Real Temp - New temp program for Intel Core processors

[RejZoR]

What is "TM Load" used for exactly?

[unclewebb]

What is "TM Load" used for exactly?

Good question. The original RealTemp load meter was based on the percentage of time the CPU is running in the C0 state. This is documented for the Core i7 and I found it gave great results on my E8400 as well so that's why I originally decided to use it.

On a Core 2 mobile CPU that supports deeper C sleep states, the C0% number actually goes up significantly as the CPU idles down and no longer represents CPU load. My best guess is that in this situation, as the CPU idles down and the cores start to go to sleep, a CPU has to start spending a bigger percentage of its awake time in the C0 state to get the background tasks taken care of. I've seen this meter report as high as 70% on a mobile chip during this situation. Kind of odd but this high number is actually a good sign. It shows at idle that your CPU is mostly asleep, which is a good thing, and it's running very efficiently.

No one ever complained but most laptop owners probably don't like seeing a 70% load number when their CPU seems to be idle. If you have that problem and don't like it then you can use the TM Load option which calculates the CPU load using the same Windows function that the Task Manager uses to calculate load.

I prefer the original RealTemp method because it is more efficient and more accurate, especially in XP, as long as you're not using the deeper sleep states. On a Core i7 or i5, I'm not sure how the two meters compare. It might depend on whether you have C3/C6 and C-States enabled in the bios.

[punkrockpolak]

Informative post, uncle. I'm not sure I'd be too happy seeing my laptop at 70% when it's idle. It's one of those things that irk you when you know they shouldn't heh.