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On my Dell Vostro 200 (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB ram) there's very noticeable difference in fan noise (and thus fan speed?) between WinXP and Ubuntu 10.04. I'ts a dual boot setup, and the fans (or at least one of the fans?) make more noise when using the Linux install. Since I use Linux most of the time, it'd be nice if I could bring down the fan noise. When booting the fans start running fast, as is expected, and gradually slow down, to end up at a reasonably low speed. When booting into WinXP I can hear the fans slow down in steps -- this does not happen to the same extend in Ubuntu.
I've tried running 'fancontrol', but its config application (pwmconfig) tells me
/usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed
Any clues as to what else I can try to fix the problem? There don't appear to be any BIOS settings regarding fan speeds on this machine.
[Update] So I opened up the case, turns out it's the fan on the GPU (ATI RV610 [Radeon HD 2400 XT]) that's making the noise.
Excellent question! I had been thinking of this too - are CPU fans more efficient with Windows running? – Hippo – 2010-09-15T17:37:43.823
If your gpu is the problem: please check if you use a propper driver - using the frambuffer could use more cpu and gpu speed than a propper driver. – Andreas Rehm – 2010-09-15T23:07:12.793
I'm currently using the 'radeon' driver from 'xserver-xorg-video-radeon'. Tried using 'xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd', but it sucked. In the past I've had bad experiences with AMD/ATI's proprietary driver, so I'm not using that. Ah well. – klokop – 2010-09-15T23:46:34.567
1I've had bad experiences with the ATI proprietary driver in the past also, but it's gotten a lot better and a lot more stable. Check out Phoronix for advice on the best version to use -it's not always the latest (as regressions are still occurring!) – imoatama – 2010-09-16T02:31:58.597