Should I cancel my ThinkPad X220 order because of the 'Throttling' issue?

it says dirextx 11 installed on dxdiag. From where exactly do i get the drivers? Did i ask that many times...lol

 

Download details: DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer

 

ok thanks...lets see how it goes.

 

Ok, I just started doing the testing today. Here is what I found about my x220...

First, I tried the occt gpu test without the ac power and got no thottle. This was just to confirm no throttle with battery only. Fine.

Next, I plugged the ac adapter and performed the test again, in the first 2-3min, got throttle to 800mhz occassionally, then went back to normal. Then after about 4min, got the perma throttle to 800mhz. Tried to change the power settings, nothing. Stuck at 800mhz. Then unplug the ac, right away went back to normal, then plug the ac back right away within seconds.

Next, with the ac adapter plugged, I perfomed the test again, now it was totally normal. Run occt for about 6min, no throttle. Then added prime95 torture test for about 3min and it throttled to stock 2700mhz and gpu clock 1000-1050. In total, I run occt for about 15min, temperature got to 89-90 degrees celsius.

Dont know if this is revelant, but will continue with my testing now and will update on what happens. Will try another occt test now, and then will reboot and try it again. I'll post the screenshots in a bit.

 

power settings in max performance? with and with out ac adapter?

 

I ended up cancelling my order before it even got processed. Apparently Lenovo raised the base price of the X220 during the Memorial Weekend sale so it's not like I missed out on a killer deal or anything.

I think you are wrong for downplaying this issue. To me a laptop is a serious investment because I spend a lot of time using it. The specs clearly indicate that the X220 is capable of performance-intensive applications. Saying the laptop is a business-class laptop and thus implying that it should only be used for business-related scenarios is absolutely absurd. Do you also think Macs are only for hippies and musicians?

I applaud the people who take the time to stress-test the X220's. Please keep up the good work.

 

yes, maximum performance on both.

By the way, im running the 2nd test (have not unplug it again), occt been running for 30min and no throttle yet. Now about to to run prime95 again to see what happens. Then I guess I'll unplug it and plug it back again and test again. Then a shutdown and test again, if it throttles after a shutdown, will do the same process, unplug and plug and see if that's fixing the throttle in some way. No way to explain how its happening though.

 

cant you just disable speedstep in the bios?

 

and why should i do that for? just asking, dont know what it does.

 

well ill get this system thursday, and it should come with an i7 so i can test this issue.. (sorry to tell you what to do but i cant atm)

But going to your question, Speedstep is the technology intel uses on their processors to underclock them, to increase battery life, and to reduce temps if cpu is getting to hot.. i used to work for dell and for the longest time the speedstep on their workstations m4400/m6400/m4500/m6500 was broken making the cpu underclock to 800mhz while running anything cpu intensive while using ac power.. and the fixed at that time was to disable speedstep, then a bios revision fixed it.

on those system speedstep didnt make any difference in battery life nor temp, thats i suggesting to disable it and see if it happens again and/or if ur temps increase

 

Ok, I'll see if I can do that later.

All my tests with the i7 x220 explained below...perma throttle definitely happening.

Ok, I just started doing the testing today. Here is what I found about my x220...By the way, I have not updated anything on my laptop, got the bios 1.12, 9-cell battery, 65 watt adapter and have not updated lenovo power manager (which it ask me to everytime I open it) and also have not performed any windows updates yet.

First, I tried the occt gpu test without the ac power and got no thottle. This was just to confirm no throttle with battery only. Fine.

Next, I plugged the ac adapter and performed the test again, in the first 2-3min, got throttle to 800mhz occassionally, then went back to normal. Then after about 4min, got the perma throttle to 800mhz. Tried to change the power settings, nothing. Stuck at 800mhz. Then unplug the ac, right away went back to normal, then plug the ac back right away within seconds.

Next, with the ac adapter plugged, I perfomed the test again, now it was totally normal. Run occt for about 6min, no throttle. Then added prime95 torture test for about 3min and it throttled to stock 2700mhz and gpu clock 1000-1050. In total, I run occt for about 15min, temperature got to 89-90 degrees celsius.

Dont know if this is revelant, but will continue with my testing now and will update on what happens. Will try another occt test now, and then will reboot and try it again. I'll post the screenshots in a bit.

UPDATE ON MY TESTING...

I ran a 2nd test of occt for about 35min and got no throttle, then added prime95 for a few min, and throttle again to stock 2700mhz same as before. Core Temperature got as high as 95 during this 40 min tests.

Then close all programs, and unplug and replug the ac adapter and performed a 3rd occt test for about 15 minutes and got no throttle. So at the moment after I got the perma throttle to 800mhz the first time I run occt and did the unplug and replug, I have not experienced the throttle again.

Now, will shutdown the laptop and turn it on again and perform the test once again. Will also change the performance on battery power so that it is not "maximum performance" and see if that makes a difference. At the moment I have both to maximum performance since I started testing.

2ND UPDATE....

Ok, I already changed the power setting to optimized and still after my first unplug and plug back, no throttling issues.

Then I went ahead and shutdown the laptop. I unplugged it while it was shutdown, then plug it again, and start it up. Again, the first test got the perma throttle in about 5min. I did the same thing, unplug and plug it back right way. Performed a 2nd test and no throttling after the replug. After the unplug/replug, the cpu doesn't even experience those occassional drops to 800mhz which happens during the first test after turning on the laptop so this is definitely a power problem experienced on boot up since it is not experienced anymore after the 1st time you get rid of the perma throttle.

Ok, I just shutdown the laptop while it was plugged and not experiencing the throttling (since i did the unplug/plug
process) and again got the perma throttle on my first test. Again, performed the unplug/plug back process and boom, no more
throttling on the next test or on anything else that I do after.

In conclusion, at least on my laptop, the perma throttle is there, but with a quick unplug/replug of the ac adapter, no more
throttling until the laptop is shutdown and start it again. I think this will do until lenovo find a way to fix the issue when the computer boots from shutdown. Hopefully it is soon enough, otherwise I might also have to return mine also.

There is only one big issue about this which is that when you plug in the ac adapter for the first time, your system will at one point perma throttle when the gpu is stressed, but in some way you won't know about it unless you are running some software like hwinfo32. It sucks that this is happening to this great laptop. I opened mine today and really like it, but this is a serious issue that lenovo should try to fix as soon as possible if they want people to continue buying this laptop or if they want for the people that already bought it to even keep it.

 

hopefully they'll fix it soon

 

*Sorry I didnt post anything up last night. Because of the memorial day holiday im pretty busy with work, haven't had much time to game. By the time im free I sleep, haha.

Will try to get something put together soon.

 

Ken, a Lenovo staff meber on the Lenovo forums, has said that they are working on what will likely be a bios update to fix the throttling issue.

Hopeful!

Petrov.

 

mine is dead stock at 800mhz no way to get it out of it.. with and with out ac power

 

you have a link to that?

 

so i disabled speedstep in the bios and seems to work better.... but it doesnt seem like turbo is getting activated.

 

Here is the whole thread. I believe Ken's comment about working on the issue was posted early yesterday morning.

 

Maybe you have "balanced" performance when on battery on power manager, change it to Max permomance/max turbo on battery and see if it is at 800mhz. When you have "balanced", it is usually at 800mhz most of the time unless you do something that needs more of the cpu, the speed goes up as needed up to stock 2.7ghz.

 

Is this happening on the T420/T420s?

 

Think people should be aware that the express 54 card with usb 3.0 has a few issues/limitations.

1: It doesn't give aux power, rather it takes it. Apparently the express slot doesn't provide enough power for USB 3.0 devices and requires extra power from a neighboring USB 2.0 port. Not to mention the unsighly cable.
2: The express card can come out easily when pulling USB 3.0 plug.
3: Only one USB 3.0 device at a time.
4: It's a bit flaky. On reboot I find I have to connect and reconnect to get the drive working.
5: Driver issues, may be related to #4.

I'm just now using this Express USB 3.0 slot and USB 3.0 external drive combo and I'm pleased with the performance, near 100MB/s on a E6410, 55 MB/s on my XPS 1210, but it's not a clean solution.

Where to find latest drivers and firmware for NEC/Renesas

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/renesas.htm

*Corrections*
Looks like the card can indeed run 1 USB 3.0 device on it's own power. I've been having issues with the card but was able to recently upgrade the firmware from 2006 to 2011 and it now appears to detect the USB 3.0 device without the aux power connected.

Unfortunately the sleep behavior issue is still there, if the machine sleeps it well show a power surge issue when it wakes up and the drive is no longer connected.

This doesn't seem to be specific to the AKE card, I see the issue here too, same chipset.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...E&id=20100915004121393&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Anyone know of a fix?

Regards,

Mike