Vaio CPU at 50% max on battery

I have a new Sony Vaio with a Intel T2330 1.6 ghz running Vista. I used cpuz to check the clock speed. No matter what power settings I change, even disabling power management and uninstalling Sony's power management, I can't get more than 800mhz, 6x multiplier on battery. Once I plug it in it will scale right up to full speed, but not on battery. Is this hardware or bios issue? I can't find any settings that make any difference. Thanks for the help.

 

I have the same power management problem with an AR58J / merom santa rosa - T7100 bios R1050J8:
when on battery, whatever vista power plan I use, using Rmclock, I can't get over 1200 mhz (x6 minimum multiplier at 200 mhz fsb). However when plugged in, the cpu scales normally up to 1800 (x9).

Frenquencies are reported by rmclock ( http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml )and cpu-z ( http://www.cpuid.com/ )

I was wondering if other ar5 or ar6 series owners got the same result?

I have the orignal install of vista on one hard drive and afresh install of vista sp1 on the other hard drive, and same problem.

If using Rmclock in the "advanced CPU setting" tab, I disable both thermal monitor (1 & 2), then the cpu frenquency can be scaled again and used according to the power management, so it seems to be a bios program problem and an bios update is necessary.

Going to report that to sony and see their answer if any...

 

I figured out the exact same thing, I have to disable thermal monitor 1 and 2 and it will scale normally. This might be some stupid Sony way of tricking you into thinking the battery life is longer than it should be by forcing a slower clock speed. Glad to hear someone else has this issue and it's not just something wrong with my laptop. I just can't believe this problem isn't more talked about, I can't find any info about this anywhere. Maybe no one notices there laptop is running half speed, let me know what Sony says.

 

If there are any other Sony NR owners out there, do me a favor and test your cpu speed on battery power using cpuz and see if it runs at a max of 6x multiplier, or half cpu speed. I wonder how many people just don't know this is happening. Thanks.

 

Actually, using RM clock and forcing the CPU to scale by disabling Termal protection 1 and 2 allows you to use the super lfm mode when the front side bus drop to 100 mhz instead of 200 mhz using 0.9375V, so you have your system at 600 mhz @ 0.9375v instead of 1200 mz @ 0.9375V, this should give a boost to the battery time.

My setting with rmclock are

- on AC power: maximum performance, the cpu is at 1800 mhz @ 0.9875V and temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees.

- on Battery : performance on demand scaling between 600 mhz @ 0.9375V and 1800 mhz @ 0.9875V shows temperature between 30 and 40 degrees

It seems impossible to lower the voltage under 0.9825 as the minimum voltage of the cpu seems to be handled by the bios.

I think it's a bit tricky from sony when on battery mode not to let you use the full potential of your computer...

 

The power requirements of my cpu must be a bit different. The system default is to run at .95v at 800mhz 6x and 1.25v at 1.6ghz 12x. My problem is in the rmclock utility I can't find any way to use it's setting at less than 1.25v. Even at it's lowest p state it says 6x 1.25v. So I've just been using rmclock for t protection disabling but using system power management. How do you change the voltage settings, unless mine just doesn't allow this.

Duh, never mind, I found the settings on the main profile page. Anyway, I can't go below .95v but I'm going to play around with it and see what I can do.

 

have you checked in the Advanced CPU that the cpu type selection setting is on mobile? Automatic detection does not always work.

 

Like I said I figured out how to change the voltage settings, it's on the main profile page I just didn't see it at first. I've been running it at full 1600mhz at 1.0v instead of 1.25v default and I ran a burn in test and it seems to be completely stable. That should be some pretty good battery savings I would think. As long as I leave the thermal monitors off everything seems to work as it should, it's probably some weird bios setting, but the bios is almost completely non user accessible, I wonder if there is a way to get to the settings that must be hidden.