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Helpful ReplyStupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7

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MrHaViK
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2010/10/07 22:17:18 (permalink)
Does anyone have a laptop with an i7 in it? The turbo... whatever it's called is really annoying. I've been trying to run various benchmarks to compare it to my desktop and everytime i run 3dmark, superpi or pcmark i get totally different results. the cpu speed varies from 1.8ghz to 2.9 and it doesn't seem to have any kind of method to when it speeds up slows down. I monitor it with cpuid during superpi and it just randomly goes up and down which gives me no kind of reliable results. There are no settings in the bios to disable it, has anyone figured out a way to shut it off or at least change it's behavior at all?
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JeffreyHam
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/07 22:51:49 (permalink)
I would think that you can turn it off in the BIOS.

 
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lehpron
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/07 23:19:31 (permalink) ☄ Helpful
Download the program Real Temp version 3.40, in the zipfile there is a little application called "i7 Turbo 6.95".  This ultility has a box to check "Turbo Mode Disable" on the fly.  Don't be surprised by the constant varying multiplier or C0 state percentages, the generator never maintains a constant value and utilization varies even on idle desktop.  
 
Give this Intel info on TurboBoost a read through or watch the flash video demo at the bottom explaining the point of TurboBoost (for the majority that just don't need the speed all the time, i.e. don't care for benchmarks). 
 
Not even whichever OS, Intel decides when their CPUs use Turboboost; and while it is based on utilization of lesser threaded applications, it isn't necessarily a per program basis.  All programs have some internal subroutine that doesn't use all cores -- that's when the Turbo engages and gets those little steps out of the way, it isn't sustained throughout the program.  This could be one reason for an inconsistent benchmark score, while those of us with mere 1x-2x binning desktop i7's won't notice compared to your 7x jump.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about it.  But if it bugs you that much, I have a Toshiba laptop with a Pentium P6000 in the same mPGA988 socket, its a 1.86GHz Clarkdale dual-core with no Turbo or HT.  Although it has a powerstate I can't seem to adjust that varies from 7x to stock 14x, could just be on my laptop though.
 
Have you looked into adjusting the powerstates to affect Turbo potential?
post edited by lehpron - 2010/10/07 23:25:13

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MrHaViK
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/08 09:25:29 (permalink)
Thank you for all the info, the RealTemp program is pretty useful and i did some fiddling with it. When i check the "Turbo Mode Disable" it truly does disable turbo mode, unfortunately that means the clock stays around 1600mhz, so except for battery saving purposes i won't be using that. What does seem to be helpful though is the EIST and C1E check boxes. With those disabled and turbo mode enabled the core speed hovers around 2500mhz. I've seen the speed reach 2900 on stock settings so this is actually a performance decrease, but at least it's stable.  Oh well, i guess you just can't squeeze performance out of a laptop.
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ty_ger07
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/10 14:17:41 (permalink)
The turbo multiplier speed varies depending on number of CPU threads being utilized.  If you have three or more threads loading the CPU, the CPU speed will stay at ~1600Mhz.  If you only have one or two (is it one or two?  it seems that two = 20x multiplier and one = 21x multiplier) threads loading the CPU, the speed will jump up to the full ~2800Mhz.
 
SuperPi only loads one thread and therefore will generally hold the CPU around ~2800Mhz.  But your operating system will also load a second or third thread as backround applications are running and will cause the speed during SuperPi to bounce around a bit.
 
Disabling C1E and Speedstep (EIST) will not increase performance.  There is no way you can increase turbo performance.  Turbo performance is regulated by the CPU itself and Intel has purposely regulated the multiplier in relationship to the load in order to keep the CPU within power consumption parameters.  You can only manipulate turbo to decrease performance but can't manipulate it to increase performance (unless you buy an extreme edition CPU).
post edited by ty_ger07 - 2010/10/10 19:46:56
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MrHaViK
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/12 18:51:00 (permalink)
ty_ger07
Disabling C1E and Speedstep (EIST) will not increase performance.  There is no way you can increase turbo performance.  Turbo performance is regulated by the CPU itself and Intel has purposely regulated the multiplier in relationship to the load in order to keep the CPU within power consumption parameters.  You can only manipulate turbo to decrease performance but can't manipulate it to increase performance (unless you buy an extreme edition CPU).

Yeah that's what i found out when messing with those settings, i did get it to stablize at 2500mhz by disabling EIST though. Not a good move for performance obviously. I've given up trying to fiddle with it.
 
BTW, nice avatar photo, is that your laptop?  Which model g51 is it? I'v got the jx-x1 and i absolutely love it except for the turbo mode thing, but that certainly isn't asus' fault.
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Mr.Pie
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Re:Stupid Intel Turbo crap on mobile i7 2010/10/24 03:50:30 (permalink)
turbo is meant to enable the end user to complete whatever they're doing faster and more effiecently
 
using less threads = more speed for the core/cores thats executing the program
and more threads = less speed for each core
 
it has certainly can be useful or not useful depending on what you are doing
 
for example benchmarking.......not all the benchmarks out there is multi threaded for 8+threads
so therefore your i7 would run at varying speeds depending on how the benchmark was written
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