i just discovered cpu throttling. this is awesome (potentially).

in throttling theres only 2 power state modes, does that mean those are the only 2 throttling states supported on my hardware? (im using a mini-itx box: via epioa m10000). so ive issued command (either a 1 or 0) to throttle cpu to 50% and it does in fact slow the pc down immediately. i presumed this would save power, and would be great as its just a small webserver for a low traffic site. when i run TOP (which i learned about here) i just noticed that cpu usage is around 20% while throttled.. and goes down to 1-5% when NOT throttled (running faster and less cpu usage??).

since im running the machine off a battery bank charged by solar panels i need to minimize power as mnuich as possible and havent been having much luck with anything (hdpar/noflushd/.or this..). i cant be sure as i havent measured it yet but the greater cpu utilization while "throttled" would sort of indicate greater not less power usage wouldnt it?

im using suse 9.0 built in acpi.
is there yet more custom configuration i need to do to acpi? ??thanks

anyone?

Looked in google, found this.

http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html

if you really need to save power, maybe invest in a reasonably quick laptop to run your server; the centrino processors also can scale like nothing else, mine goes from 600MHz to 1.6GHz in 200MHz steps

out of curiosity have you ever tried measuring the power usage when you scale to see how much it changes? my current pc uses only 30 watts under disk activity, and 20 watts idling as a web server (mini-itx platform 1ghz VIA cpu).

my acpi (in the OS) doesnt appear to do much but i dont have much comparison, i still mean to add a new notebook and install the latest suse
theres a device called a kill-a-watt for about $30 that allows you to meaure ac power usage of anything plugged into it, very handy