[samuraimac]

hummmm good stuff but i still need to know where to adjust it. if its easy enough then i can just switch it on or off for when im playing and turn it off when im not playing to save battery power.

anyone know how to adjust it for xp?

[TekWarren]

The speedstep switch is in the BIOS so it would require a reboot each time you change the setting. There are tools that can help you control some functions of the processors clock speed but I'm not sure any work on the Atom processor yet. I use a tool called RMclock on my regular laptops which allows me to lower the voltage at any given speed step. This means less power is consumed without sacrificing the speed...also decreases heat. I'm pretty sure you could do the opposite by forcing the cpu to run at full power but again I don't know if the Atom processor is supported and it does involve some time time to test settings for every individual machine.

On the video settings I am seeing power settings in the intel graphics control panel. Unfortunately it appears they are not adjustable. If you right click on your desktop and go to properties - settings - advanced - and then click on the big Intel Graphics Media Accelerator... then click on the Graphics properties button it brings up the intel graphics control panel. Click on the Display Settings button and from there the Power Settings button. All the options are grayed out for me and it appears that the slider is set to max power with or without my mini plugged in. I also rebooted with and without power plugged in and nothing changes. I am running XP Pro so I don't know if other versions will be different. These settings are locked down by Dell's driver no doubt. It might be worth downloading the graphics driver directly from Intel and installing it to see if the settings are then accessible. I would manually uninstall the dell drivers first, reboot THEN install the plain Intel drivers for the cleanest approach.

[TekWarren]

Thought I would try this myself... After uninstalling the graphics driver from device manager and rebooting I could not install the driver from Intel, it gave an error after the files started copying. I reinstalled the original driver and was then able to install the driver I downloaded from Intel but the power settings for the graphics are still locked out. If I had to guess its probably a simple registry hack or tweak to unlock these settings and some Google'n may even turn up folks who have already figured it out...


**Edit**

Another thought. Have you tried changing your power settings before playing a game? Maybe try the Always On, it looks like the graphics power may be controlled by the OS although I don't know the settings for power management would continue to be packaged with the drivers or why we don't see the slider changed when on battery vs. plugged in. I don't plan on playing games on my mini but it would be nice be able adjust power settings especially if it really is stuck on max quality vs max power savings. Also there is a intel display power savings technology box I would try checking...if I could.

[flashy]

speedstep is an intel innovation for laptops, works very well, drops the CPU core speed back to about 600mhz when on battery, i use project 64 on battery and it works fine!

[samuraimac]

Originally Posted by flashy

speedstep is an intel innovation for laptops, works very well, drops the CPU core speed back to about 600mhz when on battery, i use project 64 on battery and it works fine!

well there must be some setting that is different on our two mini's. someone must know.

[Quinten]

When you power your Mini on, press 0 to enter the Bios. On the Advanced menu, is a menu option for Intel(R) SpeedStep(TM) Technology. Oddly enough, it says that if you disable it, it will always operate in a conserve power mode.