Notebook Hardware Control _not_ good for performance.

Like many other users here, when I got my new notebook, I installed Notebook Hardware Control. Given the rave reviews of so many here, how could I not?
But, it turns out, it may not be such a good thing.

After nearly 10 months of research and looking and waiting, I recently purchased a Sager 5760 (Clevo 570U). This is one of the most powerful notebooks available today. Armed with a nVidia 7900GTX w/ 512 Meg video card, few laptops can match it.
I loaded mine with a Core Duo T2500 @ 2GHz, 1.5 Gig of 667 Ram, and a 7200rpm Hard drive. I installed Windows XP Pro myself, and then tweaked the notebook to my liking, including installing NHC.

I set NHC to Dynamic, which is what almost everyone here did, according to many posts. This was actually my first problem. Whenever I tried to set NHC to "Max Perfomance" while on AC power (plugged in), the notebook would freeze hard within 3-5 seconds. TWICE, I got Blue Screen of Death warning me of a hardware failure. That's not good. Putting NHC back to Dynamic ended this. Dynamic seemed to work fine, as the system would spool up the CPU whenever I hit it with a big job (prime 95, Super-Pi), and I had no problems with freezing.

That set, I went about benchmarking my new beast. Imagine my utter surprise when my first to runs of 3dMark05 yielded scores in the 1700's!! It was a slideshow, like I was running onboard graphics. Turns out, NHC doesn't properly handle the video card settings. I believe I saw another thread about this problem. NHC has an option to control the Nvidia Powermizer settings. Turns out it does the opposite of what you set it to. NHC was set for max performance on AC and max poer save on battery; but when i went into the nVidia driver settings, it had reversed them both. AC was on power save, and battery was on performance. Switching them back in the drivers did nothing, as NHC would override it and put them back to the wrong settings. Only after disabling the NHC nvidia control would the driver settings stay put. I re-ran 3dMark05 two more times, ahh much better, 7980+.

Then I had another thought- If it messed up the nVidia settings, is it actually helping the rest of my system?
Turns out, it does NOT. As I said, running 3dMark05 with NHC turned on yielded me scores in the 7975-7995 range. Decent enough.
HOWEVER, with NHC turned off, not running at all, my 3dMark05 scores jumped up to 8410-8425!! That's an average of 420 points!! Observe the following two screenshots;
With NHC-

Without NHC-


428 points!! That's better than a 5% improvement! I ran 3dMark multiple times in both configurations, including after clean reboots and after turning the machine off and letting it cool down. The result was always the same. Not running NHC yielded better than 5% performance improvement. The two screenshots above were taken after running 3dmark twice without rebooting. All I did was turn off NHC!

Now, even in the short time I've used NHC, I really like the program. The monitoring tools are top notch, and the potential battery saving properties of the program are probably good. (I have not tested this, a desktop replacement is not designed for battery life first. If someone would like to test battery life with and without NHC, it might be valuable info.)

But the only conclusion I can make is that I will not be running it when I need performance. And since performance is why one buys a machine like this, NHC may not get run very often.

 

You should report your bug to him. It is a pre-release/beta afterall. However, imo NHC works like a charm for me.

 

Well evidently i'm not the only one with the nvidia problem, there are at least 3 more in the Sager forum.

I will likely shoot a message to the author during the day tomorrow. This seems too big a problem to ignore.

 

question, if you use NHC to undervolt and close NHC, does the cpu stay undervolted? i know that my overclocking utility (ATI tool) can be closed and keep my card overclocked.

 

No. (Same for RMClock). You'll need to keep these programs running for the CPU to stay undervolted.

 

When you run benchmarks you're supposed to shut down any non-essential programs. If you are not having trouble with overheating I see no reason to keep NHC running during these tests.

Though not nearly as powerful, my nVidia settings are correct in NHC and in the nVidia control panel.

 

ttupa-
It appears that the problem with the Nvidia settings is happening only with the 7900 series of vid cards.

Ramian-
My CPU stays undervolted without NHC running- .950 v both ways.

I was just surprised to see such a significant (at least to me) difference in scores. It was my understanding that NHC was supposed to improve performance. Now I see it as more of a monitoring tool.

 

NHC is, in essence, a monitoring tool. It does go a step further allowing you to adjust clock and voltage of the processor and some graphics cards. However, unless you're overclocking it's not going to give you a performance boost. It will help with battery life and heat issues. It basically gives you greater control of your hardware components.

 

i only use NHC when im on battery, i like the max battery mode, it owns.