User cannot control Energy Savings on MBP

[jacobj]

Again I may have missed something on this forum but it seems that I will not be able to control when my MBP runs at full tilt...

Link
Gone is the Processor Performance control of the Energy Saver System Preference. The power-saving features of the Intel Core Duo, including its ability to switch off one of its two cores when performing lighter processing duties, are managed automatically.

Does this mean that if I remove the power adapter and then ask it to run some CPU intensive tasks it will only do so on one core to save energy or am I being paranoid?

 

[verb]

Does this mean that if I remove the power adapter and then ask it to run some CPU intensive tasks it will only do so on one core to save energy or am I being paranoid?

You are being paranoid. A few things here.

1) The Core Duo processor will scale back only when you are NOT doing processor intensive tasks. It is possible that while unplugged the clock speed of both cores might be scaled back compared to the speed when plugged in, but that is yet to be seen.

2) The power savings of the Core Duo never simply disables one core. The power savings state of the two cores are linked in nearly every power savings state. That means that instead of disabling one core, the chip will scale back both cores at the same time or put them both in any one of many sleep states.