Notebook Hardware Control

Does anyone here on the forum know of a similiar program to notebook hardware control for macs? Apple keeps the cpu at 1.5ghz when on battery where as with windows or NHC, you can underclock the processor and the graphics card. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I've been looking for one as well, but I haven't found any. It's a shame. The MBs would actually approach 6 hours of battery life if we could throttle them down to 1ghz (the way you can do with almost every PC laptop through NHC).

 

Did a search and found this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=142083

There's a program to undervolt but it only partially supports Santra Rosa MBPs (which shouldn't be a problem for you) and costs $10. Haven't found a program to underclock though.

 

Are you sure the MacBook doesn't downclock in Windows? I'm pretty sure that my MacBook Pro downclocks to 1GHz (166MHz x 6) so unless it's a Santa Rosa specific issue. In general, Santa Rosa laptop don't need downclocking since they already have FSB splitting, so SpeedStep already downclocks to 600MHz (100MHz x 6). The only thing is if you want to undervolt too.

 

Well atleast in windows theres some kind of underclocking going on. Atleast when I play COD4, if im on battery the fps drop, but as soon as i plug it in the fps go back up to normal. So theres some kinda underclocking going on there.

 

yeah its a power thing. the battery can't supply enough power to run cod4 at the same gpu clocks as you could plugged in.

(it might be feasible but rapid rapid discharge of the battery like that might be unhealthy)

the 2d windows clocks are 169 / 100 (save power)

the 3d battery clocks are 283 / 297

the 3d plugged in clocks are 470 / 635

i personally can OC to about 550 / 880 without problems, but i don't usually push it quite that far.

 

does RMClock work?

 

Not for OS X. Besides Coolbook (which costs money), no one in OS X land seems to have heard of processor throttling. I don't get this; it's almost standard practice among Windows power users to use stuff like NHC to throttle down their laptops. And if MB/Ps are only going down to 1.5ghz through OS X's power management, at least 50% of battery power is being drained unnecessarily. If they could be powered down to 1ghz (as in, if there were programs available to help users do this), we would easily see the six hours Apple claims the MB/Ps can achieve.

 

You can turn off one of the CPUs on the computer using Apple's CHUD tools from here (it might be on the install disc too, if you install the developer tools). I'm not sure how much more battery life this will give you, but it's probably better than nothing.

Apple used to have a way to throttle the CPU on their PowerPC computers, I remember setting "Better Energy Savings" or whatever on my old iBook would make the processor less powerful (no actual numbers on how much it was reduced by, sorry) but would increase the battery life a lot. I wish they hadn't gotten rid of that. Setting it to energy savings does nothing anymore.

 

Thanks, I'm going to try that now. I know what you mean about PowerPC throttling; I also had an iBook, and there, it seemed to make a difference in battery life. Now, adjusting the Energy Savers page just changes when the computer goes to sleep/dims the screen. But I'll give CHUD a go, and report back with results.

Edit: All right, I tried it--no luck! The battery life was actually worse under one core than under two. I wasn't sure why; the processor didn't seem to be working appreciably harder, but I guess the two work better together (or more efficiently, power-wise) than either individual core. Oh well, it was great to try something.

 

what are you guys using to determine the current clock speeds?

 

That sucks. It's probably just a software level thing then, making Mac OS only think there's one processor but still giving power to both of them. Developers might need to test with one CPU vs. two and I guess that would do the job.

One thing that does help with battery life (not really about the CPU, sorry if I'm off topic) is turning off Bluetooth. If you don't use it, you can just turn off power to it in System Preferences. When I did it my battery time jumped up by about 10-15 minutes (I don't trust the computer's battery timer completely, though).

 

Well for one, most OS X users are not tinkerers. Personally, one of the reasons I left Windows was to avoid things like this. Second, clearly most people are fine with the power management. Don't forget there is a lot more that goes into power savings besides processor.

And just one word of caution for everyone. Anytime you tinker with hardware controls you are running a risk, even when downclocking. Granted in this case it is not a high risk, but remember to weigh the risk against the gain.