CPU Speed Drops After A Few Minutes

[Alias22732]

Hi all,

I'm pretty bad at computers, especially hardware. I've had my laptop for about a year, and it's been working fine. It's a Samsung ATIV Book IV, and I noticed that Minecraft abruptly started running really choppy. My specs appear to be fine, as I can run other games (Arkham City, Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect) perfectly fine.

However, one thing I notice that might be a problem is my CPU speed, as displayed by my task manager under the performance tab. Upon startup, it's at around 2.8 GHz, but a few minutes in, it slows to and remains at 0.75 GHz.

I've tried everything I could to raise it. I've increased the processor percentages in my power settings to 100%, I've tried various power modes, I've tried plugged and unplugged, removing all unnecessary startup programs.

Any ideas would be really appreciated, as I could really use the help. Thanks!

 

[Foldalot]

Have you checked the CPU temps?

 

[ewok93]

Yeah, that sounds like thermal throttling. Test your temps with HWMonitor and let us know what they get up to. All you have to do to fix it is clean it out with some canned duster. Most laptops will throttle around 70c.

 

[Alias22732]

Everything's fluctuates around about 48-53 degrees celsius, according to HWMonitor. Nothing seems as though it's particularly high, and my laptop never feels even warm. Is there anything else it could be?

 

[ewok93]

That's while you're playing?

 

[Alias22732]

No, that's while I have only Chrome open, but the speed is still at 0.75, of the 2.5 max speed, even when I'm not playing.

 

[ewok93]

It could still be throttling. When was the last time you cleaned it?

 

[Alias22732]

Admittedly, it's been a while since I've cleaned it. What do I need to do to properly clean it? Just spray into the vents on the underside and the back of the laptop casing with a can of compressed air?

 

[ewok93]

Yep. It wouldn't hurt to open it up a little, though, there should be a few screws on the bottom.

 

[Alias22732]

I've opened it and cleaned it through. It was a bit dusty, but not excessively, and the problem still persists . Any other ideas?

 

[Foldalot]

Maybe the turbo-boost, or hyperthreading have something to do with it. Assuming your CPU supports those

 

[Alias22732]

Turbo-boost? Hyperthreading? What are they, and how can I check if they are affecting performance?

 

[Foldalot]

As I saw on the net, Samsung ATIV Book IV has i5 3230m which supports HT and Turbo Boost. Here are threads where you can find info about these problems

Hyper-Threading problem:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/202990/discussions/0/810920962507030196/
https://www.disruptorbeam.com/forums/gota/viewthread/4465
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2226259.html

Turbo Boost problem:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/364585-28-intel-turbo-boost-messing
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?13862-G74sx-Intel-Turbo-Boost-ruining-my-day-%28CPU-spikes-causing-constant-lag-spikes%29
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?98304-Intel-Turbo-Boost-Uninstall-it-and-get-higher-frame-rates

PS: Turbo Boost is in use when Applications(Games for example) require more CPU power which causes the CPU to activate it and raise the frequency. In your case from 2.6GHz to 3.2GHz. Hyper-Threading happens because your CPU has 2 physical cores and 4 threads. So in order for those 2 cores to become 4, Hyper-Threading activates and the CPU now becomes "quad-core".

PPS: again, this is all assuming you have the i5 3230m

 

[Alias22732]

I've looked through all these and tried their various suggestions. Still nothing. At this point, I've discovered I actually have dual-core i7 3537-U, which I understand to be fairly strong, but it still continues to operate at 30% max frequency. I accessed the UEFI BIOS of my laptop to no avail; there were very few options, none of them regarding CPU except hyperthreading, which had no effect on the problem when changed. Is there any other BIOS I can access or any way using the command prompt to overclock my specific processor?

 

[Foldalot]

I've read some threads about this problem(~30% CPU usage), and it's mostly caused by some programs, or drivers. So either way this seems like a software problem which can be solved by re-installing the OS. You can try looking for suspicious programs with weird CPU usage using Task Manager, or update your drivers. However, if that's without a success, my advise would be to re-install the OS.

 

[Alias22732]

I had had another problem with my laptop since updating to Windows 8.1 where I could change my brightness setting but it wouldn't actually change anything and my laptop would often boot up at the lowest setting and remain that way. My friend suggested I revert to an older driver for my GPU as the Windows 8.1 driver apparently has some compatibility issues so I did that, manually, through the device manager. Curious, I decided to try that for my processors as well and voila, they're back to working at full capacity. Thanks to all for the help, and long story short, Windows 8.1 drivers suck.