Sony VAIO F low performance on battery power

I have a new Sony F Series with an 820QM CPU. I notice the performance drops to a very low level when the unit is not on AC power. I have chosen the high performance power profile, and set the Min and Max processor states to 100% both when on AC power and on battery, this didn't help at all.

This is the EXACT same problem owners of most core-i7 laptops are reporting from various manufacturers. There is a thread here that has more details -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=445178

Is there any way to report this to someone at Sony who would understand it? Any way this can get resolved, or brought the the sony engineers attention? The clock multiplier is LOCKED to 1.2Ghz when on battery power, no matter what you do, with the 820QM processor, and is locked to 930mhz with the 720qm processor!

 

Try UncleWeb's Throttlestop which should be able to change the clock multiplier: # Throttlestop program. by UncleWeb http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...n.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/ThrottleStop.zip

 

Oh my god! I'm going to purchase this laptop, this is really bad news.

I love Core i7 too, I wonder if this problem will be fixed soon. Is there any solution now?

 

Uncleweb posted on this subject in the Envy 15 thread, and said his software would not correct this problem.

 

Still is a great tool to determine if it Power Throttles when plugged in, while running CPU intensive programs such as gaming.

 

Will Sony release official BIOS updates or anything else has able to fix this throttle?

 

Good Question...

 

Has anyone contacted with Sony's Tech yet? I think they have to release an clear explanation for this problem.

 

I called Sony's tech and gave them a link to the envy 15 thread, and explained to them the processor/memory performance was stuck at 1.2GHZ when on battery power, but they didn't seem to understand what I was saying to be honest. Hopefully it will make it up the chain to someone who is handling the BIOS issues etc.

 

A little Up ...
How is the GT 330M ?
better than 4650 ?
Can you run benchmark or games to show us ?
THanks

 

uP for soNy F useRs !

 

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the slower speed of the core I7-720QM when on battery. This feature has been around for at least three years and probably longer. My old Del Latitude 820 with a Core 2 Duo does this also.

The reduction in CPU speed is a result of sum of two functions: 1) Windows Power Plan Management which sets the processor speed as a function of CPU clock percentage depending on the power plan in effect and the settings of that plan and 2) Intel Thermal Management (see section 5 of http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/320765.pdf ).

In Windows Vista, you can choose one of three power plans: "High Performance", Balanced" and "Power Saver". High Performance keeps the CPU at 100% even on battery, Balanced and Power Saver will drop the minimum to 5 %. The lowest clock speed generated by the I7-720QM when throttled down by the operating system is .933GHz (all four cores active). Intel's Turbo Boost in the I7 will push that back up to 1.6GHz for a single CPU if the other 3 CPUs are inactive.

For the 820QM processor, the minimum speed is 1.2 GHz for 4 active cores and 1.73GHz when in Turbo Boost mode.

The power requirement for the CPU chip drops by 22% from 45 watts to 35 watts thus decreasing the drain on the battery and a reduction in the amount of heat generated by the CPU and the processor power supply circuits. Therefore, lower BTUs created also reduces battery drain from the cooling fans.

There are other reductions in performance in the unit as well. The I/O busses are also throttled down which has a ripple effect on disk and graphics speed.

If you want to increase the CPU percentage when on battery, either select the "High Performance" Power Plan Option or increase the Minimum Processor State percentage in the "Balanced" or "Power Saver" power plan. This setting is accessed in the Advanced Settings of the Plan

Hope this helps.

 

Any update on this issue?

To Jacksjw, it's definitely something to check, but I am pretty sure uzun and other users experienced this problem have checked those settings. HP is giving some lame excuses about they are using lition-polymer battery so it can't handle the power requirement. I wonder what is Sony's current response.