Throttling. Is it acceptable?

Most if not all notebook/laptop/portable computers use throttling to prevent overheating. The thing is i buy a 2.3Ghz CPU not a 0.8. I use the best cooling solutions which is extra clean heatsink top of the line thermal paste and the air intake is floating on air. Still in full load my CPU will go even to .800Ghz. Is this something manufacturers are allowed to do? I expect my laptop to perform at its best at all times with no excuses. Why wasnt i and every consumer informed about this behaviour before purchase?

 

If you do research on the CPU before you buy it, you'd know about it.

 

What was i supposed to search and why? You have to be serious about it. Not everyone is obliged or can do the same research. Thats why theres a ton of disclaimers on advertisements.

 

Most laptops will throttle when you're on battery, and/or throttle when you're not using any of the extra CPU power. My W520 did this as well, staying at .8GHz on battery (which was okay for me) and on AC when not running Minecraft or F@H (not okay). With an updated BIOS, I fixed the latter problem, with the throttling on battery not actually being a problem (you're not going to use your computer intensively while on battery, unless you want to kill your battery).

Just Google search "model name + CPU throttling" and you'll be able to find out about any issues said model has. Simple as that. Researching about a computer purchase is, contrary to popular belief, is not a hard thing to do. I find it hard to believe that a person who (very likely) takes the time to research a car purchase will at the same time not have the ability to take the time to research about computers as well. Yes, most people aren't computer experts, but yet again most people are not automobile experts either. With that said (as well as the existence of Google and forums like this one), there's not much excuse not to do research on an expensive purchase such as a computer.

 

Ill try to be more direct to my question. Is it legal for notebook companies to advertise CPU speeds that the notebook cant always support?

Im not talking about the case the notebook is on battery or needs a BIOS update or the speeds are modified intensionally by a user accessible program. In such cases the problem can be resolved. But theres nothing you can do when that happens because the cooling system of your notebook is gypsie-like.

 

The CPUs still support the advertised speeds and will run at those speeds when required, so there is no illegal advertising going on here. CPU throttling is generally an accepted way to cut down on energy consumption when it's not required. This isn't even in the control of the OEM; Intel (and AMD) is the company that designed the CPU throttling behavior into the chip, so even if you could sue the OEM for laptop CPU throttling it'd get you nowhere.

One way to show that your CPU can in fact go up to whatever its limit is, try running an intense program (like F@H, which is free and is actually a great thing to contribute to) and run CPU-Z to measure the CPU clock speeds as well. You'll see that with stress, the CPU will throttle up to the advertised speeds.

To use a car analogy, my Nissan can go up to 114mph. However, it's highly impractical to travel anywhere near that speed for the majority of my driving (ignoring the legal issues of speeding). While your car is capable of traveling at a high rate of speed, you don't actually need to do so to drop little Timmy off to school or to commute to work, so you limit yourself to a reasonable speed limit for most of the time when you don't need that power (say, 40mph average). Besides the practical considerations, there's also the problem of ruining the engine by using it as max power for the majority of driving that'd kill the car in a shorter time than the expected life span.

 

what is the notebook that you purchased?

 

It's how they're designed. They don't have to run at full speed 24/7, only when they need to.

 

So i have this new laptop with i3 2350m @ 2.3ghz. Even just browsing the net the CPU will throttle down because the temp goes as high as 80 degrees just by browsing. When i play a game, the cpu speed will stick at 1.4-1.6 ghz.

Of course ive taken the laptop to the manufacturer they cleaned it and said that is a normal behaviour. No change.

Is that really acceptable? They might as well make a fanless laptop with an i7 and call it normal behaviour when the the speed sticks at 800 mhz

 

Modern CPUs don't run at 100% all the time when they don't need to. My W520's i7-2720QM usually sits at 800MHz whenever I'm browsing and the like, and only goes up to its full potential when necessary (gaming and such).

See my 2yo post above.

 

it is quite legal as the CPU is capable of reaching those speeds however you can encounter 3 types of throttling.

1: load throttle. if you are running very light applications the CPU will slow itself down in order to keep it cool and save power draw. there is no performance hit if it is slowing to what your software only needs.

2: power throttle. - CPU ( or even dGPU if equipped ) slows down because it can not get enough power from the battery alone or the charger does not supply enough current to run at full load. common in many gaming laptops and Apple MacBook/MacBook Pro's that supplement the charger with the battery under heavy load.

3: thermal throttling. common issue in thin and light laptops where the CPU is forced to slow down in order to cool off in its confined space with weak cooling. especially if it has been under medium to heavy load for an extended period without a break. ( VERY common in Apple and 4th gen core I ultrabooks )

in a well designed laptop #1 happens quite frequently to maximize performance as well as battery life and keep component longevity higher.

which make / model of laptop? it sounds like it may have a power or other issue unless your games only need the unit to run at those speeds for good performance. 80c should not induce a thermal throttle at all, that is well below Tmax

 

Tell you what, how about you go into the power settings and change them to what you want. It will be a hot battery sucking device, but it will run at advertised speeds, and provide warmth.

 

I exchanged the 2350m for a pentium 2020m and the latter works @ 2.4ghz 100% of gaming time and have more fps too. So i clearly need more than the 1.5ghz the i3 is giving me.

If it is quite legal why does intel distinguish turbo boost frequencies from the base frequency? Turbo boost frequencies are conditional but base is supposed to be 24/7.

My laptop is a clevo w650eh. It has an hm76 chipset. I see the w650eh model with ivy bridge procesors on the internet but my local vendor chooses to use the cheaper and hotter sandy bridge ones.

 

I've never seen that written out in their advertising or technical sheets. Ditto for AMD.

 

Moved to hardware as it's a more appropriate section.

I'd add a 4th type of throttling: stupid manufacturers that can't BDPROCHOT settings right. BDPROCHOT is a feature that allows Intel CPUs to throttle also based on GPU temps as to avoid total system overheating. The problem is that some manufacturers can't seem to set this thing right and you end up with the CPU throttled while running at 80C (well below it's max rated temp that is ~100C) and the GPU at a comfortable 80C to 90C, which is nowhere near critical temps either. In this case, running throttle stop and turning BDPROCHOT off should fix it. It's still pretty annoying. You can see this thread as an example: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...3sw-owners-cpu-throttling-798mhz-how-fix.html.

Also, Intel states a base clock, but that base clock is valid only if safety measures meant to keep the CPU from having problems aren't being enabled. That could be throttling due to high temps, BDPROCHOT, too high power consumption, etc.

 

In my experience, there are very few laptops that can be pushed hard in the way a desktop can without running into inherent design problems that the OEM decided to ignore. Most laptops will either throttle or fry under 24/7 heavy workloads.

 

True, it's something I am very careful about when choosing a laptop. Being able to run my CPU at full turbo (3.4 GHz) 24/7 was something I wanted.

 

It's hard to speculate with your vague informationm on your system,

How much load does your game produce compared to the load browsing at which clock speed?

Unless you have an external GPU with a seperate heat sink in use, the internal GPU will heat up the CPU case a lot e.g. if a video is played or more pages use flashvideo.

Do you use an external display, maybee even as extended desktop?
Do you watch video browsing or have many pages in a browser open that use the flashplayer it will increase heat a lot. Try using a flashvideoblocker, and activate only flash wen needed.

Assuming you run firefox, I noticed after many hours CPU and memory use increases. Kill firefor in the taskmanger together with flash and imediatly restart and rebuilt all pageswill reduce heat/loading.

I have a Samsung Slate 7 tablet with an i5-2xxx CPU/GPU with tiny fan/exaust win7 and do not experience throttling, but then as I said it maybee just poor systems design for dissipation of heat, but that would be speculation again.

 

Good point. It'd be very useful if you post your specs OP.

 

Quite possibly your BIOS does not have proper support for SandyBridge (2nd Gen), the 2020m being a 3rd Gen CPU, and why you were experiencing problems with your earlier i3-2350M CPU.

Processor Support W650EH

 

5th type of throttling: Manufacturers that attempt to extend batter life by locking the CPUs at 800mhz. I got a new laptop after being fed up with my previous Samsung laptop. 800 mhz dual core with VMware remote desktop and Matlab running on top is just painful.

On a side note, The Elitebook 850 has severe GPU throttling issues at 72C (including when running Dota 2), but the ULV i7 has unlocked multipliers and voltage settings. I suspect the Elitebook 840 has the same issue because it uses the same motherboard design.

Aka, you can get very high CPU clock rates without CPU throttling, but a crippled GPU.

 

I consider thermal throttling, power throttling, poor-bios-design throttling to be major design flaws. Load throttling and battery throttling should be adjustable...

 

In this energy efficiency crazed world we live in, processors throttle to save energy and keep cooler except when needed.

 

Kent T, I much preferred your answer before the edit.

 

But you can conclude it. For example for 2410m intel says that it runs at 2.3ghz. Unless turbo boost or speedsted is used. In my case why is my 2350m operating at 1.5ghz when it is capable of providing more than that? Is speedstep used during heavy gaming or media convertion? In my opinion that happens because of poor design of the system that uses it. I don't think that my clevo reseller is safe because for 2-3 minutes the i3 indeed works at 2.3 ghz. In that case they would advertise all i5 and i7 cpus only at their maximum turbo boost frequency.

Exactly. To save money my reseller uses cpu not officially or properly supported. And here is another proof. When gaming on facebook the 2350m reaches 80 degrees and throttles but the 2020m stays below 66 degrees at max frequency. During heavy gaming the 2350m reaches 80 degrees and throttles but the 2020m reaches 83 degrees at max frequency and no throttling. This review Review Nexoc M512 (Clevo W650EH) Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews also says that using an ivy bridge cpu the system can reach 90 degrees without throttling.

I3 2350m, Nvidia 740m 64 bit, 6 gig ddr3 ram, Hdd 500gb, windows 8.1

 

Geos1, PGA i3-2350M throttles at 85C, what else'd you expect? Get rid of it, the sooner the better, and get a proper CPU.

 

The problem is with boost now part of CPU's and GPU's, it really blurs the world of "throttling". Where there was a fixed speed and anything extra was determined by user overclocking intervention, it's now blurry what speed it should achieve. Most if not all CPU's and GPU's achieve their "rated" speed without an issue. It's when they exceed that speed that it's considered outside of intended sustained performance. Not to mention artificially low temperature throttle limits, especially what we see in ULV CPU's that throttle at 70C.

 

I feel like i just discovered the earth.

I removed the bottomn cover (two screws), allowed space for the fan to take air and now my temps are 68 max instead of 82. Sometimes the fan is not even at highest speed.

I will fnd an extra cover and drill holes to it since im under warranty.

 

You might want to also consider buying some self adhesive rubber bumpers that are a little thicker than whatever is on the computer. Then put one under each back corner to help improve the access of fresh air to the holes in the base. This also puts a little slope on the keyboard which used to be considered advantageous.

The vast majority of notebooks rely on sucking in cool air through holes on the bottom. I can understand not having air inlet holes on the top (too much risk of drinks and other debris getting in) but vent holes around the edges would help the ingress of cool air.

John

 

Be careful with extra holes. As designed the air coming over the CPU HS is being drawn from other areas of the computer and going over other components. This cause the restricted air flow but also may be cooling those other components. Unfortunately if it is cooling other components then the air is being heated before making it to the CPU causing higher heats. First invest in a good laptop cooler before looking to make cooling modifications.

 

My laptop's intake vents are undersized when the CPU/GPU is running at full load (much lower temp when having the vent hang over the table), and it appears to be susceptible to being clogged with dust..

 

Yes very bad to have dust accumulation. If it runs cooler when it hangs over the edge with the cover on this means there I too little space for air to travel under the laptop. Get a cooling pad that will increase the space and or an active one with a fan that will force better air flow.

 

Something like this (which sucks air in from the sides) would help but you can start by putting a Lego brick or something similar under each back corner to increase the space for the airflow underneath.

And don't use the computer on soft surfaces such as bed clothes. Poor ventilation becomes a viscious circle with the heat building up, the fan running faster and then working as a more effective vacuum cleaner to suck in any dust within range.

John

 

Notebookcheck noticed the poor ventilation issue under full load for their review. Bought the Acer Travelmate P645-MG anyways since it did well in other factors (battery life, display, build quality, hardware components, etc) without costing close to $2000 (I'm looking at you, HP Elitebook 840).

It also has an idle temp of 38C to 41C. Not sure how that compares with other laptops' idle temps.

 

Pretty common for core i at idle.