Thinkpads Forum

I've seen people have their cpu stuck at high, but mine just keeps on switching back and forth from min 6x to max 10x (T7300). I have no idea why. I've checked CPU-Z just to make sure it is correct and indeed it shows my clock jumping back and forth as well (as it does on Rightmark show below). When I first boot up my laptop, it runs fine, but after a while (I've never timed it), it starts doing it again. I thought it was a program I've installed, but after a fresh reboot and no other programs running, it still does that after a while (few hours?). Are there any ideas? I'll try to provide other information if necessary.

That's what it is supposed to do.


This is speedstep. More speed when you need it, less power when you don't. If you don't like it - go to the power schemes (from right click on the charger icon) and pick maximum performance.

To be a bit clearer, it shouldn't be jumping to 10x at all. There's nothing running that would require it. I would understand it if it jumped to 10x when it actually is doing something, but that waveform is simply jumping back and forth every second for no reason. This happens for both on AC and on battery. It doesn't need 10x so I don't want it jumping there, especially when on battery; it'd just waste power. Also, I wouldn't want to have to force it to 6x just to keep it there as that would defeat the purpose of stepping.

Some programme you have installed may be responsible for this, do a Ctrl/ Alt/ Delete and look at the processes running in Task Manager.

There could be a clue in there, report back if there is a process that seems to load and unload frequently.

I had seen this behavior on my client's computer. The CPU would spike every 10 second for 2-3 seconds. It turned out to be a trojan that sends out spam on that interval. Maybe you should check that.

Stan wrote:Some programme you have installed may be responsible for this, do a Ctrl/ Alt/ Delete and look at the processes running in Task Manager.

There could be a clue in there, report back if there is a process that seems to load and unload frequently.

I figured that too so I tried a fresh restart and left it on over night and it still did the same thing. For a few times that this has occurred, I decided to check what task my be taking process power, but nothing really comes up except an svchost.exe process, which I unfortunately can't figure out which it is. nvsvc32.exe also seems to pop up in there, but if that is my antivirus scanner, then it shouldn't cause such spikes. Even my old laptop can handle all these programs without freaking out the stepping.

msb0b wrote:I had seen this behavior on my client's computer. The CPU would spike every 10 second for 2-3 seconds. It turned out to be a trojan that sends out spam on that interval. Maybe you should check that.

I've just ran a full scan using Symantec antivirus (the corporate version provided to me if that matters) without any trouble. I also downloaded and ran AdAware (free version), which also picked up no errors (except identity warnings from cookies). Any other idea? It took about 10ish hours this time for the stepping to oscillate like pictured above this time.[/url]

Are you more concerned with the fact that something is using cpu power or the speedstep behavior? If you'd like to change the way the processor is stepping, it's pretty easy with RMClock. If you'd like the cpu to remain at a low state for most of the time and ramp up to full performance when there's actual load, go into Profiles->Performance on Demand and look at the boxes on the bottom of the screen. I like mine to remain in a low state unless I'm doing active work, so I've set my settings to 40% cpu use (averaged between the two, settings are changeable under the "management" sidebar option), 150ms up transition, and 7500ms down transition. I'm constantly fiddling with the settings, but it works pretty well in that it'll keep the cpu low when doing things like web browsing, but will quickly go to max performance when I'm doing processor intensive tasks and STAY that way for a while, until I become idle.

Aside from the svchost.exe that's jumping around, the only other process (which is right below in the picture) is nvsvc32.exe. I decided to shut that down and it immediately solved the problem. Googling the process shows that it is an Nvidia process, which is "supposedly" used to communicate with the video card, but there have been debate over what it actually does. People have stopped the process without any problems. It seems this has been going on for years and many blame it for using up resources for now reason. Some say it's spyware/malware while other say it's not. I don't know and I haven't played any intensive 3D games or any graphic intensive programs yet so i can't tell if it will be a problem shutting the task down.

What I do know is that ending it stopped the stepping oscillations. Like I mentioned above, after a fresh restart, the steppings have no problems even with nvsvc32.exe running, but after several hours, it starts to oscillate for no apparent reason (I don't run anything after a fresh restart as a test).

I am running Forceware v169.28 from the main video driver place (is it laptopvideo2go or something)? I forgot the name precisely. Has anyone any comment on this or insight?

jeepcoma wrote:Are you more concerned with the fact that something is using cpu power or the speedstep behavior? If you'd like to change the way the processor is stepping, it's pretty easy with RMClock. If you'd like the cpu to remain at a low state for most of the time and ramp up to full performance when there's actual load, go into Profiles->Performance on Demand and look at the boxes on the bottom of the screen. I like mine to remain in a low state unless I'm doing active work, so I've set my settings to 40% cpu use (averaged between the two, settings are changeable under the "management" sidebar option), 150ms up transition, and 7500ms down transition. I'm constantly fiddling with the settings, but it works pretty well in that it'll keep the cpu low when doing things like web browsing, but will quickly go to max performance when I'm doing processor intensive tasks and STAY that way for a while, until I become idle.

I did not know this about RMClock! I played around with it for a bit and I think I can use it later in the future. I don't think this is the problem though since the culprit seems to be the strange Nvidia task.

edit: Added response to jeepcoma.