E6400 overheating throttling

What's *crazy*? Mine still displays the trotthling issue (see picture). For example, it just happened. I was just scanning some documents (that's the CSTbox.exe process) for my bookkeeping while listening to some web radio... Anyway, I've learned to live with it. As soon as I experience degrading performance I use RMClock to bring it back up.

i'm on BIOS A20. It's already my third mobo, CPU and heatsink. The guys from Dell TS give me the "that's just how it is" story now. I'm on the market for a new Dell Latitude system when they're being released.

 

If you remove the web radio from the equation, does it still occur?

 

I'm not sure whether this topic is still of interest to anyone, but I just had an interesting development on the "throttling" problem.

Some background: my E6400 (specs in signature) never had throttling issues despite being under serious load daily (even when used on my mattress -- which is not advisable BTW). Until...

A few days ago I installed Enemy Engaged (bought from GOG.com) and upgraded my Nvidia drivers to 196.xx. I experienced throttling while playing EE and I thought I needed to clean the vents. Cleaned them, throttling still happened. I thought EE was the culprit until my girlfriend experienced throttling while playing Sims 3.

So I did the logical thing, I reverted the Nvidia drivers to 186.xx, and guess what? No more throttling.

So from this experience it seems the latest Nvidia drivers cause the extreme slowdown for some unknown reason (which, by the way, might explain why Dell always releases Nvidia drivers very late relative to Nvidia's website).

Now don't go around blaming Nvidia, Dell or whoever because of one instance of this -- just try it on your system, and let us know if it works or not.

 

It might be the nVidia drivers throttling the GPU, which would then pass the computing over to the CPU I would think? Have you installed the 'NVIDIA System Tools with ESA Support' as outlined by GB in this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=360567

It has the ability to show a GPU monitor that will show you some nice graphs of the Core, Memory and Shader clocks, and will show you quite easily if the GPU itself is being throttled.

Since Dell replaced my MB and heatsink and I upgraded to A20 BIOS I have not had one issue with throttling at all. My fan also is great, instead of sitting on high all day at work on my dock at my desk, it now is very quiet and when I do run some cpu intensive processes, the fan nicely kicks into high and then maybe 2 to 3 minutes later returns to being whisper quiet, all with absolutely no throttling of the cpu at all, as was the case pre-replacement.

EDIT: That said i am not using 196.xx drivers as you can see below:

[Display]
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz (2395 MHz)
Operating System: Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit
DirectX version: 11.0
GPU processor: Quadro NVS 160M
Driver version: 195.62
CUDA Cores: 8
Core clock: 580 MHz
Shader clock: 1450 MHz
Memory clock: 400 MHz (800 MHz data rate)
Memory interface: 64-bit
Total available graphics memory: 2009 MB
Dedicated video memory: 256 MB
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 1753 MB
Video BIOS version: 62.98.3C.00.01
IRQ: 16
Bus: PCI Express x16

[Components]
nvCplUIR.dll 2.8.260.03 NVIDIA Control Panel
nvCplUI.exe 2.8.260.03 NVIDIA Control Panel
nvWSSR.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Workstation Server
nvWSS.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Workstation Server
nvViTvSR.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Video Server
nvViTvS.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Video Server
nvMoblSR.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Mobile Server
nvMoblS.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Mobile Server
nvDispSR.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Display Server
NVMCTRAY.DLL 8.17.11.9562 NVIDIA Media Center Library
nvDispS.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA Display Server
NVCPL.DLL 8.17.11.9562 NVIDIA Compatible Windows7 Display driver, Version 195.62
PhysX 09.09.0814 NVIDIA PhysX
NVCUDA.DLL 8.17.11.9562 NVIDIA CUDA 3.0.1 driver
nvGameSR.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA 3D Settings Server
nvGameS.dll 6.14.11.9562 NVIDIA 3D Settings Server

 

Another note, is that it could be that the the game is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive (or both).

Also, something to take note, that Nvidia drivers are not always the best... some drivers are more optimized for one set of games or for a specific GPU.

For instance, there was a 196 driver (I forgot the sub version), where TF2 (Team Fortress 2) was unplayable on my desktop computer (Geforce GTX 260), but Batman (newer and more demanding game) ran super smoothly. A new driver was out, still part of the 196 series, which fixed the problem in TF2 but slowed down a bit Batman.. both both are perfectly playable at max settings now.

Also, as time go by, Nvidia drops optimizing of drivers for older GPU's.It is not yet the case for the laptop (I expect another 2-3 years), but something to consider and keep note of, later on.

 

Enemy Engaged is definitely more CPU intensive -- it still uses DirectX 7

Still, a bit more experimenting shows that the newer 196.xx drivers also throttled on GTA San Andreas, a game that is recent enough to use the GPU properly yet old enough that this laptop should handle it well at 1280x800 with Medium settings.

So yeah, CyrusB, it might be as you suggested, the GPU being throttled and then everything gets handed over to the CPU. It still doesn't justify why the CPU throttles down despite never going over 75ºC.

 

If CybrusB is correct, than the northbridge GPU should be hot as more of the bus (GPU to CPU) is being used. And that northbridge throttles easily (~60C I think, or 65C)), which might explain why the CPU is only at 75C.

Also, another note to consider is that Nvidia drop optimization for both game as their are pretty old, hence explain why the GPU requires to do more work to a point to pass things to the CPU. But, that assumes that their is no throttling form the GPU part.


If you slide a pen under your laptop (to lift the laptop up, and promote better flow) does it reduces the throttling? In my case it does when I overclock my GPU... but then again I overclock preaty high (see signature).

Try the 197 series drivers for laptop.. it could also be a bug in the 196 drivers. Also, I hope you don't have the 196.75 drivers: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/nvidia-pulls-196-75-driver-amid-reports-its-frying-graphics-car/

 

OK guys, false alarm... I still get the throttling issues, whichever Nvidia drivers I use.

I think these problems started to arise just now (the laptop is more than 1 year old...) because I moved from Finland to Portugal and the ambient temperature here is higher.

I have now gotten throttling with Enemy Engaged, GTA San Andreas and The Sims 3. I think this rules out the "old games" theory. Also, it seems to happen even if I tone down the graphics a lot.

So, can someone please tell me how they got this issue fixed or whether they didn't get it fixed? I plan to annoy the hell out of Dell regarding this issue.

EDIT -- I started reading this thread backwards and found out about the ThrottleStop program. It's a good workaround, especially considering it was done by a user and is available for free (thanks, unclewebb!),

I'm still going to annoy Dell on this...

 

Actually, I have RMClock but it seems it's not doing its job properly. Can someone please tell me what I have to do on RMClock?

 

The first post in the under volting guide has some good info on setting up RMClock.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/235824-undervolting-guide.html

Keep in mind that RMC does not correctly support the newer 45nm Core 2 CPUs. You might also have to set the Minimum processor state in the control panel to 100% so it can control VID and FID without fighting with Windows.

Here's a trick to get RMC to properly support the 0.5 multipliers on the newer CPUs.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6130270-post4855.html