Currents & Powers in System Stability Test

[Gavrilla]

Hello)

In old version (latest everest 5.30.1901 Beta) in Currents & Powers Tab in System Stability Test Options I can choose ones to monitor Q9550 Currents & Powers:

In newer versions (up to AIDA 1.20.1170 Beta) there is no such choice((

I'm using Gigabyte EP45-DS4 Motherboard & Intel Q9550 CPU.

What has been changed so that such useful info disappeared from menu? Can it be fixed?

[Fiery]

Due to lack of documentation, the Gigabyte DES support was inaccurate and produced false current & power values. We couldn't get a documentation for DES, so we opted to remove DES support to avoid displaying inaccurate values.

Regards,

Fiery

[dann23]

maybe we can give it another try. HWMonitor has des support and works fine with my motherboard.

[Fiery]

maybe we can give it another try. HWMonitor has des support and works fine with my motherboard.

Are you sure it's 100% accurate at both idle and under heavy load? We too had DES support, but it wasn't suitable for all motherboards, and it was rather inaccurate at times. Sometimes at idle it produced proper values, but at load things fell apart. Unless Gigabyte is willing to provide us a SDK or other programming manual, we won't risk another try. Mostly because Gigabyte has a habit to revamp the DES support between socket generations and processor families, so even if we would make a working DES for P55 motherboards, it will most likely be useless for P67 motherboards.

[dann23]

I have a ga-ma790fxt-ud5p motherboard. HWMonitor worked with this board despide what bios version I had. And after I read about gigabyte des it seems to me that there are some versions of intersil chips that are used. what I know is that the motherboards for amd are capable of reading power comsumption and the processors voltage. but the ones from inter board are capable or reading much more than this. So I believe that the best aproach is to support this features based on motherboards types. or maybe enable this for some motherboards that are known to have stable readings. And it's worth to mention that gigabyte des utility is not updated with every bios version that is released and they work. and they don't display odd readings. also there are 2 versions of gigabyte des utility:

Dynamic Energy Saverâ„¢ 2 - Support Intel X58/P55/H55/H57 series MB.

Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced - Support Intel X48/P45/P43/G45/G43/G41/EP35/EP31/EG31 series & GA-E7AUM-DS2H MB.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/Utility.aspx

[Fiery]

1) I normally wouldn't bash another software, but now that you mentioned it ... AFAIK HWMonitor uses a rather twisted, not very scientific method to "measure" the CPU power consumption. It doesn't even work in several cases, e.g. on our Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H motherboard + Sempron 140 system it constantly reports 40.50W for the CPU power, both idle and at full load.

2) DES has a lot more variations than what you listed. There's the old "classic" DES for the oldest boards with DES support, and there's the Easy Energy Saver for AMD processors. Every generation of DES/EES uses a different method to measure the CPU power, and they do depend on BIOS tables. Such BIOS tables may change between BIOS releases.

As for stable readings, yes, our old DES method provided solid and stable readings in most of the cases, and users didn't even notice they were off. Sometimes they were off only at full load, sometimes they were off even at idle. Sometimes only by a few watts, other times the values didn't make any sense (like 0.15W at full load, or zero watts). The whole thing is just a big headache, and we invested valuable resources in this whole thing, pretty much in vain.

Don't get me wrong, we would be very happy to implement DES/EES support again, but in order to do so, we need proper SDK or programming manual from Gigabyte.

[mumak]

I'm not sure whether HWMonitor really supports DES, but in many cases the CPU Power Consumption reported there is not really measured, just totally estimated (guessed) based on TDP and current P-State. Such values are practically useless.

[dann23]

I believe you're right. A simple test to see this is by changing the voltage. If I change CPU voltage I get a differnt reading. But if I change the CPU NB voltage then nothing. Gigabyte DES utility sees this but hwmonitor doesn't. So maybe you're right. Also, after playing with voltages and frequencies, gigabyte des utility stopped working it reads 0 watts.

[mumak]

The question is whether they would be willing to release that info. If yes, an NDA would solve the confidentiality concern. It might be worth a try..

Yes Fiery is right,we try before to implement in proper way with Everest (many posts on Lavalys forum is gone),even I personaly ask my friends in GB Taiwan to give code for DES,but unsuccessfully (confidential documents).

[Fiery]

The confidential info may not need to be released. AFAIK DES 2 and DES Advanced applications use a NT service to measure power draw, and report it via a text file (INFO.DAT). Sounds like a way that could be used by 3rd party applications as well. However, the service stops reporting the values when the DES main application is not running So it's not really useful that way.