Calling ALL i7-840QM Owners! Need your help!

Hey people. I have I7-840QM chip and it doesn't want to work as it must. Specifically TurboBoost.

On 1xcore I get only 3.06Ghz. And VERY rare spikes to 3.2Ghz
On 2xcores I get 2.8 at MAX! Usually it is around 2.56Ghz.
on 4xcores I get only 2.0Ghz instead of 2.13Ghz.

So actually instead of have the best non-Extreme 1-st Gen mobile CPU I have 820QM!

I do not ask people to tell me that TB function doesn't mean to always work on full TB nor that TDP limit was reached.

What I ask you is to tell me if your CPU can or can not work on 2.13Ghz on all 4 cores?

You also can download Turbo Boost Monitor v. 1.04 which is very rare to find in the Internet while it is much better than 2.x versions IMO.

Link on TB gadget is here

Also please tell me if you can if your CPU works on 3.2Ghz or not.

 

IIRC 1st gen core i series CPUs were notorious for not hitting max turbo bins, especially mobile CPUs.

 

Medium length answer: It will depend on the workload, both my 720qm and 920xm hit max turbo on 4 cores/4 threads, 4cores/8threads and TDP is reached and max turbo isn't attained as they heat up.

You'll need to try different type of workloads and log the multipliers to a file if you really want to know whether you can hit 2.13GHz.

You know those two are dependent on each other, so there is no way to tell you whether you can or not without mentioning TDP...

If you want to monitor your clock speeds, i suggest you use throttlestop.

Final words: Every CPU is slightly different, so while some 840qm might reach a stable max turbo on 4c/8t, yours may simply never achieve that. Also, electrical resistance increases with temperature and heat generated increases with electrical resistance so it would be normal for your CPU to start at max turbo and then go down a notch when it starts to heat up.

 

I have a 820QM, and the turbo only hits the max clock rarely (if and only if windows does not interfere much with other cores). It is normally one or two bins less because of Turbo Boost 1.0, which limits to max TDP of 45W. The first gen i7 quads easily exceed that quickly.

You need to monitor clocks with throttlestop or something that can log less than a second because the processor can switch speeds in thousands of a second.

 

Thank you yknyong1 for giving me info about 820QM! This is what I need: feedback of 8x0QM owners. Better 840QM of course.

I can easily imagine someone telling me about TB without mentioning TDP. Look:
Option #1. Hey man! I have 840QM and it hits 2.13GHz on all cores. I used ******* program to bench it. Good luck with your processor!
Option #2. Hey buddy! I have the same problem as you do on mine 840QM processor! It is so frustrating. I wish you find out the way to solve this!

I asked this because I am already very skilled in theory of this question. TDP, temperature, power bricks and other. What I want now is to...

BINGO! This is exact what I want! To get feedback from 840QM owners and finally find out if it is my exact CPU problem or there are processors which hit its full TurboBoost level!

But I am very appreciated for your help guys! Because one reason is that you really want to help me and take your time and second even much more important reason is that... you bump up my thread:smile:

To summarize so no one else would spend his time for nothing.

1. Temperature.
My MAX temps under stress test do not exceed 71C degree. NEVER.
Also I tried this processor on friend's AW MX15 and his temps were even lower.

2. Monitoring software.
I used IntelTB Monitor v 1.04 AND HWInfox64 which shew 3.20 hit on single core. But it is VERY RARE. But NEVER 2.13Ghz on all cores.

3. Stress software.
I used TS to bench on 1, 2, 4 and 8 cores. I also Disabled cores in MsConfig>Boot and found that only time when I get full 3.20Ghz on 1 core is when I use only 4 cores or only 1 core from 8 available.

4. Power.
I tried all the same on AW Mx15 which should give enough power because his 920XM uses 90 Watts when inserted.

5. Microcodes
I used all microcodes from v.3 to v.5 for 06E5 CPUs (mine) and even though I think I saw better Intel SpeedStep on latest I still don't get what I want.

I did not want to write all these because it takes much time and I thought it would be much simpler to just write "do not tell me about TDP and other". I was wrong.

 

Did you check the multipliers with TS, it's possible that if the CPU was running slightly cooler, max turbo was slightly higher. I also don't think you should discard 720qm and 740qm experiences, they share the exact same architecture and as such it remains useful to know whether any non extreme edition Clarksfield CPU can reach max turbo stable. It is very hard to get max turbo for less than 3 or 4 cores because windows likes to send some part of your workload to these cores (i've tested on my 920xm and even with the benchmark on 1 thread, and TDP and TDC cranked through the roof, i couldn't steadily stay at the max multiplier for a single core, it was almost always sitting between 1 core and 2 core turbo).

Anyways my 720qm experience as i stated before (but not as much in detail) was 1.73GHz (max turbo) steady on 4 core loads, 1.6 to 1.73GHz on 8 cores, depending on the ambient and CPU temperatures (1.73 at first then slowly down to 1.6GHz as temperature kept increasing, max temp of ~70C), i almost never hit 2.8GHz on 1 core for the reasons i mentioned earlier. I have yet to see any Clarksfield i7 hit max turbo with a 8 thread load.

 

I had 740QM before upgrading to 840QM and it worked like a horse. Full 1.86 on 4 and full 2.93 at 1 core. It worked as it should and this is why I was very surprised to see that Clarksfield actually sucks sometimes. Friend's 740QM before upgrade to 920XM was the same powerfull horse.

It is all about TDP level. I doubt 720QM and 740Qm should struggle as they are in the limit of 45W. 920XM usually is in its limit of 55W but as it eats power much more than its non-XM predecessors it may or may not show maximum level.

But 8X0QM processors are close to the limit. On AW M15x TS shew 15x multiplier on all 4 cores. Which is exactly 2.0Ghz. I expected to see 16x at least on his laptop. Now I know that this problem is in processor.

As I said I want to know if I still have chance to find The One 840QM or all they are rebranded 820QMs.

 

From my experience. All non-XM Clarksfield CPUs had real issues reaching that 1 extra multiplier about their stock speed on 4 cores. I came to this conclusion because my i7-720qm never was able to utilize 1.73ghz on 4 cores. However, when I got the i7-920xm, the same issue was present, I was only able to solve it but jacking up the TDP/TDC using Throttlestop (because XM chips let you do that) and thus it was able to boost to 2.13ghz on 4 cores. Therefore, its not your fault, if anything I think the TDP/TDC settings of 45W and 37A is too conservative to allow full turboboost.
Even the XM chips with 55W/45A is insufficient, my settings were 120W/90A.
I believe its partly the fault of the manufacturer not implementing sufficient cooling but secondaruly, its Intel's fault for being too conservative. If you have a look at the modern Sandy and Ivy bridge CPUs, the secret as to why they can continuously boost on 4 cores is because the TDC limit is totally gone and they are fully governed by TDP only. I think clarksfield had a TDC cap because they could pull some serious wattage that can fry a laptop's VRM circuit, my 920xm could draw something like 90W when OC to 2.53 ghz on 4 cores.
If you are considering an upgrade, I strongly suggest either Arrandale or a 920xm, because both have configurable TDP/TDC via Throttlestop

 

I tried to mod BIOS for making 920XM possible 2 days ago but it didn't work. Sony locked VAIO F laptops from XM CPUs.

You say that 620M and 640M has configurable TDP? I wish I could overclock them with TS.

 

You probably wouldn't want to OC them unless you had the cooling of an Alienware M17x or Clevo P150EM.
I'm inferring the 620m and 640m have unlocked TDPs since they belong to the Arrandale family, I can guarantee the TDP is unlocked for the i5-580m and all other i5s below it. As far as I know, the 620m is useless because it actually has a lower peak clockspeed compared to the 580m, the higher 620m baseclock doesn't really matter if you're always turboboosting. I've heard that the 640m runs pretty hot because of the ungodly voltage Intel needs to ramp the darn thing to 3.46ghz.

 

You must compare it with ES version 620M, do you?

 

ahhhh, my mistake, I was thinking of an engineering sample that could only do 3.2Ghz. the i5-580m and the i7-620m were identical, the only real difference was that the i7 had 1mb of extra cache which counts for diddly squat considering the i5 can be had for $50 AUD less. Plus its more likely you'll find a retail 580 whereas most of the 620m are ES or 2nd hand. Shame your PC can't use the XM, its quite fun to play with though its hot as hell and sucks power like anything.

 

A 740QM does not run at the full 2.93 GHz unless you disable 3 of the 4 cores.

A typical Windows install has at least 500 threads running in the background which are constantly waking up additional cores so you will not see full Turbo Boost for more than a few milliseconds at a time. The multiplier reported in ThrottleStop is a very accurate look at what your CPU is really doing and there is no way it will ever show you 2.93 GHz during normal use.

The 720QM, 740QM, 820QM and 840QM are all turbo boost limited when fully loaded by the same 45W TDP. There is not a huge difference between them. The 920XM with adjustable TDP/TDC settings is in a league of its own. When fully loaded, it can run over 100% faster than any of those other processors, as long as you can find a way to keep it cool. If your Sony can't run an XM then it's not really worth upgrading your CPU unless you can do so without spending a lot of money.