Power Modulator release

[Skywing]

Valhalla Legends Power Modulator is a Windows NT/2000/2003/XP utility designed by Adron and myself to automatically regulate CPU speed according to CPU usage to save as much power as possible while providing maximum performance.  Power Modulator requires a Pentium 4/Xeon class processor (or better).  You must be an administrator to install Power Modulator.

Included in the MSI are the required runtime libraries and the three components of Power Modulator:
- PowMod.sys, the kernel mode component.
- PowModService.exe, the user mode service component.
- PowModConfig.exe, a command-line configuration and installation utility.

PowModService.exe runs in the background and automatically adjusts processor usage to balance out power usage vs processor time needed to carry out whatever tasks you are doing.  You can change the operational parameters Power Modulator uses to determine when to reduce processor speed with the included configuration utility.

Please note that, while the driver has been tested rather extensively under Windows 2000, it's possible (however unlikely) that latent bugs may still exist.  Use at your own risk.

Physical multiprocessor support is untested, but should work fine.  No problems are expected with HyperThreading processors.

Feel free to post back with comments/suggestions/bug reports/etc.

[Invert]

Wow. Too bad i dont have a Pentium 4.  

[Trance]

After I installed the Power Modulator, I noticed a slight slowdown in my computers performace. Also noticed it was using 14,000k, so that may have been it. Anyways, if you are wondering the system is a P4 1.6ghz, Windows XP Pro, 512mb ram.

[Skywing]

After I installed the Power Modulator, I noticed a slight slowdown in my computers performace. Also noticed it was using 14,000k, so that may have been it. Anyways, if you are wondering the system is a P4 1.6ghz, Windows XP Pro, 512mb ram.

You can use PowModConfig -getmod from the command line to return the percentage of full CPU power available.  If it says 'disabled', then you've got full power - otherwise, you've got the percentage available.  You should always have full power when most of the CPU is being spent on useful work (as in, not the idle process).  If this isn't the case, let me know (and if you changed the default tolerance levels, say what those are too).

[Skywing]

An updated version of Power Modulator has been released.  The location has not changed; to upgrade, you should uninstall your current version, redownload the installer MSI, and install the new version.

New in this version:
- Driver security has been implemented.  Only Administrators and LocalSystem can use Power Modulator to change modulation.  The default settings still apply for querying modulation settings from the driver, however.
- Fixed a potential processor switching problem in the multiprocessor detection code.

[Raven]

Would it be too difficult to modify it to be compatible with AMD/Cyrix processors? The architectures aren't that different.....?

[Skywing]

Would it be too difficult to modify it to be compatible with AMD/Cyrix processors? The architectures aren't that different.....?

I don't have enough information on how compatible their CPUID feature flags and MSR addresses are to know for sure.  I did set it so that the program will work on an AMD CPU if it claims to support it, but I haven't tested this.  I don't think Cyrix is making any new chips, so I didn't even bother with detecting them as supported.

[Raven]

If you want, I could test it on my old generation Athlon (the best system I have).

[Skywing]

If you want, I could test it on my old generation Athlon (the best system I have).

Feel free to give it a try and see what happens...

[Raven]

It fails to install, which is pretty interesting.

[iago]

It won't install on my laptop either, (AMD Athlon 1500XP or something like that)


Edit: Shouldn't try to think at 6am