X220 cpu throttling problem - Power Manager and Windows Power option conflict

[tatyau]

I got the same problem about the stuck cpu speed. Here are some interesting finding.

(1) When the cpu is locked at 800mhz, it shows "Balance"  as system performance in Lenovo Power Manager.  But in Windows Power options, somehow the cpu is set to 5% to both Min and Max processor states. If I put 100% back to Max processor states, the throttling will be to normal immediately.

(2) Back to Lenovo Power Manager, even if I select "Energy Saver" as profile under advance mode, when I go back to normal mode and move the power bar a little bit, the profile stays as "Energy Saver", but he cpu number is changed again in Window power options.

(3) When the system starts from boot, the system will select "High performance", minutes later, it jumps back to Energy saver.

I think it is total software related problem, something wrong with Lenovo Power manager profile or rapidboot.

[chaosphoenix]

Hm. Thats actually a pretty good point. I'll look into that later when I have the time too. Having both the Lenovo power options panel and the Windows power options panel is definitely confusing.. and if the two of them don't always line up.. that might explain some of this.

[mellospace]

tatyau,

So is there a way to disable or uninstall the lenovo power manager and just use the windows power manager instead and then perform the test again to see if the throttling occurs. Also, what about if you make it high performance in both the lenovo and the windows power manager, if you make all the settings the same, maybe then it will work as expected.

Thanks for your input on this. Very interesting observation.

[OtherSteve]

I have already tested this without Power Manager installed; the behavior remains the same.  I have not monitored the Power Plans for switching automatically, however.

[chaosphoenix]

Just throttled myself down to 800 and checked Lenovo power manager and windows power manager. Neither had their profiles changed (still on power source optimized). Also, I checked in advanced settings->Processor power management, and both low/high settings were 100/100 for plugged in, and 5/100 for battery power.. toggling these up and down and saving changes didn't unthrottle my system.

So unfortunately my findings dont match yours. Time to reboot because being on an 800 mhz system sucks.

[unclewebb]

Has anyone tried using ThrottleStop?

The monitoring area in ThrottleStop actually follows the Intel recommended monitoring method for Core i CPUs as outlined in their November 2008 Turbo White Paper while most other software does not.

http://download.intel.com/design/processor/applnots/320354.pdf

With ThrotleStop you can watch exactly what each thread of your CPU is doing.  When lightly loaded, CPU-Z and HWiNFO32 have decided not to follow the Intel recommended method.

CPU-Z: "Of course I admit that CPU-Z is not accurate anymore at idle on latest Intel generations, that is why TMonitor was developped."

HP recently came out with an updated bios for their Envy 17 that also had similar problems with Sandy Bridge CPUs throttling down to 798 MHz.  Give ThrottleStop a try and you might be able to solve this issue until Lenovo gets around to releasing a bios update.

ThrottleStop 3.00

http://www.techinferno.com/downloads/?did=1

[atomicminded]

Interesting.  CMOD and CHIP are both at 100%, on balanced mode.  Does that mean that Lenovo is using some other type of throttling method?

[unclewebb]

Can you click on the Set Multiplier option in ThrottleStop and set that to Turbo and snap your CPU out of this problem when it happens?

Multiplier throttling is the most common problem and sometimes you can force this back to normal.  Use ThrottleStop with the Windows high performance profile.

Post a screen shot of ThrottleStop when you are having this problem so I can have a look at what it shows and how you have ThrottleStop set up.

Also try running ThrottleStop with the Log FIle option checked so you will have an exact record of what your CPU was doing while you are gaming or watching a video or whatever.  That might show what is triggering the throttling.

[atomicminded]

Yes, I tested it today.  I used the set multipler function, and was able to fix the throttling.  I set it to turbo mode, and under the most extreme cpu and gpu load combined, my i7 2620m cpu would turbo up to around 2.7-2.9ghz, which is correct when I look at the TDP of the processor (35watts).

[unclewebb]

Thanks for testing that out.  I'll send the guy that started this thread a PM to let him know that using ThrottleStop can help solve this problem.  Maybe he can post a link to ThrottleStop in his first post so other users can give this a try.  It's helped the new Sandy Bridge HP and Asus laptops so I'm not surprised that it is working on the Lenovo too.