MacBookAir2,1 PowerMizer not working

[cputoaster]

Hi,

I am using nvidia 180.11 on a MacBook Air 2,1 running ubuntu amd64. Everything is working fine, including the 2560x1600 external Dell screen. I am now trying to get the temperature down as I am not really using any 3D applications. I was trying with all kind of options for PowerMizer, but always get

$ nvidia-settings -q GPUCurrentPerfLevel -t
2

which naturally transforms into heat and noise. What I tried so far:

Option     "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3; PowerMizerLevel=0x3; PowerMizerLevelAC=0x3;"

And all kinds of combinations of it, but the GPUCurrentPerfLevel always stayed on 2. If someone has it working on a 9400m powered notebook with this or an older driver, or knows that the most recent one does not work anyway, I would not have to go through the manual download / compile mess...

Cheers,
Andres

[AaronP]

There are a number of reasons why the GPU might not be able to drop to the lowest performance level, including just needing enough memory bandwidth to display the screen. You could try running at a lower screen resolution (not that I'm promising that it will help).

[cputoaster]

Originally Posted by AaronP

There are a number of reasons why the GPU might not be able to drop to the lowest performance level, including just needing enough memory bandwidth to display the screen. You could try running at a lower screen resolution (not that I'm promising that it will help).

Yes, thanks for the tip, that was it. When using the notebook without the external display, power management works as it should, completely noiseless. A bit sad, but maybe I*can try switching off the internal screen to keep the noise down. And now, to my next adventures with hdmi and sound ;-)...

Cheers,
Andres