequency stepping. I guess i just had assumed that was something that scaled intelligently depending on load average or some other *CPU* metric, not a battery setting.

    Of course, being WinXP, I should have realized that Foo is actually changed each time I use the GUI to modify the behavior of Bar 1 and Bar 2, which are completely separate system functions.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xtracto (837672)
      Yeah, I have known about this stepping options back when I used WinXP in my laptop, the program CPUZ shows quite interesting information and the current running frequency is one of them. What I did not know is how to manually change this profiles... [un]fortunately I am now running Ubuntu and I guess there is no easy way (not requiring a kernel patch or some magical .conf file mangling) way to set my computer to a low speed as in Windows.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There is a program called cpufreq-selector that should come with the default installation. There is even a Gnome panel applet that interacts with it called CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor.

      • Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)

        by EvilIdler (21087) on Sunday September 30 2007, @02:21PM (#20803125) Homepage
        Sure you can:
        cpudyn - CPU dynamic frequency control for processors with scaling
        cpufreqd - fully configurable daemon for dynamic frequency and voltage scaling
        cpufrequtils - utilities to deal with the cpufreq Linux kernel feature

        All are found in your apt repository.
        • And you should add, any number of power management apps will handle all that for you automatically. For me, I use kpowersave, and it handles cpu frequency scaling and power profiles (performance/dynamic/energy saving) for me.
      • On Debian, all I had to do to get processor throttling working was apt-get install powersaved.

        Now, my 2ghz Core 2 Duo has both cores running at 1ghz, except when the full 2ghz is required. This + i8kutils to force my left fan to run on low all the time = 26C when idle. Not bad for a dual core system. :)
      • ``[un]fortunately I am now running Ubuntu and I guess there is no easy way (not requiring a kernel patch or some magical .conf file mangling) way to set my computer to a low speed as in Windows.''

        Why do you assume that something is difficult on Ubuntu? And what is difficult about editing configuration files?

  • Very easy to know when it's off (Score:5, Interesting)

    by istartedi (132515) on Sunday September 30 2007, @01:37PM (#20802873) Journal

    For a while, I thought my fan might have been broken because my laptop was getting very hot. Then I realized that, a few months ago I had messed with the power setting and turned off that technology to make sure I was getting maximum performance out of something. I forgot to turn it back on, and this resulted in the machine running flat-out all the time and getting very hot. Something jogged my memory, I went back to the power settings, and it works fine now. Even DVD playback doesn't force it to run flat-out, so if you have this technology you should definitely use it.

    Of course it's only easy to feel the heat with a notebook. If you have a desktop you could be wasting power and not even know it unless you check the settings.

  • ... with AMD Cool'n'Quiet in Windows XP Pro. SP2 even with the latest drivers on my Athlon 64 4600+ (939 dual core) system. It seems like I would get rare random blue screens of deaths (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) when playing videos. One time, I had a corrupted SB Audigy 2 ZS driver and I had to reinstall it. I don't have this problem if I don't use the power management (Cool'n'Quiet).

    No one was able to figure out why I get them according to this newsgroup thread [google.com]. Maybe it is because of all my hardware devices

  • Quick summary for the RTFA impaired... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pla (258480) on Sunday September 30 2007, @01:44PM (#20802927) Journal
    If you run XP, set the power scheme to "Minimal Power Management".

    Unless, as a twitch-gamer, you (think you) can't afford to lose even a single CPU cycle, then by all means continue trying to heat your house in "Always On" mode (or the default of "Home/Office Desk", which means the same thing to AC-powered non-laptops).

    As an interesting aside, TFA's author recommends "Portable/Laptop" mode; However, he writes that coming from the Intel world. Users of AMD chips (myself included) have noticed problems with CnQ (AMD's version of SpeedStep) not working correctly unless you set it to "Minimal Power Management", which according to the charts in the linked article, should work the same as "Portable/Laptop".

  • Throttling (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wowsers (1151731) on Sunday September 30 2007, @03:00PM (#20803439) Journal
    After using WinXP, it's not the processor that wants to throttle the system - it's me. So I installed Linux instead.

  • I use Outlook (Score:5, Funny)

    by bl8n8r (649187) on Sunday September 30 2007, @03:48PM (#20803765)
    as a cpu throttler.

  • not just businesses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Devistater (593822) * <devistaterNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Sunday September 30 2007, @05:05PM (#20804225)
    Its not just business laptops that are using XP. The vast majority of people still use XP. Heck, even amongst average gamers (where you'd expect ppl to upgrade to vista for DX10 games), less than 2.5% have vista and a dx10 capable card.

  • Poorly written article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wesley Felter (138342) <wesley@felter.org> on Sunday September 30 2007, @06:21PM (#20804663) Homepage
    "CPU(s) begin in lowest performance state and then get slower and slower"

    This is remarkably sloppy writing for a supposedly technical article. Is there a performance state even lower than the lowest? Is he talking about clock modulation? Does it get "slower and slower" but never faster and faster?

  • XP vs. Vista (Score:5, Funny)

    by ConceptJunkie (24823) * on Sunday September 30 2007, @07:17PM (#20804947) Homepage Journal
    XP can throttle your CPU, but Vista downright chokes it.

      • Re:Many? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Dolda2000 (759023) <fredrik@[ ]da2000.com ['dol' in gap]> on Sunday September 30 2007, @01:31PM (#20802827) Homepage

        [...]no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.
        Yeah, personally I dislike the Vista's showing even more than Vista itself.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Planesdragon (210349)

        because no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.
        (raise hand)

        I had the beta, I liked what I saw. When I get my next PC or laptop, I'll put Vista on it as a preference to XP.
        • Seconded. Vista is a solid OS, it just isn't enough of an upgrade from XP to justify the cost. I encourage anyone building a new machine to put Vista on it, however, it really is better than it's cracked up to be.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by esecasco (1160055)
            It wasn't that bad...but it got on my f'n nerves. I couldn't use a bluetooth headset with it, and it refused to automatically install SD card drivers or joystick drivers. So I got XP OEM, and it detected my joystick in 2 seconds and was up and running, next on my list is the bluetooth(when I have time). Vista will go back on my laptop when it hits SP2 and I see that the difference in 3Dmark is less than 100 points(not to mention 20FPS difference in CS:Source)
      • What is so wrong with Vista on modern hardware?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by pla (258480)
          What is so wrong with Vista on modern hardware?

          Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.

          Now, if you have a nostalgic desire for a machine that "feels" just like XP on a PII-300 with 256MB, by all means run Vista. If, however, you consider the OS "just a way to get to the real programs", you may want to consider upgrading from Vista to

          • Re:Many? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by yvajj (970228) on Sunday September 30 2007, @02:14PM (#20803087)

            From you post, I gather that you have not run Vista. I am running it comfortably on my laptop (~1GB ram with AMD cpu) and my desktop (AMD X2 3800) with nary a problem.

            The only stuff I turned off is the animated windows and window transparency (which I hate in general). Desktop composition and other "eye-candy" is still on (I actually find desktop composition to be useful, since I can mouse over stuff on my taskbar thats hidden by other windows and view whats going on in a realtime thumbnail window).

            This is undoubtedly blasphemy on this Linux-centric site, but I actually like Vista, and find the little nuances a welcome change from XP.

            • Re:Many? (Score:4, Interesting)

              by PopeRatzo (965947) * on Sunday September 30 2007, @04:58PM (#20804185) Homepage Journal
              I have now made TWO attempts to try Vista Premium on top of the line hardware (one desktop and one laptop). It is much slower than XP (I don't mean benchmarks, I mean the experience of actually trying to get work done). After I removed Vista and went back to OEM XP Pro, the performance boost was amazing. I do media production and there's no way I could have worked for any length of time with Vista and not thrown the computer through the window in frustration.

              Plus, it's full of all sorts of DRM crap. That alone is a stopper for me. I will not willingly run an operating system that is designed to get in my way. And I seriously doubt if any Vista SP1 is going to get rid of the DRM. I'm afraid Windows XP is going to be my last Microsoft operating system unless they take a significantly different direction.

              I'm trying to think of something positive about the experience of having used Vista for the approximately 20 hours that I had it on my machines (combined) before I formatted the hard disks and installed Windows XP. I honestly have nothing.

              It's not like I hate Microsoft or anything. If they have a product that helps me get work done, I'll use it and pay for it. I don't consider them all that much more "evil" than any other huge American corporation, including Apple. But Vista is simply garbage, in my opinion. I have also suggested to all of my "strategic partners" in the work I do (bandmates, graphic artists, video producers, etc) that they stay well clear of Microsoft Vista. All but one took my advice. The one who decided he just had to have Vista lasted about a month before switching back to XP (because he's a gamer). Many of us have installed Ubuntu Studio on our secondary systems.

              • Re:Many? (Score:4, Informative)

                by oakgrove (845019) on Sunday September 30 2007, @09:31PM (#20805877)
                I couldn't agree more with what you have typed. I gave Vista a very fair shot. I ran it for a week on a core duo laptop with 2 gigs of ram and a 7600Go video card. Not shabby hardware by any means. And it quite honestly could only be described as a complete dog. Not only slow but buggy as hell. I'd close the lid and when I opened it, the screen would flicker and when I finally got my desktop back after a few seconds, the icons would be out of place like I changed the resolution and changed it back or something. I mean, wtf? I get the whole thing about immature video drivers and all that but, really, this wasn't marketed as beta software. The CPU cores would both idle and I mean idle, on about 35 percent usage. Huh? In XP is was about 2-3 percent. And that matters because I take my laptop everywhere I go and use the battery. The taskbar would flicker inexplicably. I could go on and on. I dumped that sucker and moved back to something that actually works and stays out of my way.

                Maybe I'll give it another shot when the service pack comes out.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by sqrt(2) (786011)
                If your machine is relatively new, it may even run faster than XP would because Vista is better at using your RAM to cache programs. Every animation and effect can be disabled until you're back to what looks like XP. Most of the new stuff they added to the GUI is pleasing and useful though, the only thing I turn off is the transparency.
              • Sure, just pick the "Windows Classic" Theme. It'll be much like you remember graphically. Start button reading "Start" and everything, all in gray.

                That said, I don't know WHY you'd want to - I've never really understood the appeal of atavistic GUI except for those with really old GPUs. But it's in there.

                Perceptually, I'd say using "Windows Classic" seems more clunky and perceptually slower, part of that because it looks slow, and probably in part because it means my CPU is busy doing work that my GPU should

          • Re:Many? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by DAldredge (2353) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Sunday September 30 2007, @02:16PM (#20803095) Journal
            My main windows box is a dual core Pentium @ 1.6 Mhz running on an Intel DG33TL motherboard, 2 GB Crucial ram, 300 GB SATA drive and Windows Ultimate. It isn't sluggish, in fact it runs rather quickly, nothing like a PII-300. Perhaps I am doing something wrong?
            • Perhaps I am doing something wrong?
              My main windows box is ... Windows Ultimate <-- This.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

              Yep. Having 2 fucking gigabytes of ram and bragging about vista performance is wrong. It's a machine ideal for hosting a 50 GB Oracle database, not a home PC. If you think Vista will run quickly on a home pc (as in "a computer suitable for any other desktop OS"), try it on a single-core computer with 512 MB of RAM.

              • In this age of cheap RAM, why wouldn't 2 GB be appropriate for a home PC?

                Other desktop OSes aren't happy in 512MB either. I used to have an XP machine with 512MB. It didn't perform well. If I had had any interest in keeping it around, I would have upgraded. The box didn't run Ubuntu well either, once I added enough visual goodies to make Ubuntu look sorta-kinda-mostly as good as OS X. My current primary machine is a MacBook Pro with 2GB. With any less, it would be a drag. I would upgrade to 4GB if the mac

                • I don't think parent was saying you should not purchase multiple gigs of ram if you chose to. What I think he/she was referring to is that you shouldn't brag that that you have a 5.0L V8 and you think it's pretty spiffy that it can reach highway speeds.
              • That 2GB of RAM cost 85.00 from newegg...

            • Try ordering the basic box... (Score:4, Interesting)

              by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Monday October 01 2007, @01:30AM (#20807219) Journal
              I saw a box sold with Home Basic which had something like an 80 gig drive, 512 megs of RAM, and a 1.7 ghz processor.

              It was absolutely unusable.

              The processor was not a bottleneck, I'll give you that much. And I didn't stay on it long enough to test if the network was the bottleneck -- that whole sound-drops-you-to-10% bug (a fucking BUG, not a feature) -- but I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't, for this simple reason:

              The RAM killed it. Even if it weren't for the network bug, it'd still browse slower than dialup, because it was CONSTANTLY swapping out.

              No, not "Often", or even "Most of the time". Not only when I, as a geek, was trying to coerce it to do more than it was designed to, like, say, download some updates, or install Firefox.

              It was swapping ALL the fucking time. I popped in a 512 meg USB stick and used it for ReadyBoost, which improved things marginally -- it was then capable of doing some things in maybe 20-30 seconds, instead of 2-3 minutes. And by "some things", I mean opening another tab in a browser -- Firefox or IE7, didn't matter. (And like 5 minutes or so to switch between them...)

              I may be getting the times wrong, but let me put it this way: I've used an NT4 machine with some 128 megs of RAM. I've used a Win98 machine with 32 megs of RAM -- also a Linux handheld with 32 megs of RAM, and that had to use a CompactFlash card for swap.

              That 512 meg Vista machine was the absolute WORST computing experience I've ever had. Ever, in fifteen years. The only thing that comes close was a videogame on Win3.1, running off a 4x CD-ROM drive, but at least it was fast once it loaded the damned level.

              So yes, I realize Vista can be fast. But considering that it sucks so badly, even compared to older versions of Windows, on 512 megs of RAM, you have to ask yourself, are you actually getting to use the rest of your RAM? Say you need to run a memory hog app like Eclipse -- Vista could be the difference between needing 2 gigs of RAM for Eclipse and nothing else, or needing 1 gig of RAM and being able to play music and still have a fast network.

              Didn't even touch on disk usage, but there's really no excuse there. After installing Kubuntu, plus a bunch of codecs, plus a bunch of apps not in the main install, including a couple of versions of Wine and some Windows apps, it was maybe 5 or 6 gigs. The above Vista install was 15 gigs, before you go download drivers, VLC, install Office, etc. Consider that there was also a restore partition, not even a hidden one (it was mounted), which used maybe 20-30 gigs (and wasn't even entirely full), and it's an 80 gig hard drive, total. Which means you're giving about half your hard drive up to the fucking OS, before you even install software. Sure, it's inconsequential for your 300 gig drive, but it is a waste, don't you think?

              The question is not whether there's hardware that can run Vista well. That's a given. The question is whether you'd be better off with XP, and more and more, the answer is a resounding yes!

          • Re:Many? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by bigstrat2003 (1058574) on Sunday September 30 2007, @03:49PM (#20803777)

            instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably
            That is absolute bullshit. I can't speak for RAM, since I have 2 GB for gaming purposes, but I was running Vista on a single-core Athlon 3200 with NO problems whatsoever. Everything performed like a charm. A dual-core CPU isn't anything close to required.
            • Well, after looking at Vista running on a demo computer, and hearing some very vivid and informative hearsay from Slashdotters, whom I trust have tried it themselves, I've come to the conclusion that you're wrong.

          • Re:Many? (Score:5, Funny)

            by suv4x4 (956391) on Sunday September 30 2007, @04:05PM (#20803867)
            Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.

            Are you some sort of Microsoft fanboy there?

            Over here Vista requires 256 cores and 1 petabyte of RAM to run tolerably. And then I run Calculator.exe and it stalled. I'm checking every day how the Calculator launch is going and it's painfully slow. It's been over 9 months now and it's done rendering the buttons from 1 to 6, it still has 7 to 9 AND all operators to finish with.

            I'm seriously pissed off, if it's not done by 2008 I'll be upgrading to XP.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dal20402 (895630) *

      Even if it pushes back the dates, MS WILL eventually stop supporting XP, as they have all previous Windows variants. Businesses will have no choice but to upgrade at that point, as they already have from 98SE, NT4, and (mostly) 2k.

      Vista really won't be that painful an upgrade once 1) much more is understood about application compatibility and 2) even bargain-basement office-bot PCs ship with 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor. (No need for fancy graphics if you turn off Aero.) Two years from now, no one

      • You forgot
        3) Third party tools that can disable the most annoying features of Vista.

        It is 3) that will eventually make Vista viable.

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