W520 turbo boost issue?

[freakwave]

Hi all,

I am playing around with my new machine and wanted to see that the cpu clocks up to 3.4GHz.

I am using prime95 and set the affinity to core1 and core2.
Then I am using Argus Monitor to see the CPU clocks.

All 4 cores are clocked continuously to 3.1 GHz, but the overall CPU utilization is 25%.
The task manager shows core1 and 2 100% and the rest pretty low.

So whats the conclusion here?
For me it seems that turbo boost does not work. I have never seen any clock above 3.2GHz yet.

Any other thoughts here?

Wolfgang

[jdrou]

Which CPU did you get?
Did you see the expected behavior with your W510?

[freakwave]

Ok, sorry, there is no issue. I tied the task manager and the Argus Monitor also to the first core.
After that I saw the expected 3.4GHz (i7 - 2820QM)

It seems that the slightest utilization on any other core will clock the CPU down.

Overall I am really happy with the performance. That beast is so much faster than my W510, its hard to believe.
My J2EE application starts now in 20 seconds instead of 32 seconds.

Wolfgang

[Q-Ball]

It seems that the slightest utilization on any other core will clock the CPU down.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the one problem with Turbo Boost.
Windows isn't advanced enough to use it properly- it can't park cores so other cores run faster.

[ExcursionPSD]

Ok, sorry, there is no issue. I tied the task manager and the Argus Monitor also to the first core.
After that I saw the expected 3.4GHz (i7 - 2820QM)
...
Wolfgang

Exactly how did you tie those processes to the first core?

[freakwave]

You can simply open the task manager, right click on the process and set the affinity.

[Colonel O'Neill]

There's some Core Parking threshold tweaks in the registry that you can use to prevent it from reactivating the other cores too easily.

[davidhbrown]

The CPU tab of Resource Monitor is telling me right now that all the odd-numbered "CPUs" are parked. This is with hyper-threading enabled. Is it actually parking cores or just not hyperthreading? (i7-2820QM, Windows 7 Pro x64)

[freakwave]

ok, another issue or feature:

Should the processor, when plugged in, always be clocked @2.3Ghz? Its nominal clock?
I understand there are sleep modes, but howto disable then.

I tried "deeper sleep" off in the power manager, but that has no effect.
My cpu clock is always between 800MHz and 3.4GHz.

Wolfgang

[jdrou]

As a point of reference, my Thinkpad X201 with Core i7-620M (2.66 GHz base, turbo speeds 3.06/3.33 GHz) rarely runs below 1.33 GHz when idle even on 'max battery' setting (based on CPU-Z reading). It does go to 3.33 with 'always on'.

[plympton]

FYI: the latest firmware 1.25 disables turbo boost completely. Reverting to 1.06 restores turbo boost functionality.

Went through most of yesterday wondering why my machine was dog slow never going above 2.2 ghz, and a quick Google search revealed the answer. Oh well, so much for rigorous testing before release....

[KongMD]

Looks like TurboBoost can be enabled on battery for version 1.06 of the BIOS if you start the computer plugged in, put it into Sleep mode, then unplug the laptop and resume your session.