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To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (32236)	3/19/2001 5:48:16 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Tench: It may very well be a better solution, but more honest? I don't think so; in fact, the additional flexibility leaves a lot of room open for fudging the facts. At least you know what speed the mobile Pentium III runs at when running off the battery. There will be no way of knowing what speed a processor with PowerNow (or any similar technology) actually runs at in "Auto" mode. It runs at whatever frequency is necessary to perform the tasks set before it. And that's, imho anyway, exactly what it should do. DVD decoding is actually a good example. It really only requires a fraction of what a high-end mobile chip like the 1GHz PIII can deliver. Having the CPU automatically drop down to some lower frequency (and associated voltage), regardless of whether the notebook is plugged in or not, would be very desirable. In the end, I really don't care what frequency a CPU runs at (whether mobile or desktop). I want to know how well it performs certain tasks and how much power it consumes when doing so. E.g.: Application / Performance / Battery life ------------------------------------------------------------ MS Word / 75000000 bleepstones / 7.2 hrs Quake3 / 120fps / 3.1 hrs DVD decoding / n/a / 4.2 hrs etc. That would allow me to accurately gauge the actual performance for the apps that are relevant to me - in addition to allowing a straight-forward comparison of different notebooks (regardless of what processors they are based on). Have you read this article? No, thanks for pointing it out to me. I had read a couple of other articles on PowerNow!, but Anand's article is certainly better than those I have read. Still, nothing beats actually having tried it out yourself. One thing I am somewhat worried (perhaps _entirely_ groundlessly!) about is some degree "jerkyness" when the CPU switches frequency (this goes for both SpeedStep and PowerNow!). Maybe some latency as well (i.e. similar to when a HD or CDROM spins up - although much shorter, of course). -fyo