x220 notes

[Любомир Григоров]

>  You've swapped the X220 cpu for something? Or a different machine?
>
> I find X does horrible things to battery usage on my X220. Getting into
> the lowest C state, and disabling ALL of the USB devices helps somewhat, as
> does setting a lower backlight level at boot (you can make an rc script, or
> catch the backlight buttons while the bios is still loading).
>
> Matt
>
I set a lower light (5-6) during BIOS boot, and if needed I modify manually
in X. I monitored my CPU usage and did notice that the CPU takes its sweet
time to lower the frequency (Windows keeps the frequency the same 99.67,
but changes the multiplier from 8 to 32). I don't know if FreeBSD does that
or it only manipulates the frequency. The multiplier makes more sense.
Also, CPU cores in X stay at 50C. In Windows at no activicy they drop to
44C and if no strenuous activity for a while, to 40C.

It would be great if FreeBSD could downgrade the frequency faster upon no
load. I use this:
powerd_flags="-a hiadaptive -b adaptive -i 85 -r 60 -p 100"


I am always looking for the "perfect" FreeBSD laptop, but I guess it just
doesn't exist. And I do need my 7-8 hours of battery with wireless on. If
you guys have any suggestions on further optimizing the power usage and
automating the regulation, please let me know (like turning off and on USB
devices, spinning down the HDD, etc), also if you know about controlling
the multiplier instead of the frequency.


-- 
Lyubomir Grigorov (bgalakazam)