Why is my Exp. Rating lower than a lower end competition?

[hyde]

Thanks for the suggestion, it was always in Maximum Turbo.
At home, I tried Maximum Performance on Battery, and so far I did not have this problem.

Google Maps scrolling constantly + youtube 1080p streaming buffering + WMP alx streaming, not a hiccup.

I will use the system in Maximum Performance in the office for a few days, plugged in, to see how well it does.
I can hear the fan spin much more in this power plan, though.

[hyde]

Integrated GPU performance also depends on the RAM installed (since integrated GPU uses the system RAM).
For example, this is WEI index i got with a stock single 4GB stick:
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5013/239 ... b1eb3_orig
and this is what i'm getting now with 2*4GB
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5409/239 ... fd00a_orig

We have a winner, not that this was a competition or anything, but you were right on.
Toshiba does in deed have a pair of 2GB modules.



I read somewhere that 2x4GB Ram promotes throttling, is that really the case?

[penartur]

I read somewhere that 2x4GB Ram promotes throttling, is that really the case?

Yes, i heard of that; however, i never experienced any "throttling" myself. That said, i don't push the laptop too hard for too long.

[hyde]

Yes, i heard of that; however, i never experienced any "throttling" myself. That said, i don't push the laptop too hard for too long.

The problem with throttling is it happens regardless of user interaction. It just drops and gets stuck at lowest clock speed.

[bill bolton]

It just drops and gets stuck at lowest clock speed.

Perma-throttling was addresed in the X220 v1.18 BIOS upgrade. There have been no further reports of Perma-throttling since that BIOS version was issued.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[penartur]

The problem with throttling is it happens regardless of user interaction. It just drops and gets stuck at lowest clock speed.

I heard that "it just drops" only after e.g. running stress-tests for an hour.

[hyde]

Thanks. Knock on wood, it has been running great today. I really have no idea what was causing the slowdown to overall performance.
There is still scrolling problem with the animation & graphic-intense web pages but I tested in few other systems, it is the same case.

I think running on maximum performance surely helps.
However, I was not able to run PCmark benchmark on my laptop, and I started a thread about it under the category, but so far no response. Has anyone ever been able to run PC Mark on it?
I just wanted to compare the score to the scores posted in reviews.

[jdrou]

Updated to .2342 and it is still reading 4.7, but now Gaming Graphics score went down to 6.1

I noticed this on my X201 as well; build 2342 (and 2361 from Intel) lower the gaming score from 5.2 to 3.9. I don't see any drop in 3DMark scores though.

[hyde]

Thanks for the input,
jdrou, did you try to get PC Mark to run on your Thinkpad? I tried every other way, result is "cannot gather system information".. and I got no score.

[jdrou]

Thanks for the input,
jdrou, did you try to get PC Mark to run on your Thinkpad? I tried every other way, result is "cannot gather system information".. and I got no score.

Haven't tried PCMark but 3DMark Vantage ran OK (with external monitor). Make sure you've got the latest version.

[hyde]

<quote from penartur's post>
Integrated GPU performance also depends on the RAM installed (since integrated GPU uses the system RAM).
For example, this is WEI index i got with a stock single 4GB stick:
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5013/239 ... b1eb3_orig
and this is what i'm getting now with 2*4GB
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5409/239 ... fd00a_orig
<end quote>

We have a winner, not that this was a competition or anything, but you were right on.
Toshiba does in deed have a pair of 2GB modules.

OK, fast forward a few months, I upgraded from 1x4GB to 2x4GB sticks, yet, there is no difference in Graphics rating, in fact it shows lower:
3D is set to Quality and Graphics Power Plan is set to maximum performance in Intel Graphics Control Panel.


When I slid the dial to Performance instead of Quality in 3D, I get this:


I do not consider penartur's Disk Data Transfer rate since he has SSD. Either way, I wanted to update everyone that even with 2x4GB banks, I am still lower in experience rating than my cousin's 2x2GB Toshiba..

[craigmontHunter]

I agree with Bill on this - on my T61 the WEI score went up when I upgraded to 2 sticks of ram vs. one - I don't think it is really anything to be concerned with anyway, as long as it works.

and the missing memory may be the way that the bios allocated ram to the video card - I think lenovo's give it at "harder" low limit- while the toshiba may allow the video memory to range from 8mb - whatever, (then showing up as 4gb useable ram) lenovo limits it's minimum to ~160 so that there is always enough to run the modern graphics, aero... all I know is that both my thinkpad and Thinkcentre have the same behaviour, and ultimately I would call lenovo's choice better, so that the required graphics memory is not allocated elsewhere.

EDIT - somehow I missed the last 3 or 4 posts - I don't think the WEI score is really anything to worry about, but it may be that lenovo has further customized their driver for better stability than performance, which would make sense considering the general demographics that would use either system. If you really want, uninstall the lenovo drivers and try the test with the generic intel ones; that *should* give the performance boost you are looking for.

[hyde]

craigmontHunter, I am not worried about the score, rather worried about the underlying reasons, especially after upgrading to a memory that's double Toshiba's. I know the scores don't mean much when you have a stable operation, but if there is anything else causing lower score, I would want to find out. Maybe there is a bottleneck somewhere? Who knows.

Even with 8GB and 3D set to performance, I am still having hard time scrolling up and down on animated-image-heavy web pages. The problem occurs only with scroll wheel.

[penartur]

OK, fast forward a few months, I upgraded from 1x4GB to 2x4GB sticks, yet, there is no difference in Graphics rating, in fact it shows lower:

Did you re-ran the WEI assessment?
Make sure your memory works in a dual-channel mode (you can check it e.g. on "Memory" tab in CPU-Z).

[hyde]

Did you re-ran the WEI assessment?
Make sure your memory works in a dual-channel mode (you can check it e.g. on "Memory" tab in CPU-Z).

Yep I did. Took a while and results were as above. You can see the Memory section went up from 5 to 7.5 but graphics did not improve much. I guess it has something to do with the Lenovo set the graphics memory channeling from RAM to 3D or display.