M677 question

Hello everyone, this is my first post in this wonderful forum.

My problem is as follows: i have an MSI M677X Crystal Collection laptop, from which I'm typing right now. To put it short, the problem is that CPU-Z and Everest Ultimate report HT link speed at 400MHz. As far as i know this should be 800MHz, right? It's an AMD Turion64X2 TL-56, Trinidad, 90nm. I thought this was because of the new BIOS, v.706 so i put the older one on the site back, and there was no change. I even disabled any power management features in the BIOS but the HT link speed remains at 400 even if i run a stress test on the CPU or game. Isn't a HT speed this low a performance bottleneck?
Other than that, it seems to work normal...Vista Ultimate SP1.
When I bought the laptop it came with 1GB ram, we upgraded it to 2GB at the store with an additional 1GB Kingmax module (it has Transcend in it)

Any ideas? or am I worrying for nothing?

 

I'm not all that familiar with this model. The Turion 64X2 TL-56 is definitely capable of a 800mhz HT Link. Of course, It all depends on what the HT Link multiplier is set to. I don't think this model has an HT Link Multiplier option in the BIOS (the manual makes no mention of it) so it may be hard coded. Maybe someone with some experience with this model will chime in.

 

In vista what is your power management setting?

It may be on balanced, change it to high performance and check the link then.

 

Thank you for both quick replies!
I have done some more investigation on my part.
Firstly, i have tried all 3 power management settings, both plugged in and on battery, and the HT link speed remains constant. Only the CPU multiplier and frequency change. Also, I thought i should remove 1 SO-DIMM stick and see what happens. I removed the Kingmax and left the original Transcend in. The system adjusted itself to a single-channel configuration, but the HT link remained the same. So with 1GB memory and december 2006 BIOS that is the exact shipping configuration. That means that it was shipped with this HT link speed locked?
It seems unusual, as a friend has an Acer 5520 with Turion64 X2 TL-58, and of course his HT link speed is constantly set at 800 MHz. However i have also seen Asus laptops (Z92T i think) with configs identical to the M677 (incuding the mainboard chipsets, Nvidia Geforce 6100/C51MV), and those had 800MHz HT link.
So i believe the HT multiplier is set by the mainboard, but the setting is inaccessible in the AMI BIOS (old or new). Given that, do you think Vista can change the HT link dynamically? As in do you think this could be handled by some drivers that Vista doesnt have as standard although the chipset is pretty old? That it doesn't recognize performance states correctly and thus never increases the HT link speed?
In Windows Experience Index, the processor scores 4,7 and the RAM 5,7. Do you think these are normal scores?
I'm sorry for the lenghty post, but there was a lot of fiddling with the laptop this morning

 

I have TL-52 and HT is 800Mhz DDR=1600Mhz? Why your is 400Mhz? But I would not like.

 

Well, it was something within the BIOS or controller chip of some sort. I thought i would reset BIOS and EC chip again -- removed the battery for 20 mins, put it back in, entered BIOS and pressed F9, and upon restart it seemed to have gotten back to normal (800MHz). Will monitor this further.
However, i noticed the 400MHz HT link with both the 1.14 and the 7.09 BIOSes. I had updated to 7.09 in april, went back to 1.14 just now to troubleshoot this issue. I currently have 1.14 onboard. Anybody knows the difference between the two? I know 1.xx is for retail and 7.xx is for OEM. Should I update again? Any difference?

 

If i remenber correctly the 1.xx was one of the original releases. The 7.xx was released for vista and enables some advanced power management features for the cpu that were no available with the 1.xx bios