Cool'n'quiet with ECS RS480-M, X2 CPU

Xinco · Post by **Xinco** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:25 pm

I built a PC for the wife around an ECS RS480-M and a 3800 X2.

There were some stability issues that I finally narrowed down to cool'n'quiet. I updated everything I could think of, one at a time, such as bios, drivers, memory voltage, until I finally disabled cool'n'quiet in the bios. Magically, the problems went away.

I'd really like to be running cool'n'quiet, as most of the time it isn't really going to be seeing heavy use.

I've got cool'n'quiet working with no problems at all in another PC, with an MSI NEO4-F and a Athlon 64 3000+.

Do you think this is related to the motherboard, the processor, or some other issue?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:16 pm

If I'd take a wild guess, then I'd say it is the combination of the mobo with the X2 CPU. When the ECS RS480-M was designed there were no X2 procs.

Have you looked into CrystalCPUID: User Configurable Cool 'n' Quiet as an alternative?

Xinco · Post by **Xinco** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:28 pm

Tibors wrote:If I'd take a wild guess, then I'd say it is the combination of the mobo with the X2 CPU. When the ECS RS480-M was designed there were no X2 procs.

Have you looked into CrystalCPUID: User Configurable Cool 'n' Quiet as an alternative?

Thought about it.

But as it's not really broken, I'm not going to 'fix' it. It's quiet enough for her, so I suppose the only real benefit would be energy savings.

tango charlie · Post by **tango charlie** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:48 pm

Hmm. That's a shame... I'd like to build and X2 system and be able to utilize Cool'n'Quiet...

From your post, Tibors, you make it sound as if newer mobos may be more compatible with CnQ than older models. Or does X2 pose a problem universally? It makes sense... two cores, so how do you adjust the power if one is busy and the other is not.

I'm looking at the Asus A8N-SLI Premium or the Asrock 939Dual-SATA... any idea if these will support CnQ on an X2 chip?

hvengel · Post by **hvengel** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:46 pm

X2 perhaps with some motherboards can have problems with C'n'Q. I have not been able to get it to work with my 4800.

I mostly run Linux and when I was still running a 3500 Winchester I noticed some stability problems that started with kernel 2.6.12 which was the first kernel to have full support for X2. With the single core CPU these were only minor and I ignored the issue and did not realize that it was C'n'Q related. When I upgraded to an X2 the machine was totally unstable with C'n'Q enabled in both Linux and Windows (with the lastest drivers from AMD). It would BSD in Windows and kernel panic in Linux. I did a little looking around and found that the Linux C'n'Q driver that supported the X2 first appeared in kernel version 2.6.12. It also turned out that the specific problems I was seeing before the X2 upgrade are no longer happening with C'nQ disabled. This problem has been widely reported in various Linux forms and the consenses is that the C'n'Q driver that was introduced in kernal 2.6.12 to support X2 processors is not stable. It is also my opinion that the Windows version that supports X2 also has stability issues. Both Windows and Linux are totally stable with C'n'Q disabled.

aeropenny · Post by **aeropenny** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:13 pm

You may want to read here (assuming you're using Windows):

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

When I briefly tried Windows on my X2 machine to see how some games ran, I experienced various problems when CNQ was enabled. BIOS & driver updates didn't help at the time.

As far as Linux goes, CNQ works perfectly for me since 2.6.14.iforget. Prior to that, the kernel wasn't using the pmtimer so the usual symptoms appeared (erractic keyboard repeat, time flying). With a recent kernel just install powernowd and it should work right away. Which is just as well. I'd be mighty annoyed if I couldn't use it.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:56 pm

Exactly what kind of problems did you get?

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:07 pm

Have you tried this?

Windows XP SP2 Dual Core Performance Hot Fix Download

You can now download the Windows XP SP2 dual core hot fix here. This fixes performance issues with systems running XP and using a dual core CPU with Cool 'n Quiet enabled. You must also modify the registry. Remember you patch and modify your registry at your own risk. Make sure to read the instructions at the Windows page here.

This patch is supposed to fix performance issues with Athlon 64 X2 with Cool'n'Quiet enabled, running Windows XP SP2. Some users reported having trouble setting Cool'n'Quiet until this patch was applied. If you're going to install this patch, make sure you create a restore point using System Restore first, just in case. But before you do that, make sure that both Cool'n'Quiet and ACPI 2.0 support (if this option is present) are enabled in the BIOS, that the AMD processor driver is properly installed, and that the power management is set to minimal power management in Windows.