Underclocking CPU - Help?

[King Damager]

My gf's laptop is slowly dying - and we're going to be replacing it soon anyway, however I found an issue I'm not too sure about so thought I'd raise it and see if this is something obvious that I'm missing?

It seems to be underclocking judging by CPU-Z

This is running at 100% CPU usage - I thought it might be speedstep or something similar so made sure I maxxed out the CPU usage - wasn't too hard....

But yeah, if anyone has any idea why this is underclocking like this it might stop her having to upgrade a for a few months

Thanks
kd

 

[iNPUt]

Have you checked what the temps are like on full load, might be thermal throttling + speed step on idle as the multiplier should be x14

 

[King Damager]

Yeah I tested temps a while ago, think they were about 50-70, so not too bad, shouldn't really be throttling. Yeah I thought the speed step thing, but if it is on idle how would we fix it?

kd

 

[d_brennen]

Check temps with speedfan and coretemp. Could well be the heatsink full of fluff and hair! If you're game enough you could take the hsf out and give it a Hoover, repaste the CPU and gpu and refit.

Edit: seen you posted about temps as I posted. Maybe try a couple of programs. Wouldn't be uncommon for one program to be wildly wrong. Otherwise there may be a bios update from the manufatureres site?

Also what are you using to max out the CPU? Does prime95 also result in a low clock speed?

 

[King Damager]

Speed temp puts it at 44/45 C

Oh, and not using prime95 to max CPU, just running multiple chrome tabs - this maxes out the CPU usage as it is and massively slows down and lags the computer.... I'd have ran prime95, but doesn't seem to be needed to get CPU up to 100% constant.

kd

 

[iNPUt]

Intelburn text will get that chip hot..

 

[DragonQ]

My old laptop slowed down from 1.67 GHz to 800 MHz if it overheated, that's probably what's happening.

 

[King Damager]

44/45 degrees C is hardly overheating... :S

Did just the one intelburn test, and clock speed didn't change at all... Created massive lag on everything though, and did see a rise in temp to about 47... but again nothing too bad.... Temps went back down to about 40 after closing intelburn test

kd

 

[DragonQ]

Speed fan temps aren't reliable, use Core Temp or Real Temp. Also, check that SpeedStep is enabled in the BIOS - if it's disabled, the CPU will usually run at its lowest speed on laptops.