E6400 overheating throttling

HWmonitor is another program that shows the chipset temp (Its called ACPI and i suppose its the same sensor) Isnt 55c on the ACPI quite normal temps for the Nvidia ones?. At what chipset temps does the throttling begin with the ones that have the problems with Nvidia cards?

 

No, that is because your system throttles. Do the test again, but this time on Everest, show the system speed instead of the temp, like I did (system speed on the back, and the temp on the stress test).

In FACT, I am able to replicate your temps (well very close), if I unplug my laptop power, and set the system power management option to Power Saver.

 

I don't have any event id 7's either, but I think it's because we are running XP (I believe I remember reading you run XP) and not Vista. According to tinkerdude! this is a Vista only event:

It'd be good to know if there's a way to tell in XP if you got the event though, but there doesn't appear to be a way other than noticing sluggish performance. I have not seen any poor performance at all on my system yet and I've had it 2 weeks now (running the NVidia).

[EDIT]
I should mention though that before I wiped my drive and installed XP the laptop had Vista Basic on it (that's how it came from Dell). I ran several graphics intensive tests while I still had Vista installed and I didn't get any event id 7's then either. You can refer to this post for reference:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=348221&page=13

 

You have to consider that XP probably don't have such detection system.
And again, I have Vista and WIn7 both 64-bit and no issue here... but some do on the 32 and 64-bit.

 

There are no throttling events in the Event Viewer during the period I took the first test. The chipset temperature needs to reach 55C in order to trigger the throttling.

I have done another test with the power option set to High performance and the results are basically identical.

 

And just in case you would feel better with more proof, the attached capture shows HWMonitor (CORRECTION:I8KfanGUI, not HWMonitor) indicating a Chipset temp of 64C (with no throttling).

***NOTE*** ***CORRECTION*** ***NOTE***

I8KfanGUI is NOT a reliable measurement tool for Dell Latitude E6X00 systems. The E6X00's are not on the compatibility list for I8KfanGUI as of 8/4/2009. The reported temperatures are not reliable. Therefore this report should be disregarded, especially the figure of 64C - it is a totally unreliable figure and should be ignored.

 

This is important and helpful (how did you confirm this?)

 

Same thing I did to reproduce the throttling under windows. Played DVD for about 15 to 20 minutes on MPlayer or VLC. Suddenly, the audio will start to be scratchy and video frames will start to freeze/drop. Then the system will almost crawl to a stop. Basically the same things that happen under Windows can be replicated under Linux. Run "top" command under console and no new application taking up processing but CPU is 100% utilized.

p.s.:I have Intel graphics.

 

Well, I'm really not sure that's correct. ACPI doesn't mean chipset. ACPI means Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. What makes you assume this connection? On my system, ACPI temp as reported by HWmonitor is definitely not the same as Chipset temp reported by I8kfanGUI (the readings are totally different).

55C should be a quite normal temp for any chip on any system. Maybe I don't understand your question.

Depends. From testing just now, one time the chipset temp as reported by I8kfanGUI was 68C when throttling kicked in. Another time, using a different stress test, it was 59C. So on my system, at least, I don't see a tight correlation between throttling and Chipset temp as reported by I8kfanGUI.

***NOTE*** ***CORRECTION*** ***NOTE***

I8KfanGUI is NOT a reliable measurement tool for Dell Latitude E6X00 systems. The E6X00's are not on the compatibility list for I8KfanGUI as of 8/4/2009. The reported temperatures are not reliable. Therefore above testing report should be disregarded, especially the figures of 68C and 59C - they are totally unreliable figures and should be ignored.

In fact, I've yet to find any single internal temperature sensor measurement that even comes close to correlating perfectly with throttling. The GPU temperature is the closest I've found and it's still pretty far from a perfect correlation.



Actually, the temperature of the air coming out of the exhaust port has the highest correlation of anything I've seen. Throttling kicks in at low 50's C when docked, low 60's when undocked. I measure it with a thermocouple/multimeter.

***************
Dell Latitude E6500/P8400/NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M/4GB/1920x1200/E-Port Advanced Port Replicator (Dock)/WinXP SP3

 

You should be able to view the current processor speed in at least two ways under XP.

1. Check the General tab in the "System" Control Panel applet (under the "Maintenance and Performance" group). It should show both the rated frequency and the current operating frequency. See attached screen capture, which shows my system when it's fully throttled. This display doesn't refresh itself over time. It will only read the current operating speed when you bring up the window.

2. Use XP Performance Monitor (c:\windows\system32\perfmon.exe). Use the plus-sign icon in the graph area to add another trace. From the "ProcessorPerformance" group, choose "% of Maximum Frequency". When you're throttling, it will read something less than 100% (on my system the possible values are 99%, 70% and 35%, but they could be different on yours). See attached screen capture which depicts my system just having recovered from throttling.

Also, if you take the time to read my full report, you'll discover ways to monitor all aspects of throttling (including the normally invisible On-Demand Clock Modulation).