S3 Sleep state changes multiplier setting

S

Skillz'n Magic

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 6, 2008
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I'm not sure which forum this would be best in so I'll start here.

My PC:
Athlon X2 5600
Gigabyte M57SLI-S4
2 GB RAM
Vista Home Premium 32 bit

Recently I configured my PC to use the S3 sleep state instead of S1. I compared the energy usage between the two and the savings is awesome. Problem is, when my PC resumes from S3, the multiplier changes from 14 (max) to 5 (lowest). I have to reboot for it to come back to 14. Weird.

I setup my BIOS to enable AMD Cool'n Quiet which automatically regulates voltage and the multiplier and this does fix the problem, but this sucks for games. The processor keeps throttling down and it impacts performance.

I flashed my BIOS to the newest release and I tried removing all overclocking and the problem is still persistent. Does anyone have any idea how I can either keep the multiplier from changing or help me figure out how to keep AMD C'nQ from impacting gaming?

Thanks.
 
Are you sure that it doesn't ramp back up to 14 when doing anything intensive? The Core 2 Duos drop their speeds to save on power even during regular use, so very well may be normal behavior.
 
Uhmmm... damn forum... had a nice post and it just vanished... BLAH!!!

Anyway, sounds like Deacon beat me to the punch. Carry on, gentlemen. :D
 
Thanks for the responses, here's some more detailed info:

When I DON'T have AMD Cool'n Quiet enabled it does not go up. Even when I run a CPU intensive app it sits at 5 until I reboot.

When I DO have C'nQ enabled it will go up to 14 when it needs to. The problem is that during gameplay (Call of Duty 4) it seems like it needs to accelerate to get all the way back up. It'll kind of putz around at 30 FPS, then when a lot of action happens, over the course of a couple seconds it'll get back up to 70 - 90 FPS, but then it will idle down again and repeat. It's very noticeable in game and makes it unplayable.

It's pretty annoying and seems buggy.
 
Skillz'n Magic said:
Thanks for the responses, here's some more detailed info:

When I DON'T have AMD Cool'n Quiet enabled it does not go up. Even when I run a CPU intensive app it sits at 5 until I reboot.

When I DO have C'nQ enabled it will go up to 14 when it needs to. The problem is that during gameplay (Call of Duty 4) it seems like it needs to accelerate to get all the way back up. It'll kind of putz around at 30 FPS, then when a lot of action happens, over the course of a couple seconds it'll get back up to 70 - 90 FPS, but then it will idle down again and repeat. It's very noticeable in game and makes it unplayable.

It's pretty annoying and seems buggy.
Click to expand...

What OS are you using?
 
Skillz'n Magic said:
Vista Home Premium 32-bit, it's in my first post.
Click to expand...

Did you reconfigure the sleep option when Vista was currently installed? B/c if you installed Vista first and then change the settings from S1 to S3 then it will not work because Vista is tied to the mode that it was installed with. IE: Changing from S1 to S3 causes multiplier problems, will changing from S3 to S1 will cause the system not to restore itself. (This is from personal experience.)

In order to get it to work correctly you must reinstall Vista with the intended type of sleep that you want. Then and only then will it work correctly, short of changing the registry values but most of the time (with me that is) they never work and mess up the PC even more.
 
CptFalcon said:
Did you reconfigure the sleep option when Vista was currently installed? B/c if you installed Vista first and then change the settings from S1 to S3 then it will not work because Vista is tied to the mode that it was installed with. IE: Changing from S1 to S3 causes multiplier problems, will changing from S3 to S1 will cause the system not to restore itself. (This is from personal experience.)

In order to get it to work correctly you must reinstall Vista with the intended type of sleep that you want. Then and only then will it work correctly, short of changing the registry values but most of the time (with me that is) they never work and mess up the PC even more.
Click to expand...

Nope. Sx states are dynamic to the OS, they're not fixed at the time of installation.

I change Sx states on my office test machines all the time w/o issues to the OS or the CPU.

And I'll +1 DeaconFrost's post. Load a CPU intesive program and see if it doesn't ramp back up. If it doesn't contact the MB maker and tell them to fix their BIOS.
 
For Vista, yes it is. Most of the world is still using XP.

If you can prove me that I am wrong, then show me.
 
CptFalcon said:
For Vista, yes it is. Most of the world is still using XP.

If you can prove me that I am wrong, then show me.
Click to expand...

I've heard with XP that if you install the OS with power savings completely turned off, then try to enable it you'll experience trouble due to the HAL being different. But that's different than changing sleep states.
 
der_jackal said:
And I'll +1 DeaconFrost's post. Load a CPU intesive program and see if it doesn't ramp back up. If it doesn't contact the MB maker and tell them to fix their BIOS.
Click to expand...

It doesn't change, it's locked at 5 until I reboot. The reason I noticed is because I started Call of Duty 4 and couldn't even play it was so choppy.

And I don't think Gigabyte will listen to me. I don't even speak Chinese.
 
CptFalcon said:
For Vista, yes it is. Most of the world is still using XP.

If you can prove me that I am wrong, then show me.
Click to expand...

I just did, I've got 6 test machines in my office I change the Sx states on them constantly through the BIOS, dumppo or through the ACPI APIs in Windows versions from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista.

And show me where it says you have to reinstall the OS to enable S3 after making this KB registry edit to enable USB devices to wake the system from S3. You'd think a KB article would have that little tidbit now?


ACPI based Power Managment in Linux / Windows / Apple is all governed by the lowest common value the hardware on the system will support, not by anything hardcoded into the HAL.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/winpowmgmt.mspx

And just in case, I'll call this out for you;

When a device is enabled for wake-up, the combined capabilities of that device and the operating system dictate which sleeping states (S1S4) are available. The operating system policy is to put the system into the lowest power sleeping state that can support all enabled wake-up devices.
 
der_jackal said:
I just did, I've got 6 test machines in my office I change the Sx states on them constantly through the BIOS, dumppo or through the ACPI APIs in Windows versions from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista.

And show me where it says you have to reinstall the OS to enable S3 after making this KB registry edit to enable USB devices to wake the system from S3. You'd think a KB article would have that little tidbit now?


ACPI based Power Managment in Linux / Windows / Apple is all governed by the lowest common value the hardware on the system will support, not by anything hardcoded into the HAL.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/winpowmgmt.mspx

And just in case, I'll call this out for you;

When a device is enabled for wake-up, the combined capabilities of that device and the operating system dictate which sleeping states (S1S4) are available. The operating system policy is to put the system into the lowest power sleeping state that can support all enabled wake-up devices.
Click to expand...

Ah well, I only have my A+ so... Just workin' off experience. No harm meant. But I would like to know more about sleep in Vista though.
 
I think RMClock works with vista, and I believe amd's too, but never tried either.

You can try to use that to control the way it ramps between multipliers. I've been using it for years on my laptop to undervolt among other things and it works great. Even good for my pc for when I want to fiddle with voltage/multiplier from within windows without rebooting.

Great program
 
Update:

This weekend I did a reinstall of Vista from scratch. I defaulted the BIOS and made sure the sleep state was set to S3 and that Cool and Quite was turned off before I did the install. I installed Vista, the SP1, then the chipset drivers, all Windows updates and then tried S3 sleep and the same thing happened. When it resumed it set the multiplier down to 10 (from 14). The multiplier didn't change back even after running a CPU intensive app.

I'm in talks with Gigabyte, but they seem to be even more lost than I am at this point. I'm going to try using Cool and Quite again now that I've reinstalled and see if that helps.
 
Skillz'n Magic-

This issue is documented on the DFI website in the support area for the P965-S. The motherboard defaults to stock speed when resuming from standby.
 
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