Lock CPU clock speed - Vista

Hey,

I tried searching but i could not find a definate answer for what I am needing.

I run lots of Virtual machines on my m1210 (Intel T5600), I have found a problem where Speedstep is alternating the clock speed from 1.83 to 1 GHz. This causes my VM's to become laggy, and in worst cases lock up under linux.

I have gone to power options and set the minimum and maximum to 100, yet the clock speed still alternates between 1 and 1.83 GHz

I have tried to use RMClock, but this doesn't improve on the situation. I found a work around that causes Virtual PC to run the cpus at maximum load, this keeps the clock speed at 1.83, but CPU load is maxed out. I do not like this, things get hot, fans go on full blast.

The VM's do not put that great a load on the CPU's, the problem is the change in clock speed.

is there a utility for Vista that can deffinately lock the clock speed at MAX? It seems this could be done in XP fairly easily. But the inbuilt power management in Vista is not locking my clocks speeds at max.

Please help, this is becoming very annoying, all I require is to keep the clock speed at 1.83, while i do not need to max the load on the cpu's.

 

I assume that uninstalling SpeedStep driver has no effect on the cpu throttling in Vista?

 

When I select high performace and my laptop is plugged in, my processor runs at full speed. I believe you can adjust the CPU speed for different profiles in the power mangement section of Vista. I have mine set at 100% in high performance mode, 50/100 in balanced & 50/50 in power saver.

 

How do I uninstall/reinstall speed step driver?

i tried changing the profiles, but it will not keep it at 1.83 all the time, will still drop to 1 intermitently

 

On an XP machine you would find it in Add/Remove, so should it be in the equivalent on Vista. As for reinstalling it, you would likely have to get it back on the laptop mfr/Intel websites.

 

I can't find anything like that, do intel provide drivers for thei cpu's? Vista is using a MS driver, but i cant find nything!!

 

just made a little app that might help.
If you run the attached file, it'll start a tiny little program which simply runs an infinite loop at the lowest possible priority. So when the CPU would otherwise idle (and lower the clock speed), it'll run this instead. When the CPU has things to do, they will be run instead because they have higher priority.

Sure, it might be more elegant to simply force the system to disable SpeedStep, but if you can't do that in Vista, this might be an alternative...

One problem I can see with this is that it's singlethreaded. If you want the same effect on multicore systems, you might have to start one instance of the program for each core.

 

Ugh. I should have figured that Vista had native Intel drivers for this. I was hoping that it would default to a generic driver (like in XP), which would have disabled SpeedStep.

I could have suggested trying to uninstall the driver directly from Device Manager, but Vista would just keep reinstalling it automatically over and over again each time............

 

AFAIK Intel processors do not have a driver that you can uninstall like the AMD processors do. Intel speedstep under windows XP and windows vista is built into the power management console under the control panel and you cannot remove it. This means that the only way to "disable"(soft turn off really) it was to change to to the home/desktop setting which would then cause the processor to run at full blast.

The only time you need a driver for Intel speedstep is if you are running windows 2000 or earlier, and the funny thing is Intel will not provide the driver for this purpose, you have to get them from your manufacturer and they don't support windows 2000 or earlier anymore.

 

Wow, a lot has changed on the Intel side. My ThinkPad had an actual SpeedStep driver (preinstalled with IBM PM software), I figured they were still using them (as AMD still does for PowerNow). Sadly, I guess this trick only works on the AMDs now. Thanks for the correction!

 

I can use the workaruond to make Virtual PC run the cpus at full blast, This is a really bad workaround, as the cpu's max out and things get really hot.

I do not need to max out the cpu's, all i need is to keep the clock speed at max, but then the cpu's would be under light load, damn you MS!!!! lol..

Can anyone confirm that if they use the high performance setting for cpu in power management, in Vista, that teh clock speed will stay constantly at its maximum?

I am using RMclock to check clock speed.

Also, disabling speed step in teh Bios makes the cpu run at its lowest clock speed!! wtf, disabling speed step in bios should make it use its max clock speed, no?

 

I think the inability to lock the cpu speed at max speed is more down to the BIOS rather than the driver or Vista. Have you tried NHC? I believe the newest release should be Vista compatible. I am able to set the cpu speed max by selecting the High performance power profile.

This is again most likely a bios limitation or by design feature by dell to stop overheating or low battery by people who dont know what they are disabling.

Well, only on XP systems. AMD cpu drivers are included by default in Vista.

 

Hi Miner.

Thanks for your help.

What is NHC? is it another utility like RMclock? if i use that do is there a way to disable the Vista control? or does NHC override it?

Also, have you monitred your clock speed when using Vista's power management max settings? does it stay on max clock speed full time, mine drops occasionally, seems to stay at higher clock speed than other settings though.

sorry to keep asking, just i am very close to the solution of my annoying problem.

so you tink it may be the Bios? damn i just upgraded to latest A07, i might go back to A06 and try that.

thanks again for your help

 

NHC or Notebook hardware Control is just like RM Clock but supposedly has better support for Intel based processors. So, you might have better luck trying to set the clockspeed through that. Also have you tried disabling speedstep in the BIOS and then using either RM or NHC set the cpu to the maximum multipler/speed??

Vista High performance profile does set my cpu to highest frequency always and it stays there. It only drops back to the minimum if I unplug the system from A/C power, in which case the cpu goes back to using speedstep/powernow.

 

Hmm. So I guess no more driver releases from AMD either at this point (unless the current cpu architecture changes drastically enough to make the native Vista driver(s) obsolete?). I'm guessing that is how it must work then.

 

You should be able to do it under RMClock. Under profiles assign "Maximal performance" to AC power profile. Then, go under the profile for Maximal performance and do this:

Select the box that says "Use P-state transitions" and select ONLY the last one (for me, it is 6, with a multiplier of 12x).

Also select "Use throttling (OCDM) and ONLY select the last box (100% . Hit apply.

This should set your clock to max. Your CPU load should still be normal.

 

Hey guys haven't had much time to work on this. Will give it a go tonight, thanks for the suggestions.

 

Update.

I managed to install NHC, had to get the DELL version, it seemed quite buggy, messed with the brightness of my profiles. It did say that clock speed was locked at MAX, However, RMC disagreed.

Vista does seem to control the clock speed, but it will still drop down to 1GHz intermittendly, like every 5 seconds it will drop for a split second...

I updated the intel chipset driver, the search contniues....NHC looked promising hopefully by the time it is full release it will be able to do what i require.