[Saramin]

In the option tab of the Energy Saver Preferences there are three settings for the CPU: reduced, highest, and automatic. Anyone care to give me a rundown of the percentages I'm dealing with? How reduced is reduced? If programs only use as many CPU cycles as is necessary, why do we need an automatic setting in the first place? I'm kind of confused.

Thanks.

[MrForgetable]

Well, I ran Xbench on my sister's iBook and it shows that there is a pretty big difference between Automatic and Maximum Performance.

80.17 at Automatic setting
97.35 at Max Performance Setting


I dunno. I just run at automatic and if I want to save battery life, I'll turn off Airport and turn the screen brightness all the way down

[Saramin]

Ah, I wasn't aware of this program. Thanks man.

It seems automatic cuts cpu speed in half while reduced cuts it by another 7% or so, for those interested. Or at least it did on my machine.

[ibook_steve]

I don't know which machine you have, but, assuming the latest aluminum machine, reduced puts the processor in half speed mode and keeps it there. Automatic throttles between half speed and full speed depending on CPU load.

Steve

[t4r1q]

While on battery power I use reduced mode and on AC, I use automatic.

[Saramin]

This is rather odd, but I'm noticing greatly reduced fan noise in games with no drop in noticeable performance when running in automatic mode. The temperature is actually remaining at a constant of ~62 Celcius, but the laptop no longer sounds like a jet engine.

Maybe I'm just imagining things, dunno.

[t4r1q]

if it helps any, mine never sounds like a jet engine while encoding video or playing games and the temperature reaches 62C

[Saramin]

Originally posted by t4r1q:
if it helps any, mine never sounds like a jet engine while encoding video or playing games and the temperature reaches 62C

Gah. It seems like everyone doesn't have fan problems but me. At anything above 58 C my fan can be heard across a football stadium.