Any way to disable specific CPU sleep modes?

Posted by Philippe on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Philippe
Published on 2010-03-19T20:00:29Z Indexed on 2010/03/19 20:11 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 299

Filed under:

cpu

|

noise

|

idle

|

core-i5

I just got a new Toshiba Tecra S11 notebook, which has a Core i5 520M CPU, and it appears to suffer from a well-known problem: a high pitched noise when the CPU is idle.

Googling around revealed that this is caused by a specific power-saving mode in the CPU. In most cases, C4 mode is blamed for the noise.

So my question is: is it possible to disable C4 mode (or any other "sleep" mode) using some utility or BIOS setting? I don't mind if it hurts battery life.

I'd appreciate any advice on this matter. It's driving me crazy.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about cpu

Speedstep and Intel x5570?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, My new server has 2 x X5570 CPUs. Now here is the output of grep -i hz /proc/cpuinfo model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU … >>> More
VMware ESXi - varying CPU time (CPU reservation)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello! I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 under VMware ESXi 3.5. Host has 2 physical CPUs and the BSD box is currently the only running VM. Only one virtual CPU is assigned to the VM. When measuring CPU time of a specific program, I get very different results from time to time. Processor usage is reported… >>> More
How to calculate CPU % based on raw CPU ticks in SNMP

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
According to http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/docs/mibs/ucdavis.html#scalar_notcurrent ssCpuUser, ssCpuSystem, ssCpuIdle, etc are deprecated in favor of the raw variants (ssCpuRawUser, etc). The former values (which don't cover things like nice, wait, kernel, interrupt, etc) returned a percentage… >>> More
disparity between `top`'s given CPU % and process CPU usage total

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I've noticed that there are sometimes (large) differences between the reported total CPU usage and a summation of the per-process CPU utilization given by apps like top and wmtop. As an example: I recently ran a git filter-branch --index-filter on a fairly large repo, with the index-filter command… >>> More
How to read oom-killer syslog messages?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a Ubuntu 12.04 server which sometimes dies completely - no SSH, no ping, nothing until it is physically rebooted. After the reboot, I see in syslog that the oom-killer killed, well, pretty much everything. There's a lot of detailed memory usage information in them. How do I read these logs… >>> More

Related posts about noise

Simplex noise vs Perlin noise

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to know why Perlin noise is still so popular today after Simplex came out. Simplex noise was made by Ken Perlin himself and it was suppose to take over his old algorithm which was slow for higher dimensions and with better quality (no visible artifacts). Simplex noise came out in 2001… >>> More
Noise Estimation / Noise Measurement in Image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello. I want to estimate the noise in an image. Let's assume the model of an Image + White Noise. Now I want to estimate the Noise Variance. My method is to calculate the Local Variance (3*3 up to 21*21 Blocks) of the image and then find areas where the Local Variance is fairly constant (By calculating… >>> More
Static noise in headphones

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a Asus P6T based system. I was using the on-board sound (plugging in Logitech X-230 2.1 analog speakers in the green "front speakers" 3.5mm analog output, then plugging in my headphones in that). I was quite happy with the sound quality (didn't hear any static noise if volume was turned down… >>> More
cleaning up noise in an edge detection algoritum

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I recently wrote an extremely basic edge detection algorithm that works on an array of chars. The program was meant to detect the edges of blobs of a single particular value on the array and worked by simply looking left, right, up and down on the array element and checking if one of those values… >>> More
Static background noise while using new headset Ubuntu 13.04

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
Today I bought a new gaming headset (Gx-Gaming Lychas), and when I tried to record some gameplay-comentary I noticed that there always is a static background noise, I just recorded an example so you guys can listen it (no downloaded needed): http://www47.zippyshare.com/v/65167832/file.html I'm using… >>> More