It's not the graphics card itself that causes the 60 wakeups per second, it's really the driver. The driver makes the card send a interrupt event called VBLANK everytime it finishes drawing the screen. So at 60 Hz screen refresh rate your card will cause 60 wakeups per second. In 2D mode VBLANK is not used, only in 3D mode. So a "good" driver will only generate this interrupt in 3D mode, not in 2D mode.
Sadly ATI and nVidia do not care too much about their linux drivers and because they are closed source no one really interested can fix this issue. Advertisement: Intel fixed this issue with their drivers ;) The good news: Using the latest driver from AMD I managed to make my Radeon 9600 stop causing that interrupt. Everytime the computer is booted I need to switch to a virtual console and back into X and suddenly fglrx (ATI graphics driver) won't cause that many interrupts anymore. On top of that my CPU suddenly starts entering C3 state, before the console-switching it only entered C2 - so that's an ugly bug in fglrx. The even better news: AMD will make their drivers open source somewhen in the future, it was recently announced. Maybe nVidia will open their drivers as well after AMD did. So maybe you want to try switching to a virtual console (Strg+Alt+F1), wait a second or two and switch back into X (Strg+Alt+F7) and see if anything changes. If not one could try to contact nVidia, the guys at nvnews.net have a forum where developers of the nVidia driver are registered as well - I had a nVidia graphics card in the past and always got help with issues there! Maybe disabling DRI (you may call it "3D") will help because the VBLANK becomes 100% obsolete when only 2D is available. Peter On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 18:31 +0200, Fabian Mohren wrote: > Am Mon, 21 May 2007 12:05:00 -0400 > schrieb "Kelly Price" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > It may be the video card waking it up 60 times a second (sorry about > > that Pietro). I get the same problems with my setup. > > > > On 5/21/07, tinaught <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi everyone...powerTop is awesome, > > > > > > unfortunately I get 60 wakeups from interrupts to the nvidia > > > module. I cannot use open nv driver because it doesn't really work > > > here :( > > > > > > 54.0% (60.9) <interrupt> : nvidia > > > 11.0% (12.4) thunderbird-bin : schedule_timeout (process_timeout) > > > 8.9% (10.0) cpufreqd : cpufreq_governor_dbs > > > delayed_work_timer_ 8.3% ( 9.3) firefox-bin : > > > schedule_timeout (process_timeout) 3.8% ( 4.3) <interrupt> : > > > acpi 3.8% ( 4.3) <interrupt> : ohci1394, eth0 > > > 2.8% ( 3.2) : do_setitimer (it_real_fn) > > > 2.1% ( 2.4) gkrellm2 : schedule_timeout (process_timeout) > > > 0.9% ( 1.0) : nv_start_rc_timer (nv_kern_rc_timer) > > > 0.8% ( 0.9) stalonetray : do_nanosleep (hrtimer_wakeup) > > > > > > I saw an earlier post by Aaron Baff that says that running powertop > > > in console helped, but the output is the same for me. > > > > > > Do you think is a timer in the driver? Does anyone manage to get > > > less wakeups with the nvidia driver? > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > > > Pietro > > Hi - Peter Ganzhorn has explain this so: > > > In 3D the VBLANK interrupt is needed and fglrx will produce as many > > interrupts per second as your screen refresh rate is set to! > > After his mail - i disable DRI and now i've no wakeups for the Graphic > Driver (ATI) :) > I think its the same with Nvidia 3D. > > Best Regards > Fabian N. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Power mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > http://www.bughost.org/mailman/listinfo/power > > > > > > > > > > ___________________________________________________________ > Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de > _______________________________________________ > Power mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.bughost.org/mailman/listinfo/power _______________________________________________ Power mailing list [email protected] http://www.bughost.org/mailman/listinfo/power
