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Vista throttling CPU speed

S

sswingle

Diamond Member
I just installed Vista on my notebook. It has a Pentium M 2 GHz processor. Since I have installed, the fan has not turned off once on this thing. I can only assume its because the OS is keeping the CPU clocked at 100% instead of scaling it back. My power settings are default which I believe says to go back to 5%.

If I go to power settings and manually set max to 50%, it does lower to 49%. Why wont it, when idling at 4% usage, drop down to something lower on its own??
 
Open your Reliability and Performance monitor to see what speed your CPU is currently running at. Plus you can see if any programs are keeping it pegged.
 
Its very weird. Almost as if it is doing the opposite of what it is supposed to do. If the Green % is low, 4-18%, the blue max frequency stays at 100%. But then if the CPU is doing MORE work, then the Max freq number will go down. For example I was installing office, and the cpu was maxed at 100, but the blue max freq dropped down to about 50% that entire time. As soon as the install finished and the CPU usage dropped, the max freq went back up to 100. Hope that makes sense.

Edit, took a screenshot of the monitor. The CPU was maxed out at first, and then slowed down, and you can see with the blue line what the max frequency does.
Here
 
System is a Sony VGN-A270P. I dont have any of the sony vista updates, when I tried to do them the first time around I started getting blue screens, so I rolled it back and haven't tried to load them again. Do not see a bios update anywhere though.
 
Originally posted by: ScottSwingleComputers
System is a Sony VGN-A270P. I dont have any of the sony vista updates, when I tried to do them the first time around I started getting blue screens, so I rolled it back and haven't tried to load them again. Do not see a bios update anywhere though.
Click to expand...
1) what's your CPU load like, in Task Manager? Idle?

2) what is your CPU's frequency when it's just sitting there? Check with Intel's utility. If it isn't stepping down, you may need a BIOS update to get Enhanced SpeedStep working on Vista. That's speculative on my part, based on recently noticing a different motherboard needing such an update.

 
Using the Intel utility, I can confirm that when the Max shows 100% it is 2 GHZ. When that percentage drops, the GHZ drops accordingly. But again, the only time it drops is when usage is heavy instead of low...
I cannot find a BIOS update ANYWHERE that is newer than one needed for XP SP2. Ran through all the updates on Sonys site and still having problems. Will probably go back to XP at this rate.
 
So you're saying the system's Enhanced Speedstep is working backwards? 😕 The CPU MHz drops when load is high, and goes up to full MHz when the system's idle?
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
So you're saying the system's Enhanced Speedstep is working backwards? 😕 The CPU MHz drops when load is high, and goes up to full MHz when the system's idle?
Click to expand...

Crazy, isn't it. I have a new issue also, I cant change the LCD brightness. I installed the software, and when I push the button it comes up on screen showing me the different levels, but the actual brightness doesn't change. Unfortunately it got stuck on a dark setting as opposed to a bright one 🙁
 
Originally posted by: InlineFive
Can you see and modify the ACPI settings in the BIOS? Sounds some kind of power management support is missing.
Click to expand...

The BIOS is very limited. Basically lets you set the system time, order of boot drives, and a password.
 
Hi,

I have a similiar problem.

After about 30 seconds after loading the CPU maxes out 100%. Task Manager shows svchost.exe doing this.

After a bit of looking the only way to stop this is disable the windows update service. This is on a delayed start and is the direct cause of the high cpu utlisation.

To stop it. type services.msc on the start menu search bar. Locate Windows update service in the list. Click stop, then set it to disable. Reboot your machine and see what happens.

The only downside is microsoft updates won't work unless you manually start this service.

It may help get you going until microsoft release a patch for this as it is quite common.
 
Originally posted by: Chuckee
Hi,

I have a similiar problem.

After about 30 seconds after loading the CPU maxes out 100%. Task Manager shows svchost.exe doing this.

After a bit of looking the only way to stop this is disable the windows update service. This is on a delayed start and is the direct cause of the high cpu utlisation.

To stop it. type services.msc on the start menu search bar. Locate Windows update service in the list. Click stop, then set it to disable. Reboot your machine and see what happens.

The only downside is microsoft updates won't work unless you manually start this service.

It may help get you going until microsoft release a patch for this as it is quite common.
Click to expand...

I wish that worked. At least for my situation it didn't. The reliability monitor only tells half of the story. I'm running RightMark CPU Clock Utility and it reports that my core clock frequency drops to 1Ghz, but it also shows throttling. It throttles the CPU to 100Mhz!!!

I'm running a core duo 2Ghz Dell e1705. This mainly happens when I run Dreamscene. This will trigger within 2 minutes of starting Dreamscene. It also happens at other times, but not to this extent. The worst part is that when Running dreamscene, before the throttling starts, the CPU usage is only at 12~25%.

This is soooo irritating.
 
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