Re: Rmclock 64 Bit Windows 7 12
Laverne Levenstein
I'm not sure if this is happening to anyone else, but I've recently been experiencing some serious issues with my Dell Latitude E6400 (with latest BIOS, and all other relevant updates) while surfing, playing flash videos full screen, etc. After extended periods, Windows Vista slows to a halt to the point I can barely minimize a window without severely delayed lag. I've also noticed that the typical games I play have also had its frame rates severely slowed down as well.
I have been trying out Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 and also the latest ESET Smart Security 4 Beta, but I've doubt these are the culprit. Just for good measure, I've uninstalled these but the issue still seems to persist.
As I use this mainly for graphic design (using latest Adobe CS4), it's quite critical to be able to handle most of these tasks. For that matter, as a $2,000+ laptop, I'd at least assume to be able to surf and play flash videos without issues. I've been told my Dell tech support to run Diagnostics, but everything seems to complete successfully. They haven't gotten back to me again yet - but I've purchased a 3 year Complete Cover warranty - what am I to do?
I'm a Canadian consumer and have heard nothing but the best from them - but as I am currently lodged in Hong Kong, I purchased this through Dell Hong Kong and am worried that my warranty (even though purchased), will not be rewarded as well as the Canadian counterpart without a severe delay - which means my work will be compromised.
The only "fix" is to get a new laptop.... You have to do the work to prove to them this issue is the hardware. Log the temp and CPU together and save it for proof to send to Dell. I kept at it and eventually they gave me a brand new E6510 as a replacement for my E6500. But I was working with their Pro I.T. Support, which is much more understanding than the lower support levels I believe. The E6510 is flawless (sans a bluetooth driver issue that will wipe your C:\...but that's another thread).
I ran into this issue after upgrading my E6400 to Windows 7. Got tons of the "speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware" messages in Event Viewer, and when this was happening, my computer wouldn't be running anything but would slow to a crawl because of this undercloking of the CPU.
I called Dell, demanded to speak with a manager...who didn't really admit to this being a chronic problem, but reading between the lines (so to speak)...it seemed like he wasn't terribly surprised. I'm supposed to hear back from Tier 2 today. Regardless I'm going to hold the onsite tech hostage until this problem goes away, even if that means replacing every single part in the laptop :)
So, my question for this community is: why didn't I ever experience this problem on XP? I've always thought the laptop ran hot (compared to my Thinkpad), but it never actually throttled down the CPU to an unusable level. Is it because XP wasn't smart enough to interact with SpeedStep and throttle it down?
What an experience I've had with Dell. Fought tooth and nail to get them to acknowledge this issue, but was told I had to either return the laptop to Depot Repair (which I'm sure would have resulted in it being returned back to me without resolution, just like the last three times I've done so) or pay for onsite warranty. From day 1, I said that I would like to pay for onsite and get moving quickly. A week later I finally get a call from the onsite technician to schedule an appointment, but for some reason all the parts he had just received had also just arrived on my doorstep via FedEx. Since it would be another week before he could come up and perform the fix, I choose to replace the parts myself. Laptop is finally working without the underclocking and overheating issues. Looks like they're including better thermal adhesive on the new heat sinks. Now...if only I can get my onsite warranty charge refunded. Regardless, it's goodbye Dell forever...
After installing the new MB, heatsink, bottom panel and case, I'm still getting the underclocking errors thrown in my Win 7 admin event viewer. I got an email from a Dell rep asking about status, but of course I can't respond because there is no phone number and the email address us_small_busi...@dell.com gets you an automated message indicating the account is no longer active. What a great customer experience.
I have this very same problem where the computer will randomly get pegged to 100% CPU usage and I cannot do anything. I notice it more when I am docked in my docking station on my Windows 7 system. I just upgraded to the A28 Bios so we'll see if that helps with anything.
As most people here i lived over 2 years now with the same issue, CPU frequency going from 2.8 Ghz to 0.8 Ghz as soon as i started to go intensive tasks, like gaming, computing, .... very annoyed. Tried most tips here with no results, and then ....
I tried the throttlestop utility, and the problem is solved. it just prevents the Dell BIOS from changing the "clock modulation" and slow down the CPU. click this checkbox "clock modulation", turn on th protection, and thats it, no more slowdowns even after intensive tasks !!!
i have this machine for almost 2 years. i had before the same problem, only that i dont have a docking station or a external monitor connected to it. in my case, the problem appeared when i watch a flash video in high resolution, or when i wake up from sleep mode.
while im running windows, i dont have anymore the issue. the solution i tooked from this post, i run a program automaticly at startup, and it controls the throttle of the system. also shows the processor temperature in case im doing something processor demanding. it has been more than a year running without the problem. FOR ME IS THE SOLUTION.
I have a similar problem. My e6400 was purchased in 2009, has BIOS version A29 (and I plan to update it to recently released A30), is sitting in the docking station and ... has 100% CPU load with loudly working fan. I will look at the cleaning of the fan, as suggested, as soon as the long task (loading some 10000 emails from a remote server) is complete.
I've a laptop with a Core2Dou T5600 cpu and i've been using powertop to try to measure my battery power usuage and noticed from powertop that under linux my laptop can only go to C4 doesn't exist because it only lists C0, C1, C2, and C3 as the max. Under windows however when i use rmclock to manage my cpu it could go to C4. What's the reason for this?
It's mostly a BIOS thing. Some BIOS hide C3/C4 when on AC power, and others show only C3 which is really a C4 underneath when on battery. Note that the 'max_cstate:C8' value in /proc/acpi/processor/*/power tells the maximum number of C-states the Linux kernel can handle, not the number of C-states implemented in your hardware.
ahhh i see, thanks. I dual boot, so windows when using the battery the lowest power usage i got was around 7-8W but on linux it seems like i doesn't go any lower than 11W so that why i was worried that the C3 states was wasting so much power. So is linux just not every good at power management unlike windows?
Linux has its drawback. But what makes it wonderful is that its always getting better. Intel's initiatives (lesswatt.org) is really helpfull. So if you use a recent kernel (2.6.21 for x86 and 2.6.24 for x86_64), the dyntiks lowers your power consumption.
Thanks big_gie, you're a real help, and yes lesswatt.org is awesome. I've been going there this past week and just trying out all the tricks to optimize my laptop and it is very helpful and bring the numbers down. Just not as much as windows but that's alright,I still like Linux better than windows even though i've only been using linux for about 2 months now.
We have some users which are using lower-CPU powered machines and they're encountering slow response times using our web application. Is there any way for me to do testing so that I can simulate lower CPU rates?
Most new CPUs multiplier can easily be lowered (Intel: Speedstep, AMD: PowerNow!). This is used to save power. With RMclock you can manually adjust your multiplier and thus lower your frequency and make your pc slower. I use this tool myself so I can tell you that it works.
Another slight option in addition to those above is to boot windows in a lower resource config. Go to the start menu,, select run and type MSCONFIG. You can go to the boot tab, click on advanced options and limit the memory and number of of processsors. It's not as robust as the above, but it does give you another option.
Newer CPUs feature architecture improvements which make them more efficient on an equvialent clock basis than older chips. Incidentally, because of this virtual machines are a bad way of testing performance for "older" tech as well.
Your best bet is to simply buy a couple of older machines. Using similar RAM (types and amounts), processor, motherboard chipsets, hard drives, and video cards. All of which feed into the total performance of the machine itself.
I bring the other components up because changing just one of them can have an impact on even browser performance. A prime example is memory. If your clients are constrained to something like 512MB of RAM, the machines could be performing a lot of hard drive access for VM swaps, even for just running the browser. In this situation downgrading the clock speed on your processor while still retaining your 2GB (assuming) of RAM would still not perform anywhere near the same even if everything else was equal.
Isak Savo'sanswer works, but can be a bit finicky, as the modern tpl is going to try and limit cpu load as much as possible. When I tested it out, It was hard (though possible with some testing) to consistently get the types of cpu usages I wanted.
Then I remembered, , which does this already. Highly recommended. As an aside, I found this util from playing old 90s games on modern machines, back when frame rate was pegged to cpu clock time, making playing them on modern computers way too fast. Great utility.
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