Created attachment 20694 [details] Output of acpidump 2>&1 Kernel prints "[Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands." Windows, however, works and the CPU is on the BIOS support list. Attached acpidump.
2.6.28-11 didn't work either. Motherboard is new, so i can't tell if this is a regression or not. BIOS is the newest available (P.120a), but it didn't work with P1.00 and P1.15 either.
One last additional comment (sorry for the spam): All BIOS options regarding overclocking (Am2Boost etc. pp.) are disabled and the Cool'n'Quiet option is enabled.
here is the logic in powernow-k8 cpufreq driver. if (ACPI _PSS is available) blabla... else { if (UP) blabla... else print out this Firmware Bug message. } And I checked the acpidump you attached, it's true that ACPI _PSS control method is not available. I think this is a problem that has been documented. Re-assign to the cpufreq category.
What Rui said in comment #3 is right. As there is no _PSS object, the cpufreq driver can't be loaded. In fact this is reasonable. We see this issue on a lot of machines based on AMD platform. And this issue had better be fixed by BIOS upgrading. Thanks.
Thanks for confirming that there's no _PSS object in the BIOS. I've already complained to Asrock (but have little hope). I may suggest that the wording of the message could be improved. In case that there's really *no* _PSS object it should state so. The wording right now does imply that it is perhaps just something weird in the BIOS that you want to see - in the hope to be able to fix parsing or such... (at least that's what i understood). Again, thanks for looking into this.
So, just for the next poor soul falling into the same trap: The mystery is solved in my case. The BIOS disables C'n'Q *silently* (even when the setting is set to "Enabled") if memory modules from a certain vendor are used. In my case it were those: A-Data AD2800001GOU2 2x1024MB Kit A-DATA DDR2 800MHz CL5 If i use DIMMs from another manufacturer C'n'Q works. However, i still think that's a BIOS bug, since all DIMMs i use are JEDEC-compliant, CL5, 1.8V so no "fancy" overclocking/overvoltage ones.
agree. close this as it is a BIOS problem.