intel i7 q740 processor turbo boost not working

i have a dell xps L501x with i7 processor, 4 gb ram, 2 gb nvidia geforce 435m card. initially the processor was fine and the turbo boost was working properly. but now, after i formatted the system once, its not working. i've downloaded all the drivers from the dell official site, and installed. in the device manager, it shows the turbo boost technology is unable to start (code 10).
so i contacted the dell service. after a series of installations and uninstallations, i installed the turbo boost technology monitor. he (the dell employee) said its not just the monitor, but also the driver itself. so i thought the problem was over. he also said if the turbo boost is working properly it wont show in the device manager. so i thought its ok now and thanked him.
now when i opened a game, it shows no more than 1.73 ghz. i tried with three games running simultaneously, its not working. the system gets heated up alot, only one core among the 8 cores works 100%.
So pls, anyone, can shed any light into this problem? i would be so grateful..

kris

 

I know its a bother, but just to make sure there is no any other sofwtare/drivers issues, did u try to REformat again?

Otherwise I would call again the Dell support center and ask for a technician help.

 

there's no other issues as far as i know. one more thing. is there like a on/off option for the turbo boost in the bios?

 

Nope. Not in my XPS 17. I doubt yours would be different.

My uncle has the same XPS 15 as yours, he experienced too much turbo boost instead, for instance his CPU kept running at maximum together with the fan.
It could be related somehow (but very strangely) to drivers. What he did to fix it was to unistall the realtek audio driver and the turbo boost monitor. it worked.

Just my 2 cents.

One more thing. DON'T install the drivers from the DELL WEBSITE, but from the ORIGINAL manifacture website.

Example:

Realtek:

http://www.realtek.com/Downloads/do...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Nvidia:

http://www.geforce.com/Drivers/Results/39066

The same for all the intel drivers and so on..

 

okay. i'll try first with the dell service again, then if it does not works, i'll try the other ways.. thanks for the help

 

Anytime, hope it helps u out.

 

turbo boost won't kick in if any of the cpu core temps are already on the edge.

thermals override everything.

 

TDP also overrides everything in the sense that the first generation of core i aren't allowed to turbo over their specified TDP. That means that if your 740qm is already near it's TDP (45W) at x13, it will probably not turbo or throttle soon after going into turbo. The turbo is essentially throttled by two variables, TDP and temperature.

 

what is happening now is interesting. In device manager, the turbo boost technology is having the yellow exclamation icon, but i've installed the latest turbo monitor from intel. In that, i can see now this is going over 1.73 GHz. going up till 2.3 Ghz and all. I dont understand this, but the performance hasn't increased much i think. At times it is good(while playing games), at times slow. The major problem now is i have the curved and slanted lines in games not smoothed up. its really annoying.

 

are your nvidia drivers up to date, system bios up to date, etc?

 

yeah. my nvidia graphics driver is version 285.62, bios recently updated from dell site.

 

Try enable anti-aliasing in the settings for your games.

 

But the problem gets more interesting. Previously I had NFS Run and Dead Space 2 in my laptop, both of them were getting stuck and the lines jagged. But now i installed Arkham City and Spiderman Shattered Dimensions, and these games dont have the problem. Does it mean i cant run any of EA's games? Thats a bit disappointing. And yeah. I tried BF3 too. Same effect. Any one?

 

RealTemp can turn turbo on/off:



Also using the power options can do it and it seems to reduce temps better, I do it with my dell studio as it gets hot.
just set the maximum processor state to 99%.

 

thanks for that. But still, why only EA games? If i format the system completely (all the drives) and install the drivers again, in the correct order, wont it be okay?

 

You could try getting the intel chipset driver from intels site. There is a page that tests and downloads the correct one. Also try using throttlestop to see if the cpu is turboing.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

My i7 q720 was getting very hot and throttling down, I used the power setting and set the max processor state to 99%. This must reduce the voltage or something as the temps were lower and my games ran smother.
it also stops turbo. If I just disable turbo the temps stay high.

 

Be sure "max processor state" in Control Panel > Power Options is set to 100% under your particular power plan. Anything less will disable turbo. I personally have it set to disable it on battery to save power.

 

BUt there is a problem This is what i get when i click on power option.. thw window with power plans. - Balanced, Performance.. etc

 

Control Panel -> Hardware & sound -> Power options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings. Enjoy

That is if your cp is set to view by category.

alternatively, you can press the windows key + R and type powercfg.cpl top skip the first three steps.

 

thanks to everyone who tried to help me. But nothing works in this stupid piece of . I tried everything. I even uninstalled the driver for turbo boost, but everytime i restart, it shows turbo boost not working properly in device manager. The graphics is pathetic than an inspiron foe EA games. and even for other games, it takes about 5 minutes to start. I'm fed up. My only advice is that nobody should buy a xps. i just wasted my 60000 Rs. (about $1200). Thats all.