The debate on the fan...

[James314]

Ok, let me get this straight, the reason the fan is on a lot of the time, even when people register that the temp as indicated by software like mobmeter is only at 36-38 degrees is because there are other heat sources picked up by the bios such as wifi card heat and GPU heat. Now, personally, i do not accept this as i had no problems befire the recent update and now i do. Secondly my wifi card is almost always off and my GPU is never ever performing any taxing tasks like gaming etc. However, i have an open mind and so i have the following questions:

I have heard that turning power play on even when on AC will decrease the fan:

1. how do i do this?
2. what effect does this have on the quality of viewing, eg. does the brightness decrease like in battery mode.

I ask because i would to dispel this myth - please see the post bellow on 't4x fan - some findings' - by testing it out myself. Furthermore, if this does help i will be extremly happy to have my tp back to its quiet self - although this would not explain why the bios update changed the fan level.

Pease contribute as much as you can as this seems to be an issue that invites hundreds of differant recommendations that all contradict each other. I for one want to try and set the record straight by exploring all options.


EDIT/UPDATE: Thank you Erõ Zsolt for the following links which provide a wealth of information to the subject, please take some time to consider these carfeully before posting...enjoy!

T4x fan noise: some findings

Stopping the 'fan always on'
problem once and for all!

Silencing Thinkpads - T40
louder than R50e

T40p fan doesn't stop

Arggh! how can I get this FAN
to go off?

fan runs, hard drive noise

t42 fan running constantly with
new bios SOLVED- bug !! (note, SOLVED is a mistyping here...)

underclocking a t42?
interesting thread

Fan on most of the time after
CPU upgrade


Thanks,

James...

[dvorak]

Display Properties -> Advaced -> Powerplay will help you to clock down even on AC.

I have it on Battery mode, display brightness MAX, adaptive CPU mode, CPU temp is 41 degrees, HDD 35 degrees, machine plugged in (AC), BIOS v3.13 and the fan is running. I've had it on Battery mode the whole day, no difference.

Clocking the GPU down doesn't reduce graphics or brightness, it simply does less in a time-length than before, but doing 2D things like running Windows is no trouble, it only matters when gaming or doing graphics work.

[James314]

when i go to display settings, then advanced and then powerplay, it does not give me the option of switching power play on when on AC. It just says at the top that power play is off because AC is on or because power play is not selected. Bellow that it has two blue buttons, one that says enable power play which is ticked and one that asks something about colour depth reduction which is unticked.

something else i should know??

James.

[dvorak]

There's a Powerplay settings button on my tab, it's either because you didn't notice it, or due to me using Catalyst drivers instead the preloaded ones.

Anyways, if you wish to use Catalyst ones too, download them and use Patje's Mod to get them to install.
http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

[James314]

hmm calyst drivers huh, are they stable? im weary of weird driver mods like this...what are the benefits of catalyst drivers?

James

[dvorak]

hmm calyst drivers huh, are they stable? im weary of weird driver mods like this...what are the benefits of catalyst drivers?

James

Yes, as far as I have used them, stable.
I first had to try them because I had some Anti-Aliasing problems on some programs, installing Catalyst seem to have fixed them.

I'm just updating to Catalyst 5.3 as I type, if you wish, I can send you further information.

[James314]

thanks Dvork but i think im gonna pass on Catalyst drivers unless there is any real benefit to my getting them especially as you say that they make no differance to your fan.

So again i throw out the question, if its not wifi, if its not my GPU and as some people say its not the bios - which i disagree with - then what the hell is it?????


James

p.s. Dvorak, please IM me about the advantages of catalyst drivers as maybe i will install them at some other time.

[daeojkim]

go to
Display -> Setting -> Advanced -> Powerplay
Check the "Enable Powerplay" box, then Click "Powerplay properties"
There are 3 options
1. AC
2. High battery
3. Low battery

By default AC will be in high peformance and both battery settings on maximum battery life.

Change the AC setting to "Max battery" or "low performance" or equivalent.

Then Click OK.

BTW I am using Omega driver 4.10. It has been working flawlessly for the past 6 months.

[James314]

thanks but i do not have that option as i said above, it seems you can only get that option by installing other drivers like omega or ati catalyst.

james.

[erozsolt]

Using tweaked drivers is not a solution!!!

They are extremely instable, buggy and useless! They are for gamers, not for TP users. I tried them, and they are not compatible with "hibernate" and "suspend". (Sometime they work, but sometime they freeze my computer to death).

We have to solve this problem at BIOS level, look at original thread.

[James314]

thank you erozsolt, this is my point exactly! In regard to your post in the other thread - i was using bios 3.13 when things were working well. Is there a way of going back??

cheers again,

James.

[dvorak]

Using tweaked drivers is not a solution!!!

They are extremely instable, buggy and useless! They are for gamers, not for TP users. I tried them, and they are not compatible with "hibernate" and "suspend". (Sometime they work, but sometime they freeze my computer to death).

Tweaked drivers (Omega) is one thing, but using ATI-s Catalyst drivers, I feel, is justified. The drivers IBM supplies are now more than 4 months old, it may not matter when all you do is text-based, but when your specific program has display issues that are fixed with the latest Catalyst drivers, there's no reason for letting your work hang until IBM once comes up with suitable drivers. Time is money, after all :)

I have been using Catalyst for over 3 months now without any hassle, and quite enjoy the feel I can control more, Powerplay options aswell.

thank you erozsolt, this is my point exactly! In regard to your post in the other thread - i was using bios 3.13 when things were working well. Is there a way of going back??

I'm currently using v3.13, and regret to say, the problem still is here. If it actually is a problem.
I've noticed the bottom of the LCD is a lot warmer than the top, seems the extra brightness could also be one of the secret reasons for the fan to kick in. Especially combined with the higher clock of the GPU.

[dvorak]

Deleted.

I'm sorry, I must have hit the quote button instead of edit.

[James314]

ok, so now the question is, does turning power play on when on AC sufficiently lower the GPU temp anough to stop the fan from spinning all the time? lol after reading just then that such third party drivers are unstable i quit my d/l of the catalyst drivers and im on dial-up - oh dear! So now i want to know the full story first. Erozsolt mentioned in the 'twin' post to this issue that its about lowering temp or dealing with the bios update - so hoping and praying that IBM start thinking long and hard. So on a more proactive stance, does anyone know if powerplay whilst on AC will help at all?

thanks again,

James.

[dvorak]

lol after reading just then that such third party drivers are unstable i quit my d/l of the catalyst drivers and im on dial-up - oh dear!

As I just mentioned in my post above you, I've used Catalyst for more than 3 months without it ever crashing on me, I presume erozsolt was referring to Omega drivers which are tweaked, definitely not the same as Catalyst.
As a side note, Catalyst drivers are default drivers released by ATI for desktop systems -- stable, Omega drivers are third-party drivers, not mean't to be stable, but instead give cutting-edge performance.

So on a more proactive stance, does anyone know if powerplay whilst on AC will help at all?

Again, in the upper part of this thread, I mentioned by findings:

I have it on Battery mode, display brightness MAX, adaptive CPU mode, CPU temp is 41 degrees, HDD 35 degrees, machine plugged in (AC), BIOS v3.13 and the fan is running. I've had it on Battery mode the whole day, no difference.

[James314]

ahh yes, so you did, sorry about that! well there you have it ladies and gentlemen, its some kind of BIOS problem, whether the new one is to blame or not, it seems to be the only level that the problem can be addressed.

Time to play the waiting game...tick tock tick tock...

James.

[daeojkim]

Omega drivers are actually based on catalyst drivers, they have some few extra features that allow you to tweak if you want to. By default they are not tweaked at all.
One thing that I noticed was there were so much more options for external monitor resolution that the original IBM drivers did not allow you to choose.

Anyways try some other drivers. Just because the drivers are from IBM does not necesarily mean they are better than rest, as many of us had to find out the hard way after upgrading drivers and causing all sorts of problems.

[K. Eng]

The Omega drivers (4.10 and 4.12) caused my system to hang or crash when I came out of standby and hibernate.

I am guessing that the Catalyst drivers should probably be stable. After all, the Catalyst drivers are the official release from ATI. I've never had problems with Catalyst on any other ATI card I've used (Radeon DDR, Radeon 8500LE, Radeon 9000, Radeon 9600). Still it is a bit of extra work to get them installed on a ThinkPad.

[erozsolt]

I said only tweaked drivers are unstable, for me it was the newest Omega driver.

Catalyst drivers are a different story. They have a strange name (like ForceWare for nVidia) which sounds like a gaming stuff but they are the official ATI unified drivers. So ATI Catalyst drivers are official, stable and usable with any ATI video card, including Mobility Radeons used on TPs. I think, even IBM drivers are based on former Catalyst drivers.

So you can safely download and install the latest official Catalyst drivers (from ati.com), but be sure to download the smaller (like 25 MB) version, not the Catalyst Control Center, because it is a unusable memory hog .NET application only for overclocking purposes.

As for the original problem, if PowerPlay could help with the fan issue, I think it can help a bit, but not entirely solve the issue.

For me (T40, short heatsink version), the following configurations caused the fan running [fan usage 0..10]:
BIOS 3.14 - AC - Powerplay off - Wifi on: continuously running fan [10]
BIOS 3.06 - AC - Powerplay off - Wifi on: a bit better [8]
BIOS 3.06 - AC - Powerplay ON - Wifi on: even better [6]
BIOS 3.06 - AC - Powerplay ON - Wifi OFF: the big leap! No fan at all! [0]
for DC, values are [7,4,4,0]

So turning off Wifi helps a lot, whereas enabling Powerplay only helps a bit.

[dvorak]

To clarify: I've had my WiFi, PCMCIA slots, modem, infrared etc. disabled -- anything I don't use.

Using an older BIOS version is also a little weird, I suppose the bugs would occour again that were fixed in the newer versions.

Version changes for BIOS:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... uj28us.txt

[James314]

NOTE TO ALL RADEON 7500 USERS: do not try installing ATI's catalyst drivers as you will just get BSOD. I used the mod, followed instructions but whenever i went to actually install the driver i would get BSOD - i tried 4 times to no avail!

Thats that possibility out the way then.

James.

[erozsolt]

I could install Catalyst, but only using a Desktop computer to unpack the driver and then copy back to TP but it doesn't worth it:

The advanced PowerPlay settings are only available in tweaked drivers, not in official Catalyst, so there is simply no gain using ATI Catalyst over IBM drivers.

Sorry James for not posting this earlier, but I just checked it now. I am in looking for some registry setting, which controls the PP features, so maybe I can find an easier solution.

[James314]

no probs, its not your fault. Thanks for your help on this issue, its much appreciated. My tp is fine despite the BSOD, i just deleted the ATI Catalyst folder as there is no point in it just sitting there and that was it, no drama.

James.

[erozsolt]

Use driver cleaner for uninstalling drivers totally!
There is a short readme on the site,
http://www.drivercleaner.net/

Now I use a tweaked driver called ATI Optimized driver it has the advanced PP settings, and now my TP is quieter but this driver still has some bugs.

So it's your choice, but always use driver cleaner after uninstalling a driver.

[dvorak]

As it seems, James wasn't even able to install them, so there's no point in trying to clean something that isn't there.

Now I use a tweaked driver called ATI Optimized driver it has the advanced PP settings, and now my TP is quieter but this driver still has some bugs.

Have you tried manually under-clocking your card? There are various tools for this. A few names I can remeber were AtiTool, RadLinker.
Although it may not help significantly, you may win a degree that in a hot environment may mean no fan :P

[James314]

yeah, as Dvorak said, i couldnt install any new drivers using the mod so i just had a folder full of set-up files for the driver and ATI panel, just trashed the lot!

James.

[James314]

UPDATE: The reason i could not install the drivers was due to Process Guard which protects rundll32.exe and doesnt allow it access to physical memory. Now i have enabled it things should run perfectly, ill install the drivers and report back for future referance just in acse another user has this problem at some point.

James.

[erozsolt]

Powerplay not really clocks down the GPU, but turns off unused parts, so it is not possible to achieve the same effect using ATItool or Radlinker. I am not sure about other cards, but my MR 7500 has the same frequencies at DC and AC.

[beeblebrox]

Powerplay not really clocks down the GPU, but turns off unused parts, so it is not possible to achieve the same effect using ATItool or Radlinker. I am not sure about other cards, but my MR 7500 has the same frequencies at DC and AC.

I don't know what kind of problems you guys have.
I have been using the Omega drivers (2.5.9.0) on my T40p (Radeon 9000) without any problems for a year now. Hibernate, suspend, etc. all perfect.
I usually clock down the Radeon to some 150Mhz, that is more than enough for Office work.

Omega, IBM drivers, DNA drivers etc. are all based on the same set of ATI drivers, which are released as Catalyst. The developer of the Omega drivers is a close developer of ATI anyway. However, the "tweaked" drivers just offer more settings. Catalyst does not work with anything below 9600. Gladly ATI has put in a check for any "old" chips below 9600.

If the computer crashes it is mostly a problem with graphics memory, the Radeon 9000 does not work below 99Mhz.
If you need OpenGL you better stick with IBM drivers! Do not use Omega!

Powerplay reduces the core voltage of the GPU, thus reducing heat and performance. Very similar to Pentiums (speedstep).
You can do some tests with powerplay and reduce the clock as well, but you will get a lot of crashes before you find the ideal clock. My T40p works perfect at 150 Mhz and powerplay. No fan!! I have a long heat pipe on the GPU. I tested the GPU with ice spray, and indeed the GPU is checked by a thermal sensor.

The wifi card is a main heater as well!!!! Especially when you transfer a lot of data and have power save disabled. That's a main cause for the fan. Transfer a huge data file and check underneath the touchpad. It burns the desk, therefore the fan.

For the ones who are annoyed by any fan and who use silent 4200 rpm drives, you probably better get a USB stick WLAN. That helps.

[James314]

Catalyst drivers dont work on anything bellow 9600!! Nice of ATI to tell us that. Turns out Process Guard was not to blame so i could not install catalyst at all which figures if the above is true. So it seems there is now no way i can use powerplay when on AC...TO ALL IBM EMPLOYEES ETC, IF YOU ARE WATCHING, FIX THE [censored] BIOS!


James.