If you have upgraded your Mac using my
semi-cracky
How-To you may have also upgraded your
Powerlogix CPU Director
software as time went along. Recently I updated to CPU Director 2.3b2, and when the drop down menu in System
Preferences > Energy Saver > Options > Processor Performance disappeared, I was worried. My CPU was no longer
dynamically changing speed up and down from 1GHz to 2GHz and was staying solidly at 2GHz.
I eventually did
what my father always told me: "When all else fails, dig the manual out of the garbage." I went to the Trash
and grabbed the READ ME FIRST.rtf.
The readme for the newest CPU Director includes this pithy statement:
Note: DFS and Power Management functions require Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, and require a PowerLogix 7447A
CPU card. If you purchased a PowerLogix 7447A CPU card prior to July 27, 2005 your card requires CPU Compatibility
Updater, which will be sent to existing customers. (If you have a PowerLogix 7447A CPU card and the thermal pane does
not appear in CPU Director, or Processor Performance does not appear in the Energy Saver System Preference, you need
the CPU Director Compatibility Updater.)I dutifully emailed Powerlogix support to ask for the CPU
Director Compatibility Updater. They sent me the program, I ran it, and System Preferences > Energy Saver >
Options > Processor Performance reappeared. The problem is, since this upgrade my machine systematically overheats
when I tell it to choose Processor Performance: Automatic. My G4 has not had problems this bad (and subsequently caused
kernel panics) since
the update to
10.4.3.
The ultimate solution to this problem would be dynamic CPU switching but also failsafe
temperature monitoring that allowed CPU Director to force the computer down to the lower speed if overheating becomes
imminent. Apparently this exists for some of the Powerlogix CPUs but it sure doesn't show up in my CPU Director
software (I have the Powerlogix 7447A).
There has been no word yet from
Powerlogix about this issue and I'm going to have to step back in
CPU Director versions. Hopefully the CPU Director Compatibility Updater
won't make my setup incompatible with previous version of CPU Director. If anyone else has had similar issues and/or has
a solution, feel free to post in the comments.
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