HP tx2500z running at half frequency?

Anyone notice that the tx2500z runs at only half the rated frequency on battery? No matter which settings you fool around with in Vista, it won't run at full frequency.

Has anyone been able to run at full frequency when on battery mode?

 

Running Wprime?

I've run it in Vista 64. Had to set threads to 2 though.

 

regardless of whatever you are running. Try running on battery and monitor the CPU freq with a utility. Its not running at full rated speed. What gives...

 

That's what I was trying to tell you. Running wprime on battery set to 2 threads does get full 2.1ghz (as per ZM-80). Monitored using CPU-Z 1.46 or the built in Windows performance monitor. Just so you'll know it does occur.

 

I just tried wPrime on Vista 32-bit (its what was installed from HP) and same results. Its running at the full frequency of 2.2Ghz (ZM-82) and then when I yank out the power supply, its at 1.1Ghz. I have wPrime running while I have CPUz 1.46 running in the background.

Perhaps its the difference in Vista 32-bit vs 64-bit but all I can say is, I want to use my full processing capabilities of my notebook at times, yet I can't.

 

Did you choose max performance on battery power in the power setting?

 

Yup, no matter what I do, its stuck at half frequency. Do you have a tx2500z? Try it out. I've seen the same thing happen on a friend's as well.

I went into max perf, set power management for the min freq while on battery to 100% but still only get 1/2 the frequency. Something funky is going on here.

 

The CPU reduces multiplier when the programs dont use a lot of processing power, my c2d for desktop runs at 6x200 which is 1.2ghz, when I am using CPU intensive programs, it ups to 10x200 which is 2ghz, so pretty much it is a build in function that reduces power usage

 

I know CPUs vary frequency on demand and have already played around with the various settings under Vista (ie min CPU set at 100% under Vista).

In this specific case though, only when running on battery, when the programs use 100% CPU load, it only runs at the half frequency of the maximum rated CPU frequency.

The CPU in the tx2500 seems to max out at 1.2GHz rather than the full 2.4Ghz only when using the battery. When its plugged into the power adapter, it runs at the full 2.4Ghz when I max out the CPU. Try it out on the tx2500. I've never seen other laptops do this (I own 6 other laptops and none of them ever do this).

 

I can't believe that is still an issue...

I noticed that years ago, on the eMachines/Gateway Arima-manufactured notebooks with the AMD Athlon Mobiles (3000/3200etc...). I bought one at Best Buy, took it home, was fine. I noticed on battery it was R-E-A-L-L-Y slow - did a bunch of testing, and apparently back then, AMD's PowerNow! simply halved the clock-speed. I tried everything, a bunch of 3rd party utils, to no avail - unplug the psu, and max speed halved.

Went to Best Buy and asked what gives, and they had no idea - I told them I'd like to return it, as I was only getting half what I paid for, and they said no prob - minus restocking fee.

Needless to say, AmEx told them to stick it - dang it's nice using a decent C/C company...

Machine went back to B/B, and I'm STILL waiting for a normal-on-battery AMD chip...

T

 

There is something weird going on, though. Although I can get full processor speed running on battery, I'm still having issues keeping the CPUs cool when running on AC. I've gone into the control panel power options, and set the various advanced power settings identical between "on battery" and "plugged in", yet the CPUs tend to run at higher performance settings when plugged in.

 

OK, this is weird. My tx2500z is now also running at half-speed when on battery power; running wprime or anything else doesn't help, even with max cpu/graphics performance power settings. However, it does occasionally blip up to max speed when on battery, but I haven't been able to figure out why or how.