Processor not running at full speed

[SaabScott]

It would appear that my T7500 processor is not running full out.

Thoughts on how to correct/adjust this?
"Current speed 1.2GHz"

[SaabScott]

Sorry, forgot to mention that my power setting is "max performance".

[richk]

Running on battery or A/C? If A/C, is working battery installed?

65W or 90W A/C adapter?

[SaabScott]

Running on battery or A/C? If A/C, is working battery installed?

65W or 90W A/C adapter?

Running on A/C with battery (original) installed.
Original 65W A/C adapter.

Not sure if this is just the processor scaling back at that moment or if it really is running slower than it should.
I just checked again and it still shows 1.20GHz.

Granted, I am not running anything tough at the moment, but I don't expect to see this when I have it set to max performance.

[richk]

From your PC Doctor screen, it looks like your machine is model 6459. My notes say that is an NVIDIA model, so you should have a 90-watt adapter. Your CPU will not perform at full speed on 65-watt.

[SaabScott]

From your PC Doctor screen, it looks like your machine is model 6459. My notes say that is an NVIDIA model, so you should have a 90-watt adapter. Your CPU will not perform at full speed on 65-watt.

It is a 6459, T61p with NVidia.
This is the adapter that Lenovo shipped with the machine.

Well, that is well and truly embarrassing!
The box itself says 90W.
I'm quite certain that this is the only adapter I have used with this machine!

What makes this even worse is that I am a former IBM/Lenovo employee ... who worked with these machines almost every day of my 13+ years there.


Anyone have any suggestions on where to pick up a replacement 90W adapter? Quickly?

[Harryc]

That's OK, we know that we know more than you guys, that's why you should have listened to us when we said that walking away from IPS Flexview LCD's was a mistake .

http://outlet.lenovo.com/accessories/po ... j0465.html

Don't know if they ship to Canada though. If not, try EBay.

[SaabScott]

That's OK, we know that we know more than you guys, that's why you should have listened to us when we said that walking away from IPS Flexview LCD's was a mistake .

http://outlet.lenovo.com/accessories/po ... j0465.html

Don't know if they ship to Canada though. If not, try EBay.

Sorry, I worked for IBM/Lenovo Canada.
We didn't get a say on anything.

And no, Lenovo US does not ship to Canada (ask me about that! I can talk to that and anything else related to Canada for hours).
I will check locally and with a few friends to see if perhaps they have something kicking around.

Having just reloaded this thing with Windows 7 makes me realize just how out of touch I have become with computers.

I do still know a thing or 3 and will chime in where I can.


Thanks for the help so far ... I'll see if I can't return that.

[SaabScott]

Decided to do some more checking on this.
As I said, I have been using this adapter for some time, perhaps the life of the T61p.

And it is only recently that it has appeared really slow (thought it was the OS that needed refreshing actually).

Just installed CPU-Z and found this:



And then when I went to save that image, it was reading this:




I am very confused at the moment.
It looks like the processor is capable of stepping.
However, when it was at 1197GHz, I launched WoW and the processor speed didn't budge.
So it isn't taking into account something that is processor intensive.


One of the posters on Tom's Hardware site suggested that it could in fact be a cooling issue (based on the threads I was reading).
Going to check to see how my fan(s) are functioning next.

[Harryc]

So it isn't taking into account something that is processor intensive

The discrete graphics adapter that's already been mentioned sucks down major league power. Isn't WoW GPU intensive? Maybe the Laptop isn't getting enough power to run both the GPU and CPU at full speed. I still say you need a 90W adapter.

[SaabScott]

Well ... surprise, surprise!

You were bang on.
Replace the AC adapter with a 90W and whamo!
Processor jumped to full speed, heat came up, and now I have extra fan noise (meaning that I am actually pushing the system again).
I will have to figure out what happened to my 90W ... I have some thoughts, but regardless, a replacement worked and wasn't expensive.

To the user who PM'd me with the suggestion of ITExchange, thank you.
Actually dealt with an ex-IBM'er who I may have met in my past life.

[Harryc]

Well ... surprise, surprise!

At least one of us was surprised

[UncleMike987]

(Gasp.)

I've been reading this thread and am stunned.
In the company I work for, I regularly find my user's Lenovo laptops are running at half (if not a third) of the usual speed, even though they are plugged into a power supply/have been rebooted/etc etc.

And, seriously, is this the cause ?

Most of the laptops contain Centrino P8600 2.4GHz dual-core CPUs, running Windows XP SP3, and they are supplied (by Lenovo) with 65W power adapters.
Are these power adapters really not powerful enough to maintain their usual speed ?


Btw, I get my users to regularly check their CPU speed, by hitting the "Windows" key + the "Pause/Break" key.
This brings up a dialog which shows the CPU's usual speed, and it's current speed.

[Brad]

Welcome to the forum!

The graphics chip and not the CPU determines what A/C adapter is supplied and recommended. In general the 65W adapter would be used for built in graphics and 90W for the more robust graphics such as ATI or nVidia depending on model and type.

Brad

[UncleMike987]

The graphics chip and not the CPU determines what A/C adapter is supplied and recommended. In general the 65W adapter would be used for built in graphics and 90W for the more robust graphics such as ATI or nVidia depending on model and type.

Thanks Brad.

So for our bog-standard integrated-graphics laptops, where the most CPU-intensive task is running Excel, this might
not be the cause after all.

This morning, I discovered a few more users with this issue, CPUs running at half of their possible CPU speed. When
I opened the Power Settings dialog (Fn + F3) it showed they were set to run at "Maximum Performance" (rather than
maximum battery life, etc) However, I still needed to go into the advanced screens to manually click on the "Maximum
Performance" button to make the CPU run at full speed.

Odd. Very odd.

[RealBlackStuff]

If your Thinkpad's TYPE is xxxx-CTO (Configure To Order), Lenovo would have built them to your company's specs.
Low CPU speed means long(er) life for both laptop and battery!
You may not be allowed to tamper with BIOS settings (unless you are the boss...)

[UncleMike987]

If your Thinkpad's TYPE is xxxx-CTO (Configure To Order), Lenovo would have built them to your company's specs.
You may not be allowed to tamper with BIOS settings (unless you are the boss...)

True, and our Thinkpads are configured to order.

But, our regular users are allowed to go into the Power settings, and change the performance/battery options if
they want to. But.. they don't do this, most simply don't know how to. It's the Levono itself which seems to decide
on the CPU speed, and hopelessly gets it wrong.

> Low CPU speed means long(er) life for both laptop and battery!

True, but a bottom-of-the-range laptop running at half the speed it's capable of, results in a poor user experience,
and a huge waste of man-hours.

And when a laptop reports that's it's running at Maximum Performance (when the CPU is running at 1/2 the
speed it can run at), then bursts into life when you click on a "Maximum Performance" button... that's a bug.

I made one of my fellow Visual Studio 2010 developers very happy this morning. His Lenovo laptop was plugged
in, and running at a third of the speed it could run at, 800 MHz, instead of 2.4GHz.


My point is, we can't be the only company suffering from these issues.

For something this critical, there must be a fix, or queue of annoyed Lenovo users somewhere...?

[RealBlackStuff]

For you it's a bug, others declare it a feature.
Make your company happy by sending out a memo to all laptop users, on how to adjust their laptop's speed (or do it centrally if your IT department can handle it by remote access).

[miro_gt]

I think you all need to learn how now-a-days CPUs work, so read my post in this thread below:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=102163

[UncleMike987]

> I think you all need to learn how now-a-days CPUs work, so read my post in this thread below:
> http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=102163

Interesting stuff, I completely understand this.

But... I haven't been randomly going to user's PCs and checking their CPU speed due to boredom. Regularly,
our users are using heavy duty Excel files, Visual Studio 2010 or sophisticated calculation software, and their
Lenovo laptops are crawling, due to the CPU deciding to run at a slower speed, even when the Power Settings
are set to "Maximum Performance."

The software is crying out for more CPU speed, but the Lenovos are choosing to run slower.
This is my problem.

It's nothing to do with the software "not being written to make the most out of dual/quad core CPUs",
as soon as you manually change the Power settings, the CPU is fully utilized and the problem goes away
(until the next time the Lenovo chooses to decrease the CPU speed).


> From http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=102163
> "At the moment when the CPU starts working harder it will raise its internal multiplier to get more speed so
>that its performance will increase substantially for the task that is doing."

This is what is not happening on many of our Lenovo laptops.

I have MacBook Pro's, Samsung laptops, Dell laptops, Sony laptops, running Lion, Windows 7 and XP,
and none of them ever have this problem.

This is a bug in the Lenovo hardware/software.


> For you it's a bug, others declare it a feature.

That's a naive response. If I buy a 2.4GHz dual-core laptop, and I'm running CPU-intensive software which
needs as much CPU as possible, the laptop must be able to run at (about) 2.4GHz when it needs to.
Otherwise, why bother buying a fast CPU in the first place ?

Again, I've never seen this issue on any other brands of laptops, apart from the Lenovo ones.


Please, I'm just looking for an answer to one simple question:

What do I need to change on these 2.4GHz Lenovo laptops to make sure that (at Maximum Performance
setting, and when it's plugged into the mains) the CPU will run at the full speed, when the software
demands it ?

[RealBlackStuff]

Your laptops have a P8600 CPU, which means they are probably T61, T400, T500 or X200 Series models.
Integrated graphics usually means lower-power integrated Intel graphics.
In newer machines the Intel graphics have become much stronger.
What model laptop are your machines?
We are interested in the TYPE and PRODUCT ID from the label on the laptop bottom.
The TYPE will be xxxx-CTO, but the PRODUCT ID should be like xxxxK1U
Once we know this, we could give you model-specific instructions to up the power of the CPU.

I see you are in Zurich, a bank perhaps?

[robert213]

> quote:
> For you it's a bug, others declare it a feature.

That's a naive response.

No, that is RBS's dry and cynical (yet truly accurate) sense of humor. His intention is to "lighten the moment" by briefly taking your mind off of your very frustrating situation.

Follow his advice. You are in good hands.

[miro_gt]

sounds like you may have a power saving feature enabled somewhere, or part of the laptop is getting too hot, which I doubt but it's still possible.

- enter in BIOS and make sure the laptop is set to run at Maximum performance when on AC, and when on battery.
- make sure your Power Manager is at Max performance as well.
- it is possible that the Power Manager itself may have gotten some issues, so if you'd like you can go ahead and remove the program completely, then try again to see if your CPU is up to speed. You can reinstall the power manager later again, and you can find it in the lenovo website.

now if that doesnt work then go to this website:
http://www.techinferno.com/
and download ThrottleStop 4.10 , and run it. On the main screen you'll see an option that should be checked that is called BD PROCHOT. Uncheck it and try again your programs. What that would do is disable the ProcHot signal, thus would ensure the CPU will run on its full potential even if another part of the laptop is getting too hot. Now it's not recommended to run it without this option checked, but for testing purposes it works just fine. This was the problem of a Dell D630 laptop here that was running much slower that it should.

also check the temperature of the CPU and report back.