Power management issue in Mavericks with Sandy Bridge

[treuben]

Hello all, I have a Sandy Bridge set-up with i5 2500 on Gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3 and minimal graphics with nvidia 8400GS. Installation is mostly working using clover as bootloader but I have a remaining power management problem. I am using SSDT generated by the usual script, ssdtPRGen.sh (with no errors upon running it) and DSDT from the repository for my board. I use DropOEM option in clover (to allow SSDT to work) and haven't told clover to generate p-states or c-states itself.

Using the imac12,2 system definition (one of those recommended for Sandy Bridge) I get only two cpu states recognised in HWmonitor but intel power gadget seems to recognise more and change about as normal in terms of clock speed. Using macpro3,1 system definition I get more lower CPU states it seems but still works ok.. the problem is that temps are 5-6 degrees higher than with Snow Leopard at idle and HWmonitor displays Vcore of 1.07 all the time.. Now given HWmonitor's not displaying my clock states properly I can't be sure but I am guessing that Vcore being stuck there may be the reason. (It should be able to drop to 0.89 or so at idle I believe.

So my questions are:

1. Where do I go from here to diagnose my problem?

2. I have seen people patch system definitions as these seem to affect power management - some people use macmini sysdefs for sandy bridge but I can't boot - getting stuck at video initialisation so does anyone know how to patch sysdefs or associated files in Mavericks to allow proper CPU power management?

3. If you can suggest any tricks to get my system to boot with macmini sysdef I'm all ears. (This might be a shortcut and achieve the goal without knowing what we're doing!)

4. Any out of the box ideas that might help!

All the best from Australia and thank you in advance 8)

 

[Shiitaki]

You could try a iMac Sandybridge profile. I'd check to make sure any auto over clocking was turned off, and verify the voltage settings in the bios are set to stock.

As I check my own voltage value in HWMonitor, it's at 1.08 at idle, and at 4.0Ghz. It's Ivybridge with a Z77 Gigabyte board, the with native power management. I wonder if anyone with a mackintosh sees their voltage change?

 

[toleda]

1. Where do I go from here to diagnose my problem?

Search: Mavericks power management

 

[treuben]

I have searched for a week and read many, many posts. There's a lot out there talking about later cpus and using macmini sysdefs - which don't get me to a GUI on my machine (maybe as I'm not using intel graphics but Nvidia). I've read the Mavericks Power management guide but there's not a lot in there about Sandy Bridge. I asked some specific questions as well as the appeal for more general help (which is really just to invite people to chime in with something I might have been missing). It's not like this is the first thing I've done though I thank you for your good intentions.

 

[treuben]

Perhaps we could add some questions then:

5. Does anyone see their Vcore change in HW monitor (especially SB people) and if they don't.. where do they see it change? BTW, for me SMC monitor also shows stuck Vcore at 1.069v

6. I see some people looking in IOregistry explorer for CPU states but the keys don't seem to match what I see in mine. If someone is expert at that and can help with a relevant key and what it should look like then that would be helpful too.

To answer what has been asked;

I use imac sysdef already and it works to the extent described.. though imac sysdefs are famous for having even more limited speedstep than macmini or macpro3,1..At least with imac sysdef my graphics card GPU is allowed to step to lower frequencies properly hence I have found it the best so far (GPU is stuck in macpro3,1). Thanks for your input Shiitaki. 8)

Additional info re temps: my idle temp in Mavericks are 34-38 degress C, up from what I think was 28 odd in Snow Leo - using stock Intel cooler. Ambient temp is 23 degrees.



All the best!

 

[toleda]

though imac sysdefs are famous for having even more limited speedstep than macmini or macpro3,1..

Flawed research; that problem is the tool, not the sysdef. imac12, imac13 and imac14 have always worked properly.

 

[treuben]

So the people grafting bits of sysdefs together to get proper speedstep or that say macmini sysdefs are superior in this regard are mistaken? I was under the impression that the imac sysdefs don't allow all facets of CPU power management to work. There are people patching other system files that contain board definitions etc too to make this happen. In my case *something* certainly stops it working properly since I have observably higher temps in Mavericks despite enough clock multiplier states looking to be available. Vcore or C-states is what I suspect. It also doesn't explain why I see not entirely absent but *different* states when using macpro3,1. (I see more low clock multiplier states then and it's not that I care.. I don't mind missing a few multiplier states in the middle... low states are important for idle temps though.)

So apart from saying that hwmonitor is flawed (which seems quite reasonable) do you have any suggestions concerning how we might see this (vcore, c-states) working? (perhaps ioregistry explorer key pointers or something else?) Do you have a preferred method of collecting this power management info?

As an aside.. is it still correct to say that turbo doesn't work on H67 sandy bridge? That doesn't bother me so much as I'm not greedy at all in terms of processor speed - I wouldn't miss turbo if it came to that. I just want to have the lowest idle states back in play when the machine is idle.

 

[toleda]

So the people grafting bits of sysdefs together to get proper speedstep or that say macmini sysdefs are superior in this regard are mistaken?

Yes. See Post #3, first search result. Power management works exactly as designed on H67 Sandy Bridge when implemented properly. Your experiments are not valid and your conclusions are incorrect.

 

[treuben]

Ok, so I used AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext via simple permissions change and kextload in terminal:

td$ sudo chown -R 0:0 AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext
td$ sudo chmod -R 755 AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext
td$ sudo kextload AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext

Wandered over to /var/log/system.log and saw:


kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MWAIT C-States.....................: 4384
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_CORE_THREAD_COUNT......(0x35) : 0x40004
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PLATFORM_INFO..........(0xCE) : 0x100060012100
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PMG_CST_CONFIG_CONTROL.(0xE2) : 0x18000401
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PMG_IO_CAPTURE_BASE....(0xE4) : 0x20414
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_MPERF.................(0xE7) : 0x83F7D74E05D
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_APERF.................(0xE8) : 0x7499BC927E3
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_FLEX_RATIO.............(0x194) : 0x80000
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_IA32_PERF_STATUS.......(0x198) : 0x28AC00002200
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_IA32_PERF_CONTROL......(0x199) : 0x2200
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_CLOCK_MODULATION......(0x19A) : 0x8
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_THERM_STATUS..........(0x19C) : 0x883E0000
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_MISC_ENABLES..........(0x1A0) : 0x850089
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_MISC_PWR_MGMT..........(0x1AA) : 0x1
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_TURBO_RATIO_LIMIT......(0x1AD) : 0x22232425
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS......(0x1B0) : 0x4
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_POWER_CTL..............(0x1FC) : 0x4005F
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_RAPL_POWER_UNIT........(0x606) : 0xA1003
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_POWER_LIMIT........(0x610) : 0xA580001483C0
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_ENERGY_STATUS......(0x611) : 0xBBEE4608
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKGC3_IRTL.............(0x60a) : 0x8C02
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKGC6_IRTL.............(0x60b) : 0x8854
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKGC7_IRTL.............(0x60c) : 0x8854
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PP0_CURRENT_CONFIG.....(0x601) : 0x18141494000008C0
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT........(0x638) : 0x1483C0
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PP0_ENERGY_STATUS......(0x639) : 0x8423D34F
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PP0_POLICY.............(0x63a) : 0x1F
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_C2_RESIDENCY.......(0x60d) : 0x614868AC134
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_C3_RESIDENCY.......(0x3f8) : 0x15544788
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_C6_RESIDENCY.......(0x3f9) : 0x1D3759ACAA1F
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: MSR_PKG_C7_RESIDENCY.......(0x3fa) : 0x0
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU Low Frequency Mode.............: 1600 MHz
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU Maximum non-Turbo Frequency....: 3300 MHz
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU Maximum Turbo Frequency........: 3700 MHz
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU C3-Cores [ 2 3 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU C6-Cores [ 0 2 3 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 26 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU C3-Cores [ 0 2 3 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 24 26 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU C3-Cores [ 0 1 2 3 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU C6-Cores [ 0 1 2 3 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 26 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 26 28 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 26 28 29 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 34 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ 16 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 32 34 (35) ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ 16 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 32 34 35 (36) ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 34 35 36 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ 16 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 (37) ]
kernel[0]: AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ (16) 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 ]


So looks like I have C3 and C6 working along with a nice helping of P-States. Which is nice to know.. though what I expected too. Now I just have to find something to show me changing Vcore or to find out why it isn't, if it isn't.

 

[treuben]

any Vcore aficionados in the house? 8)