Is there such a thing as a 'buttery smooth' experience with CULV?

[Lazimutha]

I have an ASUS UL80jt laptop (i5 U520 4GB) that has been giving me a number of issues since time began, but after some perseverance, it is now a 'nice' experience. I largely use MS office and IE10, but have been looking for a 'buttery smooth' experience. To this end, I have done the following:

1. Upgraded to SSD - big help.
2. Changed my power profile so minimum CPU is at 50% - found it reduces some lag.
3. Changed to Windows 8 - improves a number of issues I won't go into unless someone is interested.
4. Enabled 'turbo 33' mode - found a little benefit.

Despite this, things aren't as 'instant' as I would like - opening/closing programs; . Perhaps I am being unrealistic, but tweaking settings that have a small chance of making things faster is fun! Or is that experience only available on desktop CPUs?

Any recommendations or comments greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[jolancer]

Its not your hardware its your software and or drivers... unless you jacked the bios settings, or theres a hardware or bios defect, like some post im not gana try and go find this guy was having his cpu automatically underclocked due to faulty temp readouts from bios.

sorry havnt used win7 or 8 for that matter. could only give you tips to make XP run like lightning on even the most basic systems.... but for office/internet , on my net book this is on Xp office opens befor i can count to ONE. and i think everyone on this forum would consider a netbook unusable to there preference.

that said your i5 wouldnt have issuse if not for your software or setup. google how to optimize your version of windows.. or if your using a manufactures install that comes with a bunch of crapware and god knows what. remove it

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It Turbo's to 1.8GHz, which means it's basically as fast or faster than my 2 GHz C2D laptop under lightly-threaded loads. (Which I have no complaints about.)

Some of the older UL80jt models had overclocking options. Have you checked the BIOS for anything like that? Did it come with a software overclocking utility of some kind? Locking the CPU to its max Turbo frequency, at least when you're plugged into mains, would make it pretty zippy.

If you have an SSD-equipped desktop with a much faster CPU and a similar software configuration, then you're always going to suffer a bit from the Porsche effect.

You could try a lightweight Linux distro on it if you're feeling adventurous. Some of those are pretty damn snappy.

 

[Zap]

I have owned and used a number of systems/notebooks with low wattage CPUs, ranging from single and dual core Atoms, to AMD Brazos/Zacate (E-350), to Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.2GHz dual core CULV) and Core i3-2357M (1.3GHz dual core Sandy Bridge CULV).

I have used all of them with an SSD of one kind or another.

None of them were as "buttery smooth" as my desktop rig (highly overclocked gaming rig with SSDs).

 

[Lazimutha]

Thanks for the opinions. I agree that I am probably wishing a bit too much and my laptop is fast enough as it is. I just remember an article Anand wrote about quad cores and 'buttery smooth' UI experience and I wondered whether it was possible with my current machine. I also had a desktop, but have since decided to try to live without since I moved.

The 'turbo33' function is not as great as it sounds. In fact, I can only really enable it via asus' physical button. I couldn't install the software button as that required desktop gadgets. I wasn't able to find any software that could manually override or adjust the degree of 'overclock'.

Have also decided to wait until haswell and wanted to boost this machine to the rafters before they are available.

I must say that the two things that really changed things were the ssd and increasing the 'minimum processor speed'. I haven't changed it to 100% yet, as I am slightly cautious about overheating.

 

[lovelaptops]

I'm sure this is obvious to most, but the same issues don't crop up with SB/IB ULV cpus