Mailing List Archive

On 8 Oct 2004, at 15:05, Peter Gaži wrote:
> Hello Gentoo users,
>
> I read about athcool utility recently in this list, so i emerged it
> and it works perfectly, my Athlon XP1700+ is at 40 C when idle. But
> the emerge was followed by a message:
>
> * WARNING: This program can cause instability in your system.
> * Use at your own risk!
>
> so I would like to ask you people if any of you had any bad experience
> with athcool. Is it safe to use?

Never tried it myself, but the web page
(http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/jacobi/linux/softwares.html) lists
chipsets it's been tested on, along with results.

* On Saturday 09 October 2004 00:05, Peter Ga¸i wrote:

> I read about athcool utility recently in this list, so i emerged it
> and it works perfectly, my Athlon XP1700+ is at 40 C when idle. But
> the emerge was followed by a message:
>
> * WARNING: This program can cause instability in your system.
> * Use at your own risk!
>
> so I would like to ask you people if any of you had any bad
> experience with athcool. Is it safe to use?

Well, user experiences may vary from setup to setup, depending on what
components and chipsets are used.

Anyway, I didn't encounter any instabilities after installing and
running athcool for now about two months.

Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.

After installing athcool _AND_ removing those big fans (lord, it is so
quiet now!), the CPU is at about 40 C when idle - a huge difference in
my humble opinion. Very rarely it even gets at 39 C - that's something
I only saw with my Intel CPUs before! ;-)

Regards,
Jens

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Jens Mayer wrote:

>* On Saturday 09 October 2004 00:05, Peter Ga¸i wrote:
>
>
>
>>I read about athcool utility recently in this list, so i emerged it
>>and it works perfectly, my Athlon XP1700+ is at 40 C when idle. But
>>the emerge was followed by a message:
>>
>> * WARNING: This program can cause instability in your system.
>> * Use at your own risk!
>>
>>so I would like to ask you people if any of you had any bad
>>experience with athcool. Is it safe to use?
>>
>>
>
>Well, user experiences may vary from setup to setup, depending on what
>components and chipsets are used.
>
>Anyway, I didn't encounter any instabilities after installing and
>running athcool for now about two months.
>
>Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
>2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
>idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.
>
>After installing athcool _AND_ removing those big fans (lord, it is so
>quiet now!), the CPU is at about 40 C when idle - a huge difference in
>my humble opinion. Very rarely it even gets at 39 C - that's something
>I only saw with my Intel CPUs before! ;-)
>
>Regards,
>Jens
>
>
>
Heh. One interesting thing, is my Athlon XP 2000+ runs between 35 and 40
C when idel, WITHOUT athcool, and I'm only using the stock AMD cpu fan,
and NO case fans (unless you count the power supply). And at full CPU
useage it never gets above 45 C.

Alex S.

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On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 09:43:06 -0600
Alex Schultz <alex_sch@telus.net> wrote:

> Jens Mayer wrote:
>
> >* On Saturday 09 October 2004 00:05, Peter Gaži wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I read about athcool utility recently in this list, so i emerged
> >it>and it works perfectly, my Athlon XP1700+ is at 40 C when idle.
> >But>the emerge was followed by a message:
> >>
> >> * WARNING: This program can cause instability in your system.
> >> * Use at your own risk!
> >>
> >>so I would like to ask you people if any of you had any bad
> >>experience with athcool. Is it safe to use?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Well, user experiences may vary from setup to setup, depending on
> >what components and chipsets are used.
> >
> >Anyway, I didn't encounter any instabilities after installing and
> >running athcool for now about two months.
> >
> >Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
> > 2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
> >
> >idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.
> >
> >After installing athcool _AND_ removing those big fans (lord, it is
> >so quiet now!), the CPU is at about 40 C when idle - a huge
> >difference in my humble opinion. Very rarely it even gets at 39 C -
> >that's something I only saw with my Intel CPUs before! ;-)
> >
> >Regards,
> >Jens
> >
> >
> >
> Heh. One interesting thing, is my Athlon XP 2000+ runs between 35
> and 40 C when idel, WITHOUT athcool, and I'm only using the stock
> AMD cpu fan, and NO case fans (unless you count the power supply).
> And at full CPU useage it never gets above 45 C.
>
> Alex S.
>

Some mainboards activate the stuff, which athcool activates per
default... for example a NForce2 board a friend of mine had

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On Saturday 09 October 2004 13:46, Jens Mayer wrote:

> Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
> 2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
> idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.

I am using athcool with an K7S8X too, and it lowers my CPU temp of about
20°C°!

But it has it disadvantages: moving around data is slower, and I have light
noises in my headphones. So, when I plan to listen to music, I deactivate
athcool ;)

Glück Auf
Volker

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* On Saturday 09 October 2004 19:14, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

> > Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
> > 2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
> > idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.

> I am using athcool with an K7S8X too, and it lowers my CPU temp of
> about 20°C°!

You must be on some arctic polar expedition! ;-)

> But it has it disadvantages: moving around data is slower, and I have
> light noises in my headphones. So, when I plan to listen to music, I
> deactivate athcool ;)

Hm, I definetly didn't encounter any noises in my headphones, using a
Creative Sounblaster Live! 5.1. You make an interesting point about
slower disk throughput: Did you benchmark this somehow? At least with
"hdparm -tT" I couldn't see any differnce (but I know there are better
ways to benchmark a harddrive).

Regards,
Jens

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oxymoron." - The Wall Street Journal, page B1, Tuesday, July 17,
1990.

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On Saturday 09 October 2004 19:30, Jens Mayer wrote:
> * On Saturday 09 October 2004 19:14, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > > Athcool is an amazing piece of software: I had my CPU (an Athlon XP
> > > 2600+ on a fairly cheap Asrock K7S8X mainboard) at about 50 C when
> > > idle, therefor having two big fans inside my tower.
> >
> > I am using athcool with an K7S8X too, and it lowers my CPU temp of
> > about 20°C°!
>
> You must be on some arctic polar expedition! ;-)
>

I meant: the CPU temperature fells from without athcool 56°C to 36°Cwith
athcool. And don't be sarcastic - it is octobre - winter is coming...

> > But it has it disadvantages: moving around data is slower, and I have
> > light noises in my headphones. So, when I plan to listen to music, I
> > deactivate athcool ;)
>
> Hm, I definetly didn't encounter any noises in my headphones, using a
> Creative Sounblaster Live! 5.1. You make an interesting point about
> slower disk throughput: Did you benchmark this somehow? At least with
> "hdparm -tT" I couldn't see any differnce (but I know there are better
> ways to benchmark a harddrive).

No, I moved an iso-image from /home to /tmp (I have /, /home, swap and /boot,
not the smartest layout, but I always have an eye on free space and I am the
only user.. besides of that, the harddisk is big enough, even for a mad app).
And with athcool the rate went straight through the floor. This happend every
time with athcool, when something wanted to write larger amounts of data, it
was dead slow. So, before doing harddisk intensive stuff, I deactivate
athcool now and my disk is back to speed.

Glück Auf
Volker

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On Saturday 09 October 2004 11:51 am, Sebastian Dröge wrote:

[snip]
> Some mainboards activate the stuff, which athcool activates per
> default... for example a NForce2 board a friend of mine had

I have an NForce2 mainboard and an Athlon XP 3200+, I ran athcool hoping to
get a little peace and quiet around here (I have to keep one side of my
computer open to keep it happy), found out that the bits were already
active...I guess I'll have to get better case fans after all. ;-)

-=-
Ryan W

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 19:30:34 +0200, Jens Mayer <gentoo@jensmayer.de> wrote:
> You make an interesting point about
> slower disk throughput: Did you benchmark this somehow? At least with
> "hdparm -tT" I couldn't see any differnce (but I know there are better
> ways to benchmark a harddrive).

I'm gussing this depends on the motherboard, and various other factors
- on my computer hdparm -tT went from ~40 mb/s to ~8 mb/s with athcool
running.

I have a good cooler, so athcool only gave me a few extra degrees. I
disabled it so I could get my fast hard drvie back :)

--
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> I'm gussing this depends on the motherboard, and various other factors
> - on my computer hdparm -tT went from ~40 mb/s to ~8 mb/s with athcool
> running.
>
> I have a good cooler, so athcool only gave me a few extra degrees. I
> disabled it so I could get my fast hard drvie back :)

Are you sure that you have DMA enabled on your hard drive?

--
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On Mon 11.10 00:04, Edward Guldemond wrote:
> > I'm gussing this depends on the motherboard, and various other
> > factors - on my computer hdparm -tT went from ~40 mb/s to ~8 mb/s
> > with athcool running.
> >
> > I have a good cooler, so athcool only gave me a few extra degrees. I
> > disabled it so I could get my fast hard drvie back :)
>
> Are you sure that you have DMA enabled on your hard drive?

How else would he get 40MB/sec? Or did you mean that enabling athcool
somehow disables or at least tinkers with DMA?

At my box, enabling athcool lowers the temperature from almost constant
60°C (without load!) to normal 34°C (damn, I was totally amazed, my
computer was often so hot I thought it would start to burn ;)). When I
compile stuff, temp raises again up to 60°C, but that's clear and no
problem since it goes down right after the compile. HD speed (hdparm
-tT) goes down slightly from 46MB/sec to 39MB/sec, so no problem there.

Bert

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Its going to depend on a whole load of things. My Athlon XP1800 with a stock
AMD fan runs somewhere in the mid 40's with pretty poor case circulation.The
only alteration I made was to replace the AMD sticky pink goo with some real,
silver based heat sink compound. I think when I move up to the next processor
I will spend some cash on a good heatsink with a large/quiet fan.



Heh. One interesting thing, is my Athlon XP 2000+ runs between 35 and 40
C when idel, WITHOUT athcool, and I'm only using the stock AMD cpu fan,
and NO case fans (unless you count the power supply). And at full CPU
useage it never gets above 45 C.

Alex S.

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On Monday 11 October 2004 15:10, Kevin Philp wrote:
> Its going to depend on a whole load of things. My Athlon XP1800 with a
> stock AMD fan runs somewhere in the mid 40's with pretty poor case
> circulation.The only alteration I made was to replace the AMD sticky pink
> goo with some real, silver based heat sink compound. I think when I move up
> to the next processor I will spend some cash on a good heatsink with a
> large/quiet fan.
>
>
>
> Heh. One interesting thing, is my Athlon XP 2000+ runs between 35 and 40
> C when idel, WITHOUT athcool, and I'm only using the stock AMD cpu fan,
> and NO case fans (unless you count the power supply). And at full CPU
> useage it never gets above 45 C.
>
> Alex S.

and how does your mobo measure the temp?
Via socket or via cpu-diode?
If it is measuring with a sensor under the cpu in the socket, you can easily
add 20-30°C and would be nearer the 'original' temps.

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I have an Epox 8RDA3+ (nforce2) with an Athlon 2500 on it. Temperature is about
54C when idle and 59C under load. When I started Athcool without the "fixup"
option my PC crashed only a few seconds later. With the fixup-option athcool
doesn't have any effect at all.

Btw: /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/power gives me this:
active state: C1
default state: C1
bus master activity: 00000000
states:
*C1: promotion[--] demotion[--] latency[000] usage[00000000]
C2: <not supported>
C3: <not supported>

Looks pretty bad to me, not even C1 powersaving mode seems get used. I called
Epox support two month ago about this issue, since this turned out to be a real
temperature-problem during summer. They simply told me that there are no
officially supported powersaving-features implemented in AthlonXP-processors and
if I needed powersaving I should upgrade to Athlon64.


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