Problem with Intel Speedstep during games

Hi Guys,

I have a HP Pavilion DV4220tx (1.86ghz pentium m, ati x700 yadda yadda yadda) and have been having issues for the 6 months ive owned it concerning the intel speedstep / thermal protection.

The machine runs fine however during some games it will decide to cut the speed in half from 1.86ghz to 998mhz which turns my games into a very nice slideshow!

Using Rightmark clock utility I have disabled the thermal protection, disabled all intel speedstepping, yet my machine still decides to sometimes cut the processor speeds

Anyone have any ideas?
I can provide my exact Rightmark settings if needed.

I have also tried various other programs as a result with no luck.
Currently my only solution is when this happens, to alt tab / quit the game, goto the rightmark clock utility options, and basically enable then disable the thermal protection and click apply, and the speed jumps back up again.
(Note, thermal protection is set to DISABLE per default, its as if its ignoring the program)

Is there some special bios menu on my hp i need to get into?
I have checked through it to no avail


Cheers guys!

 

Disable Speed Stepping in the BIOS.

That will kill it for sure.

 

I thought Speed Step was only in the newer Core Duos?

 

There is no speedstep option in the bios unfortunately

Unless there is a special keystroke required to access an advanced section in the bios..
but there is nothing listed.

 

It is possible the notebook is slowing down to protect itself. Is the notebook getting hot when this happens?

HP (and many other notebook makers) commonly do not include options in BIOS that we feel should be there.

 

I'll second this; the HP dv4000 series with the Radeon X700 video card has been known to overheat, that is most likely what yours is doing. Your best bet to fix that issue would be to get a cooling pad - check our Accessories forum for recommendations.

 

ah bummer
I may have to look at getting one of these cooling pads

Thanks for your help guys!

 

Alternatively, you could just call up HP and yell at them. If they sell you a notebook that can't do what it's supposed to do because it overheats, they have a problem. I don't know whether or not they'll buy that, or offer to fix it/replace the notebook or whatever for you, but might be worth a try. Computers are not supposed to overheat. When they do so, it's because something is wrong. And when someone else (like HP) assembled and sold it, they should have tested that the **** thing worked (and worked under load).

 

If your power scheme is set to Always on or RMClock's scheme, then RMClock controls entirely all software related voltages and steps.
Have you tried undervolting? It greatly helps reduce heat at the highest multipliers!