[gentoo-user] Re: lm_sensors much hotter in 2.6.31 than 2.6.28

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 10/25/2009 11:37 PM, Grant wrote:
> After upgrading from 2.6.28 to 2.6.31, I noticed my CPU temperatures
> are reported a full 20C hotter.  If I load the old kernel, the
> reported temperatures drops back down to normal.  Has anyone else seen
> this?

If you're using coretemp as sensor, the temps are always off (the 
coretemp sensor of Intel chips is not accurate, not by any stretch of 
the imagination.)  It only reports the distance to the CPU's maximum 
thermal junction, which then the coretemp driver *tries* to translate 
into a temperature, but the result is wrong since the value reported by 
the CPU is not accurate to start with (it only gets accurate as you 
approach the max value).  That maximum value is totally undocumented for 
desktop CPUs (the docs Intel provided recently are wrong.)

You should use your mainboard's sensors instead for accurate values.