Samsung Series 9 NP900X3A - no Turbo Boost for i5-2467m at all?

Hi, my girlfriend has this model:

Samsung 9 NP900X3A-B01UB. It has Intel i5-2467m with 1.6GHz and a Turbo Boost up to 2.3GHz.

The problem was that some of the flash websites like i.e. Dell website works pretty slow, I need to wait for couple of seconds while the flash loads and after that the navigating becomes more smooth. In the first seconds it's very slow and it hangs.

Something was telling me, that it shouldn't be like that with such a processor. I use the HWINFO64 to watch the cloks and Prime to have a maximum load on both cores and the result was that with both on 100% the maximum frequency was 1600MHz (it was like 1598MHz or something like that). When unplugged it was half of that - almost 800MHz.

I was playing with Samsung FN+F6 (Balance, Max Performance, Long Lasting Battery) - the same effect -> never more than 1.6GHz... Is something wrong with the computer ?

The temp on both cores are like 70-72 Celcius while fully loaded.

Cinebench 11.5 (64bit, multi core cpu test) showed score 1.16 which is veery poor. It should have like 1.8. Maybe disabling programs like firewall, antivirus, chrome, etc. would make the score better but for sure I will not get 1.8.

 

Does the power plan make a difference? I seem to recall that if I used the "Samsung Optimized" power plan then I saw something similar. What happens if you use the "High Performance" power plan?

 

Balanced performance / performance on demand setting should let the turbo mode cut in when needed. 70C isn't hot enough to trigger throttling (which HWiNFO would show as throttling). Did you select an option for reduced fan noise?

You could try reinstalling the Intel chipset driver (or specific TurboBoost driver if you can find one) in case the system has forgotten that the capability exists.

John

 

The only difference which I've noticed between the plans are:

- when plug in: no difference
- when unplug: with "Balance" it reduces the speed by half and doesn't increase. With "Performance" it reduces the speed by half, but when needed it uses 1.6GHz as well.


I will look for drivers.

One thing seems odd - I managed to make a situation when the processor used the turbo boost but only for a like 1-2 seconds while still on 100% load.
Scenario: Chrome was closed with 10 Tabs. I opened it again and Chrome was trying to open all of them. The CPU usage was like 100%. No turbo boost. I unplugged and plugged in the power connector and then for a two seconds I've seen the Turbo boost...strange.
No such thighs when using Prime.

I also downloaded Intel Turbo Boost Monitor which shows that it's always 1.6GHz (except the '2 second turbo boost') but there is an information, that Turbo boost is in my system.

In bios there is only one option related to CPU: it's called like CPU energy Savings or something like that. But it doesn't make any visible difference.

In Services in Windows I don't see "Intel Turbo Boost" which can be enabled or disabled - do you guys have it?

Fan noise reduction seems to be off. The fan goes faster when I use i.e. Prime.

 

Started working. Maybe it was working from the very beginning but I don't know why it doesn't use Turbo Boost while running Prime (even when I select one thread instead of 4) or Cinebench R11 (also test on one core or two). Instead of that I left the HWINFO running and just use the computer as usual - the HWINFO64 shows that sometimes CPU is even tuned up to 2.3 GHz.

Any idea why these programs don't initiate the Turbo Boost mode?

 

Thanks for the update.

Any program that loads the CPU should automatically cause it to speed up until either the CPU reaches maximum speed or it can meet the damands of the program. That rule seems to be working up to 1.6GHz but TurboBoost has additional constraining parameters in particular the power / thermal limits.

HWiNFO does make an estimate of the power consumption but I'm not convinced that it is completely accurate.

Confusing, but maybe as a 17W component (power includes CPU, GPU and memory controller) it is less keen to stay in the turbo zone. A bit like the Intel IDA of a few generations back. Seeing it working was similar to searching for sub-atomic particles.

John

 

But you must remember that CPUs can change clock speeds more than thousand times a second, so you may not easily spot boosted speeds especially if the cooling system is poor.

 

@John Ratsey: you might be right, when the both CPU are 100% used it's faster and better for the whole performance to stay in the regular zone. I'm not so familiar with this feature. Need to read more about the Turbo Boost and the CPU usage relationship.

HWINFO has something like MAX/MIN values, so even microseconds events should be visible for me