On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Steve Elias wrote: > Mary, it's great that your dell laptop throttles back the cpu when it > overheats. that's smarter than my P4 desktop with Asus motherboard, > and also smarter than the toshiba 'satellite' laptop. if you > watch/compare the iteration time of prime95 that ought to indicate > when the cpu is throttled back...
Actually, the iteration time does not change appreciably when the cpu throttles back, and I'm not sure why. Sometimes the external fan that I have set up (until the replacement fan parts arrive) goes a bit wobbly which really cuts down on the airflow, and the system starts heating up again. When that happens the iteration time only goes up by .001 sec (i.e. from .120 to .121), but it's obvious from looking at the timestamps that the iterations are taking a lot longer than they should (instead of every 2 minutes, it'll be 3 minutes every 4th timestamp or so). prime95 appears to be counting cycles instead of timing by the system clock, and it takes the same amount of cycles whether the cpu is running at 466 or 350. As far as the Dell goes, I've been pleased with it in spite of the fan going out. It takes a lot of hard use (even abuse one might say) even without prime95. I bought it because I'd heard the Latitudes were supposed to be fairly hardy for laptops (I hear Inspiron machines do not enjoy the same rep, however), and that's been true for me. As a bonus, I can even service it myself (the service manual is available in PDF off the Dell website), so replacing the fan will not cost me labor charges and I won't have to lose use of the machine for more than an hour or so. _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
