X230 CPU stuck at 1.2GHz with battery out

I'm having an interesting thing happen with my X230. My CPU seems to be stuck at 1.2GHz...



I've even turned on Maximum Performance & Lenovo Turbo Boost + in Power Manager 6, I still get 1.2GHz which results in this...



Once the battery is in, I get this...



I'm also having a problem with my mSATA not being read as the primary drive, even though I'm booting from it.

 

Don't all answer at once. j/k

I found out why the mSATA is not being read as the primary drive...

5.9 WEI Score for SSD - ssd - Storage

but can't figure out why the CPU won't go past 1.2GHz when the battery is out. Once the battery is placed back into the unit, the laptop almost instantly goes up to the 2.5GHz for a second and even the Turbo Boost 3.1GHz for a second when a YouTube video is playing. Odd behavior.

 

This is a carry-over from the X220. Lenovo limits cpu power without the battery.

 

Why? This only kills your battery faster unless they completely stop charging your battery at 100% and use DC power from the supply.

 

I have an upcoming X230, and it is my habit to remove the battery when the laptop I'm working on would sit for a while (as I believe this extends battery life, and I think it does... my three year old C2D laptops still has 2+hrs battery life)... Is there a workaround for this? Would be using a larger wattage power brick solve this?

 

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management screen?

 

All ThinkPads will drop to lowest performance with no battery, I confirmed this with my T60, Z61t, T61, X220 tablet, X61 tablet.

 

BTW, I've also done the following to my install..

Change Default Installation Directory In Windows 7 & Vista

Change User Profile Folder Location in Vista « Joshua Mouch

I've moved ProgramData as well to the HDD.

 

Doesn't the CPU limitation disappear as long as you use a 90W adapter instead of the 65W that ships with the machine?

 

I'm not too worried about it because it seems that my battery is not being charged when the charger is connected. The battery has been at 99% all day.

 

Really? As far as I can tell, my T500 performs the same with and without the battery inserted, on discrete or integrated graphics modes.

There's no need to keep the battery removed. In Power Manager, enable the Advanced mode, go to the Battery tab, and then click on Battery Maintenance. There, you can set the charge and discharge thresholds: the lower bound is the threshold at which charging will begin, and it will charge until it reaches the upper threshold. I have it set at 40% and 95%, respectively. That way, the battery isn't unnecessarily repeatedly charged.

The default behavior is to start charging at 96%, I believe.

 

Do you have all the Lenovo software installed (Power Manager, etc all the stuff in ThinkVantage). I found 65 vs 90 watt made no difference, with the battery removed, all my old ThinkPads run horribly.

 

My T430 runs just fine without the battery, has no problem getting to the normal 2.5Ghz and even turbos to 2.9Ghz correctly too.

 

I have Power Manager and the power management driver, as well as the Lenovo switchable GPU driver. I haven't actually run benchmarks, but I get the same FPS in games and my CPU does clock up to its maximum frequency. As a reference, this is on the 90W adapter that came with the T500.