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    T520 i7-2720qm not reaching full speed?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by conscriptvirus, Mar 31, 2012.

  1. conscriptvirus

    conscriptvirus Notebook Evangelist

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    Hey I recently got a Lenovo thinkpad T520 (first thinkpad ive ever owned) and it has the following:

    i7-2720qm 2.2GHz (w/ turbo it SHOULD be able to get to3.3Ghz.
    nvidia NVS 4200m
    8gb ram
    160gb SSD


    When I'm running some games, it only hits up to 2990Mhz and can't seem to get to the 3.3Ghz. The games I run aren't optimized for dual cores (HoN and BF2) so if only one cpu is being utilized, shouldn't turbo kick in?

    Also, since im new to the thinkpad laptop, is the air intake on the back/side? as in, i dont need to raise my laptop to keep it cool?

    Thankss
     
    conscriptvirus, Mar 31, 2012
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  2. lead_org

    lead_org Purveyor of Truth

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    the turbo mode will reach the 3.3 ghz only in situation where the CPU TDP is maintained at the designed envelope, if the CPU overheats it will throttle back to keep the temperature in control.

    The air intake occurs in several spots, some of the fresh comes from the vents at the bottom of the laptop. So having it raised will reduce the system temperature.
     
    lead_org, Mar 31, 2012
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  3. conscriptvirus

    conscriptvirus Notebook Evangelist

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    hm is there a way to increase this TDP limit?
     
    conscriptvirus, Apr 1, 2012
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  4. lead_org

    lead_org Purveyor of Truth

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    TDP can't be changed, try download HWinfo and check what the CPU temperature you are getting.

    Also, make sure to download any necessary bios updates.
     
    lead_org, Apr 1, 2012
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  5. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    HWiNFO also provides an estimate of CPU power consumption so you might be able to figure out whether throttling is caused by either the CPU core temperatures exceeding 95C or the overall power consumption is reaching the design ceiling. You can also run wPrime with different numbers of threads while watching HWiNFO. You may see that the CPU will only reach the design maximum speed when one, or possibly two, threads are running. As you add more threads then the maximum speed will slow down but the overall benchmark will still be finished more quickly.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Apr 1, 2012
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  6. conscriptvirus

    conscriptvirus Notebook Evangelist

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    Ran HWMonitor and im getting usually around 35W and at max 41W. Temps are maybe around 75-80C. Still sitting 2990Mhz. I tried downloading Intel XTU but it doesnt really let me do anything but monitor stuff and i noticed once that the CPU hit 3.2GHz but only for a few seconds.
     
    conscriptvirus, Apr 1, 2012
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  7. Mech0z

    Mech0z Notebook Evangelist

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    The cpu can only turbo to 3ghz when using all 4 cores, if it clocks up to 3.2 it means its only using 2 cores!
     
    Mech0z, Apr 1, 2012
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  8. conscriptvirus

    conscriptvirus Notebook Evangelist

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    Dunno what i had done to the bios before but i just reset it to default settings and now i can get speeds up to 3.2ghz :D
     
    conscriptvirus, Apr 1, 2012
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