Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
this is my first post on the thinkpad forums. I recently bought an x60 (got it two weeks ago), and i love it. I was on notebookreviews.com yestorday, and a member there has discovered a fix (hotfix from Microsoft), that speeds up and utilizes both cores on the Core Duo. I tried this "fix" last night, and it noticebly helped my startup time on my X60. It also increased the framerates on Madden 07, which i play. I haven't had time to run real tests, but from what i experienced, it is noticeable. However, i think the fans come on more often now.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=896256

Just thought this may be useful

thanks for the links..

no time now (TS Ernesto heading this way!) to review that material, but i will..

Hope you get through that Tropical Storm. Good thing i don't live near the coast...

the tropical storm has fizzeled..
much ado about bad weather with a name..
the variables went my way rather than the other way as it could so easily have done)

in this case TS Ernesto went up the middle of the peninsula..
and, FWIW, i know how mean water can get from my 10 years living aboard two big boats..
so when i sold the last one i wanted far away from the coast..

anyway, i made the changes described in the notebookreview post..
the T60p did not crash..
there is only one question..
the writer does not specify if the value "1" should be hex or decimal..
of course, "1" is "1" in hex, binary or decimal..

now, i need to run a benchmark..
in fact, i should have run one before and then after the mod..
so i will install some diag. app (sisoft sandra?) and and do it on the X60s..

Microsoft has not officially issued the Hot Fix as something that needs to
be loaded in a mass production setup, Also the performance differences with
the Hot Fix installed or not does not show large differences.

Therefore we do not recommend installing unless it is used to try and
troubleshoot any sort of crashing issues of 3rd party applications, since
the hot fix is not finalized yet.

Got that from the thread. It was quoted from a Sager rep.

I think this hot fix is nothing.

i wonder if this will affect the power consumption of the cpu. i don't think i am willing to give up 30min of battery life for few sec improvement in performance.

CalBioEngr wrote:i wonder if this will affect the power consumption of the cpu. i don't think i am willing to give up 30min of battery life for few sec improvement in performance.

The more a cpu works the more power it will consume. Simple as that.

I wouldnt xxxx with this unofficial fix anyway.

Mod edit: Expletive deleted.

gobluefan wrote:it noticebly helped my startup time on my X60. It also increased the framerates on Madden 07, which i play.

Question: did you set your power manager on 'Maximum CPU speed' setting to 'Adaptive' or 'Highest'?

It looks to me from the description of the hotfix on microsoft site that the main problem is that Windows did not correctly realise that a processor had been throttled down, so it thinks the processors are less busy than they really are (e.g. if your 2GHz is throttled to 1GHz, but windows still thinks that it runs at 2GHz, then its going to shove more task to the processor than it should be -- basically a scheduling problem).

Therefore, if you've set your 'Max CPU Speed' on 'Highest', this hotfix shouldn't have any effect, I think.

curiouscosy wrote:

gobluefan wrote:it noticebly helped my startup time on my X60. It also increased the framerates on Madden 07, which i play.

Question: did you set your power manager on 'Maximum CPU speed' setting to 'Adaptive' or 'Highest'?

It looks to me from the description of the hotfix on microsoft site that the main problem is that Windows did not correctly realise that a processor had been throttled down, so it thinks the processors are less busy than they really are (e.g. if your 2GHz is throttled to 1GHz, but windows still thinks that it runs at 2GHz, then its going to shove more task to the processor than it should be -- basically a scheduling problem).

Therefore, if you've set your 'Max CPU Speed' on 'Highest', this hotfix shouldn't have any effect, I think.

I keep my x60 on Thinkpad Default power scheme, might this have some effect?

Thinkpad Default power scheme on my T60 sets the 'Max CPU Speed' to 'Adaptive', so yes, this would explain why you see some speedup after installing the hotfix.

You might want to compare the speed after changing max CPU speed to highest on the power manager.

curiouscosy wrote:Thinkpad Default power scheme on my T60 sets the 'Max CPU Speed' to 'Adaptive', so yes, this would explain why you see some speedup after installing the hotfix.

You might want to compare the speed after changing max CPU speed to highest on the power manager.

makes sense

I prefer the CPU to be in adaptive mode. It keeps the computer running cooler, the fan runs less often, and the battery lasts longer.

I installed the hotfix and did a 2M and 4M Super Pi test before and after.

Results:

2M
Before: 2m05s
After: 1m15s (40s less)

4M
Before: 3m26s
After: 3m09s (17s less)

The difference in speed betwen the two is seen from the very first iteration.

I did not notice an increase of power consumption with the hotfix installed.

Regards,
Madana

x60s 170444U, 100GB 5400rpm, 1GB, 8-cell, WinXP Home

I have an x60 w/ 1GB RAM and XP Pro. I performed all steps outlined in the Processor fix, installed the MS Patch, Created the Registry value and made the required change to BOOT.INI.

I used SuperPI to test the results:

Before fix:
Restarted system. System is in X6 UltraBase.
2M: 01m17s
4M: 02m50s

After fix:
Restarted system. System is in X6 UltraBase.
2M: 01m17s
4M: 02m51s

No changes as far as I can tell. I'm not certain of this, but I think before the fix when I went to my Task Manager and looked under CPU Usage History, both graphs were identical (not sure). Now the graphs are independant of each other and display unique results for each core. Is this correct?

Just as a followup, got the typical 7-8 hours of usage from my laptop that I normally do with the extended battery.

My conclusion of the Processor Patch and updates:

Performance = Same
Power Consumption = Same

Based on the file versions indicated in the MS KB article, it seems that my X60s already had the patch installed when I received it. Perhaps Lenovo incorporates the patch into certain builds, so those who see no improvement from the hotfix may not actually be changing anything?