Any utility out there to clock down the I5?

Just got my new machine and love it.

However, when I take it somewhere with me, I want to extend the battery time to as much as possible. I ordered my laptop with the higher capacity battery, but I want to squeeze out even more.

I tried using CPUID but for some reason it doesn't even detect what the multiplier is. It is probably outdated.

Anyone?

 

Throttlestop maybe.

 

It downclocks itself automatically, but there's also an option in Windows battery settings to limit the min/max processor states, so you can set a ceiling there.

 

Try CPU-Z.

Besides display brightness on low, wireless off, silent cooling mode and setting cpu states to 0% in windows energy panel I dont see anything you can do.

Throttlestop acutally can throttle down your CPU to 1x multiplier (133MHz!), but interestingly it takes much more juice then as it does when just running on default 9x multiplier. Maybe there is an option for undervolting the cpu, but I didnt find something yet for the core-i CPUs.

 

Using windows settings I can last up to 9H-10H (quasi-iddle, light websurfing) with large capacity battery.

 

When you say websurfing, I guess that means WiFi activated. In that case, that is really a GREAT value.

 

I'll try it out. Do you know if you can change voltage as well?

I tried messing with that but it still seems to hit the max cpu freq. when running a task at 100% (BOINC for example, running 4 tasks at once using the SETI project). I need something to forcably down-clock the CPU.

I know CPUID would let you change the voltage in older CPU (used it on my previous Athlon laptop). I think lowering the voltage could make the difference too.

What laptop is this?? That's awesome. I really don't think it would matter that much that I have a 17.3" screen since it's all LED now throughout the whole Sony laptop line.

 

Right now there is no software that can change the voltage of core i CPUs as far as I know.

 

The windows settings work. When you see 100% in task manager that means 100% of the CPU speed that is available. If you have it forced in windows to only allow 50% cpu cycle then 100% in task manager = ~1.4Ghz per core on a 2.8ghz cpu.

however...if you are loading the cpu heavily it may not be best to do this manual throttling. I'm sure there's an analysis out there somewhere...but there IS something to be said for Intel's "hurry up and sleep" philosiphy.

 

I was only loading it for a short while to see if the windows settings actually work. To be honest, I didn't see any difference. I even brought it down to about 10% but the temps and frequency never changed when I had Core Temp running.

Now I've just finished messing with ThrottleStop and it's a pretty good program. It actually does work (except for lowering voltage; I read that 'I' CPU's don't support software voltage change anymore). I was able to bring down the multiplier to 9x but could also scale down on the "clock modulation".

I was able to get 3 hours out of the battery with normal browsing, wireless, mid-brightness. I don't that that's too bad for such a physically small battery.

I honestly haven't tried without ThrottleStop running yet. This is the first time I run on batteries so I don't have a "base" figure.

 

Sounds like you changed the windows settings for the wrong profile. If you do it correctly, it does work.