Is there a way to keep the Core 2 Duo from slowing down?

I have recently bought a Dell XPS 1710 with a 2.33 GHz T7600G processor which allows for the adjustment of the CPU multiplier. However, even at the stock 2.33 GHz setting, the processor seems to bounce between 1.0 and 2.33 Ghz all the time according to some of my gadgets.

Is there a way to keep the processor at a single frequency? It seems silly to be able to overclock to 3.16 GHz when the proc clocks itself down to whatever it feels like at the time.

Note: I don't think heat is an issue for the moment and I am using the AC adapter for power.

 

I believe that it clocks down when it doesn't need the power of the clocked settings.

 

It is possible to disable SpeedStep or whatever it's called these days, both in the BIOS, and by using third party programs like NHC etc. I'd advise against doing tha, though. The processor clocks itself down if the extra processing power isn't required. And also to conserve battery life, and keep limits on heat dissipation.

 

Which extends the life of the notebook.

 

So the ever changing frequency should not affect my games/benchmarks?

 

nope, not at all. It auto-detects when you need more frequency and adjusts accordingly

 

No it shouldnt affect your benchmarks/performance however I remember the earlier days of such things on desktops, AMD were the first to bring it in long before Intel used the feature. It was found that on AMD systems, if you disabled that feature you would get a slight increase but I think eventually this was sorted out.

If you want to disable it, use RMClock. In profiles click P-state transitions and you should be able to choose tick the multiplier/s you want the CPU to use. So clicking on the highest one only will mean the CPU will only run at that speed at least for most of the time. I use that for my maximal performance profile where my T7200 runs at 2ghz constantly and my power saving profile it runs at 1ghz only. Battery life isnt an issue since it is plugged in.

 

Speed step is a seamless operation, when you need the horsepower it will ramp up to full, disabling it will NOT improve performance, all it will do is keep your crotch a little warmer.

 

If you're running Windows Vista, setting the power plan to "High Performance" will lock the processor at it's fastest speed, I think. You can edit the power plans in the control panel and set the lower limit to 100%.

However, as Iceman said, I would consider it a fruitless endeavour. It did make a difference on my old Turion 64 X2 machine, but none whatsoever on my C2 Duo.

 

The core duos are neat. They underclock when they are not needed as badly, to conserve battery life. But when the realize that you need to ues all 2.33 GHz, then it speeds back up.

@David Horn: Setting the power settings to high preformance effects your GPU mainly. It does ALMOST nothing besides that. Other things that does is brightness, standby times, disk speed, and sound quality.

 

Install notebook hardware control. Then, under the cpu tab, set the dropdown menus to max performance.

 

Will work but why do? Won't improve performance and will increase temp (or fans will run more).

 

Todays desktop cpus utilize it as well, to reduce heat and energy consumption, while a good thing, it can be bad for highly overclocked systems as the voltages also fluctuate, which can kill an otherwise stable OC dead in its tracks.

 

SpeedStep on my CPU and w/e equivalent on my 8600M GT *DOES* affect my performance in games greatly!

I play CSS and Insurgency and sometimes I will drop to about 25 FPS. I have only recently figured out it was because the CPU/GPU were downclocking themselves to save power, even though I run my laptop plugged in all the time. I seem to have reached that threshold right where it SHOULD detect that it needs more processing power, but it thinks, "eh, this is good enough". Sometimes, it'll go past the brink and I'll instantly jump to 70-120 FPS when I used to be getting 20-50 FPS.

It actually really annoys me since EVERY SINGLE FRAME in a first-person shooter counts.

 

well, not every frame....

most likely your LCD is only even rendering 60 frames / second, so any more than that is not being used.

still- you don't want to be dropping into the 20's. faulty speed step. intersting.

 

Are you sure its speed step and not a background process taking up resources? I dont game extensively on my laptop, but I've played my share of shooters on my M1210 and the only time I've had a problem is when my AV decides to run spontaneously or I get a sudden windows update or whatnot. Another possibility is heat build up, the chips are made to throttle down when they reach a certain temp.

 

... Intel first released it in their Intel Mobile Pentium III line a full 3 months before AMD let out their K6-2+/K6-III+ models.

 

Once again... Movies run at 23.3412 Fps (we'll call it 24) So anything above that is running as smooth as it can be.

And if you think that it is an overheating problem;
install I8kguifan you can set your fans to what ever speed you need. I set mine, so that my computer never goes about 30 degrees C.

 

Movies and games don't process frames the same way. A frame in a game are much more static than in a movie, as there's motion blurring as well as other stuff. A game have to run at a higher (sometimes much higher) FPS to look fluid. generally speaking, over 30 or 40 FPS is considered fluid by many. For Some it's only nice over 60 FPS.

 

Not really... Its the image quality, and the smoothness that matters, and the FPS that the Human Eye can see is no more than 25 FPS, so why would it matter if the FPS is 9999999, or 25?

 

See, that's a common misconception. First off, the Human eye don't see in FPS. We see stuff continously. If we DID see in 24FPS, we would either be dead (our race wouldn't have had a chance to evolve, we would have been eaten) or banging in to stuff all the time. Also, movie FPS is not the same as game FPS. But since I'm too lazy to explain, here are some links that do.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html
http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

just a quote from the last link:

Now, unless the human race has devolved since 2001, this still goes. Happy reading.

 

Movies and real time 3d rendered animations are like comparing apples to ardvarks in terms of FPS.

 

Seconded on the FPS-eye thing. We see at an unlimited number of "FPS", but we there are some things which go past our brain's ability to process all of the "FPS" so it puts them together, i.e. a lightbulb (it really flashes on and off very quickly, but we cannot notice this).

I played Oblivion with OldBlivion on my ****ty desktop at 12FPS, and it seemed quite fluid to me. It wasn't pissing me off or anything.

 

Nah, it does. In fact, I didn't think it affected the GPU at all, but I may be wrong. Fire up the Reliability and Performance Monitor and watch the CPU speeds in the different modes. High performance is uncapped, but in Balanced the CPU speed fluctuates.

In fact, if you add both CPU frequencies to the graph, you can see the speed of the individual cores varying.

 

The high performance profile in vista does not affect the GPU. It affects CPU speed, powersaving settings (turn off hardrives, turn off screen, standby, hibernation), Screen brightness, and some other powersaving stuff.

 

I am OCD to the tenth power about how perfect my computer is (reformat every week, custom Windows installation ~150MB, custom shell that replaces Windows Explorer ~120KILObytes), no Desktop, etc. etc.

I can guarantee you it is NOT a program in the background.

Humans do NOT see in FPS as stated earlier by someone, but we *CAN* tell distinguish movement at up to around 150 FPS. So getting more FPS is important to me.

And as long as there is ANYTHING preventing constant 100% utilization of CPU/GPU, such as SpeedStep, you are NOT going to be able to get full performance out of a computer. For 99.9% of users it's OK, but like I told you, that 1ms delay before my CPU turns to full 2.0GHz annoys the !@#$ out of OCD perfectionists like me--not to mention it's hurting my in-game performance!!!