athcool 0.3.11 review

athcool is a small utility, enabling/disabling Powersaving mode for AMD Athlon/Duron processors. Since enabling Powersaving mode,

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 17K Developer: Osamu Kayasono

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athcool is a small utility, enabling/disabling Powersaving mode for AMD Athlon/Duron processors.

Since enabling Powersaving mode, you can save power consumption, lower CPU temperature when CPU is idle.

Powersaving works if your kernel support ACPI (APM not work), because athcool only set/unset "Disconnect enable when STPGNT detected" bits in the Northbridge of Chipset.

To really save power, someone has to send the STPGNT signal when idle. This is done by the ACPI subsystem when C2 state entered.

WARNING:
Depending on your motherboard and/or hardware components, enabling powersaving mode may cause:

noisy or distorted sound playback
a slowdown in harddisk performance
system locks or instability

Supported Chipsets:

VIA KX133
VIA KT133/KM133/KL133/KN133[A]
VIA KT266/333[A]
VIA KM266
VIA P/KN266
VIA KT400[A]/KM400/KT600
SiS 730/733
SiS 735/740/741/745/755
SiS 746[FX]/748
nVIDIA nForce
nVIDIA nForce2
AMD AMD-751/761
(AMD AMD-762)

AMD-762 Chipset has not support HALT disconnect, so Powersaving only enables when S1 or S3 state entered

Requirements:
libraries and header files of pciutils

Usage:

/usr/sbin/athcool [options]

supported option:

on enable Athlon Powersaving mode
off disable Athlon Powersaving mode
stat query Athlon Powersaving mode
list list supported chipsets
fixup fixup some problems for specific hardwares (EXPERIMENTAL)

Note: install and use athcool, you need super user privilege.

What's New in This Release:
replace 'Copyright' to 'License' in athcool.spec