Pentium M Speed Step Vs. Low Priority Processes in Feisty

[F-3582]

Hi,

I just noticed a strange thing which I suppose is related to my upgrade to Feisty (probably kernel-related):

Whenever there is a low priority process, it doesn't matter how high its CPU usage might be, it never gets the CPU to enter high performance mode (in my case: switching from 600MHz to 1.7 GHz). Not much of an issue, you might think, but a few programs acually show issues because of this. Just let me give you two examples:

- Folding@Home: Before upgrading to Feisty it almost instantly made my CPU switch to maximum clock speed, but now only the benchmark at the beginning (obviously no low priority process) does this, the actual calculations only use the slower mode taking thrice the time it would normally take to finish a work unit.

- Opera: In order to prevent plugins from slowing down the browsing experience (wise choice) and because no one writes native plugins for Opera they use a plugin wrapper which is also run as a low priority process. Unfortunately this slows down almost any Flash animation I've seen so far while my CPU still runs with 100% usage at 600MHz.


Does anyone know if there's a workaround for this? Puh-Leeze

EDIT: I just confirmed this using the system monitor - Any process with a nice value higher than 0 is rendered unable to trigger the aforementioned event. Looks more like a feature than a bug...