E6420 Owner's Thread

Hey Everyone,

I just got my e6420. One big issue I noticed is with the 2520M. When SpeedStep is enabled on my Windows 7 64 bit the processors WEI score is 2.9... when I disable SpeedStep, it jumps to 6.9! I reformatted this computer right when I got it, but I made sure to install all the drivers. Anyone else having this problem?

I'm also having the popping issue. I thought about replacing it, but I don't think they have a fix for it yet. So I'm planning to sit on it till they get that worked out.

 

What Windows power profile you are using? The Performance on Demand profile should allow the CPU to accelerate when there is work to be done.

John

 

I'm using balanced. Everything looks normal. The processor has the freedom to change from 5% to 100% performance (if SpeedStep was enabled I'm assuming). I'll change it to high performance, but I doubt that helps. Something is fishy with SpeedStep that doesn't let the drive quickly switch to max frequency.

A secondary problem that came up with me is that the whole computer hangs everyone once in a while for like 3-5 seconds before suddenly clicking back into gear and shooting through all the tasks. Ran a memtest and ruled the memory out. I installed an SSD (Vertex 3), could that be the culprit?

 

I got the same CPU and I don't have any issue with SpeedStep.....

I have a C300 on SATA-600, had encounter freezing issue when using Intel RAID + Drivers, check out: Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community

 

I'm not sure how soon I can get time with one of the Lenovos - right now we only have one of each in house - but as soon as I do, yes. The price difference between the T520 and W520 is small enough (vs. very large for the comparable T510/W510) that we are likely to standardize on the latter... don't know if the 1920 screen is any different between the two but I suspect pics will be from a W.

Disappointing to hear, although in my case I had to use those just go get anything visible on screen with the Intel driver - otherwise I had 2/3 of the screen black and 1/3 gray and nothing visible.

Did you compare the intel card (with or without those settings) to the Nvidia card (via optimus disabled in the BIOS.)

With the kernel I'm using (2.6.38.2-zen with Dell Laptop WMI support enabled) the keys do not work from the command line outside of X, but with both the Nvidia driver (optimus disabled, which is how I mainly run my machine lately) and with the Intel drivers the keys work correctly in X/KDE (Xorg server 1.10.something/KDE 4.6.2) I run Gentoo but the KDE is pretty much stock KDE. Nvidia driver is 270.41 I think but may be mistaken - it was the the first version in Gentoo unstable to work with Xorg 1.10.

 

Will try that. The SpeedStep is an oddity though. I ran the PassMark CPU Benchmark and found a 300% improvement when I turned off SpeedStep. Really weird. Does SpeedStep have its own driver? I may have to send this bad boy in.

 

Speedstep (and i7 turbo mode) should be supported out of the box on Windows 7. You might check that you have the latest Intel Chipset drivers (eg from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...s+Chipset&ProdId=3321&LineId=1088&FamilyId=40 , although the ones on Dell's site won't be far off.)

 

Note that there is also a specific Intel TurboBoost driver. TurboBoost post-dates Windows 7 (but may be included in W7 SP1).

John

 

Mash007

I just hope that You didn't found something accidentally, as this does not sound good... Could you try to replicate this behaviour? Try to describe SSD workload when this happen. THX.

 

While waiting for my e6420 I decided To get a new backpack for it.

Any recommendations? I preffer slim and light backpacks with room for the laptop, charger, a few documents and maybe a USB flash drive.