Fewer wakeups per sec in Powertop after RAM upgrade?

Discussion in 'Laptop Hardware' started by jesseosby, Sep 9, 2008.

  1. jesseosby

    jesseosby

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    This is strange...has anyone else noticed this?

    I spent some time yesterday tweaking the kernel and such trying to improve my numbers in Powertop on my 512MB A110. The best I could get at idle was around 8.2W with like 300+ wakeups-from-idle per second and no more than about 5ms in C3 state.

    Today I picked up a 1GB DDR2 chip and installed it, then went back into Powertop, expecting to see an increased power draw from the extra RAM. But, instead, I am now seeing idle draw of about 7.8W, wakeups-from-idle per second around 15, and C3 state times around 90ms.

    These are certainly not scientific results...and I'm not going to go back in and remove the 1GB module to see if the power goes back up...but I'm interested if anyone else has noticed this, or wants to test theirs before and after they upgrade their RAM. I've read that the wattage numbers vary some with the battery level (though in both cases mine was showing around 2.0-2.5 hours remaining), and am not so confident that this thing can measure accurately at the 1/10th watt level, but still, the wakeups-per-second dropping from consistent 300+ to consistent 15 or less seems impressive.

    Maybe it's just something wonky with my kernel that's working better with more RAM...FYI, I am running 2.6.26.3 with a config duplicated from the Acer original then modified some. eth0 was up during my testing, wifi was down, and screen was set to dimmest setting. 3.114 bios.
     
    jesseosby, Sep 9, 2008
    #1
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