November 25, 2003

Hello All,

It has been a while since I posted anything new, sorry. 

I think you may find it worth the wait though. Alex S. from the Yahoo Forum has customized a version of the Crystal CPUID program to allow it to modify voltage and multiplier on PowerNow! capable processors. This means that those of you running the 1800+ and 1900+ mobile processors now have a way of managing battery life and performance.

To download the Moded Crystal CPUID utility click here. The utility is 292KB in size.

The following, is the info that Alex provided me about the utility.

So here are the new features:

1. The application now is "iconized" to the system tray, and could be started "hidden"-controlled in the ini file.

2. Change Voltage with Frequency - if this checkmark is activated, then the Voltage change box is grayed, and the voltage changes automatically after you change manually the frequency (according to the current power state table). At the same time it prevents setting freq and volt levels out of those, provided in the scaling table. 

3. Override Bios-changes the scaling table to the "fake" one. Since the "BIOS" is not automatically updated, it can be used just as a second "fake" table ;-) 

4. Custom scaling - you can select your custom scale up level, scale down level (in CPU %), and CPU speed polling interval (in ms) 

5. More detailed comments and instructions how to build your own scaling table are available in the .ini file. It contains and example "BIOS" and "FAKE" tables for Athlon XP 1900+ which could be used also for 1800+, but in this case you should change FID7 for the "FAKE" table to be 24, which corresponds to 15x multiplier. Could be used also wit the current setting of FID7=26 ( 16x) but I'm not so sure how XP 1800+ will survive this "overclock" Known issues: 1. The icon tool tip (showing the speed and voltage) is not correct when started from "manual"... I'll take care of that soon. 2. The patch is applied to v2.0 of CrystalCPUID-now there is v2.3 available. 3. When the automatic scaling is active, the program uses 2-10 % CPU time, which varies depending on the polling interval (the smaller the interval, the more the CPU load is... But this is the price to pay of not being a real drive, but just "userspace" program... :(

4,5, 6 ....... will be reported by the users as soon as they start using it... ;-)

And at last, one big WARNING!

USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK! AND DO NOT SET THE VOLTAGE TO 0 Volts - THIS IS THE FASTEST WAY TO SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER !

OK, hope this program will work for all members that have upgraded their notebooks. At least it works for Peter, Andrew (AcL) and me, William also tested it, so I don't see any reason failing to work for the others. I also tetsted it while watching DVD-the CPU speed was changing from time to time, but I haven't noticed any annoyances in sound and video....

I will emphasize what Alex says.

USE THIS UTILITY AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PAPER WEIGHTS THAT YOU CREATE.

Good Luck with this utility. If it works for you please let me and Alex know.

Brad