T420 Turbo Boost not working

I wouldn't normally cross post, this is already in the T420 owners thread, but I need all the help I can get at this stage really before I potentially return the machine.

My T420 has the i7-2620M CPU.

I can't get the turbo boost monitor to go above 2.70 no matter what I do (Prime95 torture tests, intensive development work, video encoding)

The 9 slice battery is in, and the AC power is also in.

Power management shows intel turbo boost as enabled.

Intel AMT Firmware was updated this morning after discovering the problem - as was the machine BIOS - again - after discovering the problem.

None of these changes have managed to "turn turbo boost on"

I had a sony vaio before this machine and this feature "just worked" - i'd be grateful for any any ideas or pointers before I call Lenovo - thanks.

 

I've just swapped my SSD for the drive that came with the machine when it was delivered, and lo and behold the boost works.

So this is something i've managed to break when making a clean windows install on my SSD somehow - although I'm not sure how - all the lenovo drivers are installed, and no errors are showing in event viewer.

Any ideas?

 

Interesting. I have an SSD and seem to have the same problem-- except I did not do a clean install, but transferred the OS using Rescue and Recovery. Power management shows turbo boost as enabled. I checked the BIOS, and no settings there.

I'm using a 65W power adapter, and thought that might be the problem. But it can't be a 65W vs. 90W problem, unless you coincidentally switched to a 90W adapter when swapping out the drives during troubleshooting.

To test the processor, I just ran WEI.

 

thanks for adding to the thread - glad im not alone!

I don't think it matters if it's an SSD or HDD per se, and it definitely isn't the power adapter because I've only got one ( I did see those power adapter threads on the lenovo forums this morning as well - but I think those only apply when the battery has been removed from the machine)

I'll swap out the drives again later when I finish work, and make a note of all the intel utils that are installed on the factory one - it's likely to be one of those imo.

maybe add your symptoms to the thread I started over on the lenovo forums:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T5...Turbo-Boost-not-working-1-33-BIOS/td-p/528601

 

Most likely some sort of setting issue, as a poster on the Lenovo forum mentioned. I imagine if you imaged the HDD onto the SSD, you would see Turbo Boosting enabled.

I'm running W7P on a T420s clean install with 320 series 120GB SSD. Turbo Boost works nicely. Run a single threaded virus scanner to stress your cpu.

 

It wasn't a setting issue for me. Note that I did transfer the factory image onto the SSD using Rescue and Recovery. What finally worked for me? Restoring a Windows backup from a week ago.

 

Mysterious... =( You obviously don't recall installing any sort of power control app or changing a system setting related to power or performance in the intervening week?

 

Well, I might have switched power profiles once or twice. But earlier when I first noticed (thanks to the OP) that my Turbo Boost wasn't working, I checked the setting in Power Manager a bunch of times like a good OCD-afflicted chimp, and even crawled through all the settings in the Windows advanced power settings panel. I tried different modes, etc. I'm just relieved that it worked-- and that my backup/restore worked, and that my battery life is back! (I managed to apparently much things up by using Throttle Stop, at the suggestion of a poster on another forum. Never again.)

 

I took some time today to make a brand new windows installation on an external disk, and then boot it from the eSATA slot.

The turbo boost works absolutely fine on the vanilla install with and without the chipset drivers, so that must mean that along the way I've installed some driver or another which stops Turbo Boost doing it's thing.