intel

Powertop is a command-line tool released by Intel that shows you the power consumption of the applications running on your system. It works best on notebooks with Intel mobile processors and can help you find out the programs that put a strain on your notebook battery. It requires kernel 2.6.21 or newer with tickless idle enabled (CONFIG_NO_HZ) (which is currently available for 32-bit kernels only). Fedora 7 comes with a 2.6.21 kernel by default, so we can use Powertop on it.

The introduction of Core 2 Duo about a month ago delivered a new processor with about a 25% improvement in performance over the fastest chips in the market. The top-line X6800, running at 2.93GHz, was the most flexible of the new processors, with completely unlocked multipliers up and down. This allowed settings like running the stock speed at a 12x multiplier (3.5GHz) at default voltage - the result of the incredible head room exhibited by the new Conroe processors.