T430 CPU speed question

[indidginus]

Hi,

I recently bought a T430 advertised as having this cpu:

Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)

However in my control panel the i7 cpu shows up as 2.90 GHz. Can anyone please tell me if there is some option to increase the speed in the BIOS or similar? Many thanks.

Michael.

[wolfman]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

It's the "up to 3.6ghz" that is important here. The base clock frequency of the processor is 2.9ghz and under certain types of load, the processor can turbo boost up to 3.6ghz (see the Intel sheet here for the specifics: http://ark.intel.com/products/64893/Int ... -3_60-GHz)).

For your specific processor, the clock speed for both cores can increase dynamically to 3.4 ghz and for a single core it can turbo boost to 3.6ghz. See here for more information: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core ... 446.0.html.

Hope that helps...
Steve

[indidginus]

Thanks Steve

[AIX]

Open Power Manager, switch to Advanced > Power plan > System settings > System performance - here you can choose between:

- low (this we'll keep your CPU at the lowest frequency - which is 800 MHz, if I'm not wrong)
- balanced (this will let the CPU jump at its nominal frequency - 2.9GHz for i7-3520M - if needed and fall back to the lowest frequency when not needed)
- turbo (this will let the CPU jump over its nominal frequency, but not to the maximum turbo freq.)
- maximum turbo (this will let the CPU jump to the max. turbo freq. - in your case up to 3.60 GHz).

[indidginus]

Thanks AIX. I noticed that there is an option to enable Turbo Boost in the power manager. But when I restart my machine it gets reset to disabled. Do you know how to solve that?

[AIX]

There are two things: Power Manager > switch to Basic and you'll see:

- Intel Turbo Boost Technology Enabled/Disabled
- Lenovo Turbo Boost+ Enabled/Disabled

You should see the first one enabled!
If the second one is disabled after a restart, don't worry, it looks like it works as expected:

"Lenovo Turbo Boost+ This boost mode for the cooling fan makes the most of power gained with Intel Turbo Boost."

http://blog.lenovo.com/design/peak-shif ... er-manager
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-Th ... d-p/475527