X220 - gimped performance unless plugged in

[thecrafter]

Hi,

For some reason when browsing, scrolling over images will be choppy unless I'm plugged in to a power source. For example this site: http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110509/tc_digitaltrends/hackergroupanonymousissuessharprespo...

When on battery, it will be choppy to scroll until it's past the image, then it will be smooth. When on power source, it will be smooth even when scrolling over the image.

I've tried changing my power plan when on battery to maximum performance, it did not help.

Any ideas?

[wyld]

what browser are you using? i am chrome 11 and on battery i scroll the page in your link very smooth. i also have 8gb ram and am not running much else besides chrome right now.

[thecrafter]

Firefox. RAM and stuff doesn't matter, because it's smooth when on power and choppy when on battery. So it's something with power savings or along those lines

[ColonelONeill]

Are you on FF4 with HW acceleration turned on?

[chaihg]

Let me guess. You should also be hearing a sound from the exhaust area every time you scroll or open tabs in firefox.

Am I right. Go to a silent room and test this.

[thecrafter]

ColoneOneill: FF4 with HW, yes. But once again, regardless what verison, what features it has, and what the computer specs are or what color underwear I'm wearing at the time - the fact is that its smooth when plugged in and choppy when not...

[ColonelONeill]

Open Task Manager go to the CPU graph, and scroll repeatedly. It hits around 55% for me if I scroll up and down repeatedly.

(P8700 on battery clocked to 1.86GHz.)

[thecrafter]

ColonelOneill: Peaks at about 30% usage when scrolling up and down that image

chaihg: interesting. I didn't notice but you are right. But it isn't from the fan, it's from the motherboard/CPU. Some kind of system noise, not fan noise

[chaihg]

Ha . . so you are not alone. Every x-series thinkpad has this problem. It is something to do with browser using GPU wherein it should be using CPU.

I am wondering its the case with every integrated graphics thinkpad.

One more observaation is that even the charger (believe me it sounds stupid) makes a shrill noise when you scroll.

Check it out.

[wyld]

I just enabled GPU acceleration in Chrome and relaunched. It doesn't display these symptoms. Is it just a FF4 thing?