https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27184

--- Comment #26 from Alex Deucher agd5f@yahoo.com 2012-04-04 06:07:48 PDT --- (In reply to comment #25)

I just happened to test with this very same 3.3.0-rc3 kernel that while I was in linux console ie. no X and the screen blanker got activated, the lcd display was put into suspend mode ---> I hit the keyboard at this stage and the screen came back without fuss. Last time when I tried all the different stages with xset, none of them worked well. Is there an easy way to modify the states the console screen saver is using (for testing purposes) ?

You can use xset to test dpms, e.g., xset dpms force off

Also, for what it's worth, the driver only implements two states: on and off. All of the intermediate dpms states that are not "on" map to "off".