Windows XP: Slow computer after watching youtube

[sm625]

Wow that is seriously borked. I think in order for it to perform that badly it has to be throttling at some ridiculously low temperature. Like maybe 60C. Is your cpu fan working at all? Is the cooling system free of dust? You posted a temperature of 38C but I am wondering is that as high as it goes, even when running superpi?


And to anyone: is there a way to tell what temperature it is throttling at?

[VirtualLarry]

Originally Posted by sm625

And to anyone: is there a way to tell what temperature it is throttling at?

RMclock can show you, via the graphs, at what temp it throttles, but that is for the CPU's internal throttling (I think). So if the BIOS is doing some sort of throttling, too, it may not detect that. I don't really know.

[kjetillunde]

Originally Posted by Steltek

I can tell you exactly what this problem is. Do a Google search for "Dell" and "Throttlegate" and you'll be inundated with information from loads of pissed off people.

When first released, the E6400/E6500 (as well as various XPS and Studio models) were notorious for suffering from overheating problems. Dell, instead of fixing the problem, spent lots of time ignoring customers and deleting threads about the issue in their support forums in a futile attempt to make the issue "go away". Some Dell engineers eventually created a BIOS to solve the heat problem. It used a combination of reduced CPU multipliers and Intel's CPU Clock Modulation feature to reduce laptop temperatures. It also had the unfortunate side effect of being so over-sensitive to overheating that it reduced laptop performance down to approximately that of a brick with an LCD attached.

Apparently, you have that BIOS installed in your machine and something happened (probably an overheat) that triggered it.

The first step to fixing it is to update to the most recent BIOS which is available -- Dell allegedly released a BIOS that was supposed to resolve the issue.

If a BIOS update doesn't fix the problem, there is a utility in the following thread you can use to get around it. However, you have to be very careful with it. It works by maximizing the CPU multipliers and disabling CPU clock modulation. When using it, you have to monitor CPU temperatures because the utility will have the side effect of overriding the thermal protection on the laptop (meaning, you can literally burn up your CPU). It also has the side effect of severely reducing battery life when on battery, so don't enable it unless you are doing something beyond web browsing that needs the higher performance levels.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...rottleGate-Fix

Thank you Steltek!
I updated to the most recent Dell BIOS and that solved the problem!
The multiplier raised to 6 and core speed to 1595mhz. The performance is much better now.

The BIOS update did the trick!

[kjetillunde]

I also enabled Intel speed step again (witch I disabled earlier), and the multiplier raised to 9 and the core speed to 2392mhz. The result from superpi at 1M was 21s. Awesome!

[ketchup79]

Very cool, glad it's working.

[Puppies04]

Glad you got it sorted.

[kjetillunde]

Thanks for all help!

[pete1229]

Your problem is it's a Dell, a very old Dell! Old Dells really suck and are notoriously slow.

[ketchup79]

Originally Posted by pete1229

Your problem is it's a Dell, a very old Dell! Old Dells really suck and are notoriously slow.

Old computers are notoriously slow.