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As an experiment, we took one of our reference QA platforms, "Industrial PC" based on mobile components (chipset and CPU). Hardware configuration of this system consists of:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 running at 1.8 GHz (SL9SG)

Motherboard: MSI® Fuzzy GM945 (version with DVI output and 945GM chipset)

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit

This PC contains typical "Napa" configuration found in many laptops worldwide. What is interesting, though, is that apparently ACPI BIOS "PSS" tables for CPU controls might be buggy, and they do not contain proper control data (this might be dependent on a particular BIOS version). Fortunately, CPUgenie is able to detect and correct this problem. CPUgenie does not rely only on ACPI tables for CPU performance control, and it can actually "guess" the missing/broken ACPI data. Upon installing CPUgenie, we run its "Automatic Voltage Optimization Wizard" feature, in order to find the lowest stable voltages for this system. The test ran overnight and resulted in following temperature improvements:

WOW! 13 degrees for free! Also, it is worth noting that the new voltages for ALL multipliers are now set at 0.950V! In the original (default) configuration, 0.950V was reserved only for the lowest P-state, while the highest state was running @1.137V. This is quite healthy reduction in voltage, which definitely has an impact on the CPU's TDP.

Unfortunately, this system runs on AC power, so we were not able to test the effect on battery life - but, even without it we believe the benefits are quite important. Getting rid of 13 degrees under heavy load means less CPU Fan activity needed to cool down the system, and of course, cooler environment! Regardless of where this system would be used – in a server room or on the office desk, those benefits in temperature and power reduction are very helpful, and they are very easy to achieve!