SRL Archive - News and General

I have the hp envy 17 3D laptop which has the quad core i7-720QM processor

The clock speed is 1.6 GHz, with turbo boost up to 2.8 GHz, which is supposed to activate when your CPU is under heavy load

I have Core Temp installed which also shows me the frequency of my processor

When my start up my laptop, the frequency fluctuates, but often goes above 2.5 GHz, and then settles at around 1.4 GHz when nothing is open

When I bot, i use 8 simbas, with 8 different accounts running simultaneously. I noticed that the frequency rarely goes above 1.6 GHz, why is this??

Please keep in mind that i don't have much of an idea of how turbo boost really works, but it seems odd that the frequency will not rise when my CPU is under load from 8 runescapes.

Thoughts?

There is so many variables that could be happening.

Is that a quad core or a dual core version?

Well does 8 SMARTS tax you CPU enough to make it lag? If it doesn't need to, it's not going to bump up the clock speed. Turbo Boost is only made for certain high intensity applications and it's going to take in to account current processor temp and other factors as well.

Try hitting it harder with Prime95 or video encoding and see if it jumps or not. You may have a glitch in the driver/bios or it just may not deem it as needed at the time.

Btw, haha just noticed who you were.

quad core, i'll try prime95 on it and tell you what happens

iirc turbo boost goes on a core by core basis and it's possible 8 simbas spread over 4 cores and/or 8 threads isn't enough to make it come into effect. (The mobile versions have HT right?)

From: Capricorn
iirc turbo boost goes on a core by core basis and it's possible 8 simbas spread over 4 cores and/or 8 threads isn't enough to make it come into effect. (The mobile versions have HT right?)

Mine has HT :p.
Edit: Just for the hell of it, http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43537&code=Intel%C2%AE+Core%E2%84%A2+i5-430M+Processor+%283M+Cache%2c+2.26+GHz%29 :p.

From: Mr.Klean
Well does 8 SMARTS tax you CPU enough to make it lag? If it doesn't need to, it's not going to bump up the clock speed. Turbo Boost is only made for certain high intensity applications and it's going to take in to account current processor temp and other factors as well.

Try hitting it harder with Prime95 or video encoding and see if it jumps or not. You may have a glitch in the driver/bios or it just may not deem it as needed at the time.

Btw, haha just noticed who you were.

@Bolded portion: Who is he?

Friend from school haha :P and according to this…

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122

it has HT

Ran prime95 and still did not rise above 1.6GHz

From: mrawesome

Ran prime95 and still did not rise above 1.6GHz

Right so it has 8 threads.

I don't think prime95 should be run on a laptop. It's possible you have some options somewhere in HP's* power options or in window's power options that stop it from using too much power.

*if you didn't reformat/reinstall

From: Capricorn
Right so it has 8 threads.

I don't think prime95 should be run on a laptop. It's possible you have some options somewhere in HP's* power options or in window's power options that stop it from using too much power.

*if you didn't reformat/reinstall

Why not? Prime95 is not changing any settings it's only stress testing the components. If a laptop's components couldn't handle what they were meant to I would take it back. If you're worried about heat he has a laptop cooler anyways.

It may be engaging the extra cores and the program may be not reporting right. Try using a different program like CPU-Z. 8 smarts should struggle on a 1.6ghz quad

Edit: Lol I've got the dumb today. CPU-Z Is what you want not speedfan lmao .

alright well CPU-Z is showing a higher clock, thanks for the quick replies everyone!

From: Mr.Klean
Why not? Prime95 is not changing any settings it's only stress testing the components. If a laptop's components couldn't handle what they were meant to I would take it back. If you're worried about heat he has a laptop cooler anyways.

It may be engaging the extra cores and the program may be not reporting right. Try using a different program like CPU-Z. 8 smarts should struggle on a 1.6ghz quad

Edit: Lol I've got the dumb today. CPU-Z Is what you want not speedfan lmao .

Because Prime95 is an unrealistic work load for a cpu, nothing real will ever push your hardware like Prime95 will.

From: Capricorn
Because Prime95 is an unrealistic work load for a cpu, nothing real will ever push your hardware like Prime95 will.

It's a great way to see if your computer can clock higher, which is what the OP needed.

From: Smartzkid
It's a great way to see if your computer can clock higher, which is what the OP needed.

Not really no. Turbo Boost is an automatic process done by the CPU, if the CPU feels it is not safe to increase the clock due to temperature or power consumption it won't. I'm not saying OP shouldn't/should run it, I am just saying Prime95 will stress your components. I don't really see the point to unnecessarily stressing your components just to see an automatic process happen…


@OP You may be able to see an increase in performance if you set the affinity for the programs around. (Window's likes to move work loads around on the threads for some reason, and this can affect Turbo Boost)

As an example you could be running a program that only uses a single thread, but Window's could continuously move that workload around any of the cores. This can dramatically reduce performance as well affect Turbo Boost. (IE if your word load is only single threaded it would be best if it was kept to one core, so turbo boost can boost that single core higher than vs 4 cores clocked marginally)