We buy out-dated "monster" gaming laptops used, and have good luck with them for running lower-end games, like LOL. We had particularly good luck with an ASUS ROG G74SX that we bought a few years ago, so we just got another identical one (ironically, the market price on this machine has gone up by $100 in that time).
Problem is, the second one is much slower, subjectively (running LOL side-by-side, for example, the difference is painful). Specs are identical. Same GPU (GTX 560M) and same CPU (Intel® Core™ i7 2630QM). Same RAM (8 GB). The faster one has an extra magnetic HD, but that shouldn't matter.
Ran a simple windows Novabench on both, and indeed, the second one is about 3x slower in CPU and RAM operations:
Good machine:
https://novabench.com/view/1672641
Bad machine:
https://novabench.com/view/1672642
Furthermore, Novabench is reporting the bad machine CPU at 789 MHz instead of 2 GHz.
They have identical GPU performance, and identical disk I/O performance, so that's good.
The slow one is running Windows 10, the fast one Windows 7, so perhaps that's the problem. I created a PuppyLinux LiveUSB, so I could boot identical OSs on both. Sure enough, inside Puppy, all 8 virtual cores are pegged at just under 800 MHz on the slow one (they vary on the fast one, depending on load, but many of them up around 2 GHz).
Running sysbench on Puppy, the single-threaded prime test takes 11.8 seconds on the slow one, and only 3.3 seconds on the fast one (3.5x faster).
/pro/cpuinfo is also showing each virtual core pegged at 799.26 MHz on the slow one. Every core has exactly the same value, whereas on the fast one, cpuinfo is showing most of them up above 2 GHz (including as high as 2.8 GHz), and a few slower than that, based on load (though I do see that two of the core on the fast one show 799.26 MHz).
The faster one is also running hotter, 55 deg C on the fast one vs 35 deg C on the slow one. The slow one hardly makes any fan noise, the fast one's fan is blowing a lot. This begs the question of what the fast one is doing to heat up running Puppy Linux (or why all 8 virtual cores are "spun up" all the time---not sure how it's supposed to work). But still, hot is better than 3x slow.
(For what it's worth, I have them both sitting on the BIOS screen right now, and the fan on the fast one is really blowing loud, while the fan on the slow one is barely running).
I checked the BIOS settings side by side, and they are identical. Exact same BIOS version number, and all the info displayed in the BIOS matches.
I even swapped the batteries (the slow one came with a battery that doesn't hold charge, but we're running both on wall power always anyway). I was thinking that there was some kind of power-management thing kicking in, but no change with good vs bad battery.
Opened them up, identical RAM chips inside (2 Samsung PC3 4GB chips, same model numbers). Noticed that the fast one has them in banks 1 and 3, while the slow one has them in banks 0 and 2. Not sure if that would make a difference, but for sanity, I tried moving the RAM to the other slots on the slow one---no change, CPU still slow.
In dmidecode in puppy linux, I'm seeing the same part number for the RAM chips. Both machines are showing 1333 MHz DDR3, Samsung, etc, internally.
I could try swapping RAM chips between them, but I'll hold off on doing that for now.
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?
What could be keeping the CPU core speed ratcheted down like this?
Problem is, the second one is much slower, subjectively (running LOL side-by-side, for example, the difference is painful). Specs are identical. Same GPU (GTX 560M) and same CPU (Intel® Core™ i7 2630QM). Same RAM (8 GB). The faster one has an extra magnetic HD, but that shouldn't matter.
Ran a simple windows Novabench on both, and indeed, the second one is about 3x slower in CPU and RAM operations:
Good machine:
https://novabench.com/view/1672641
Bad machine:
https://novabench.com/view/1672642
Furthermore, Novabench is reporting the bad machine CPU at 789 MHz instead of 2 GHz.
They have identical GPU performance, and identical disk I/O performance, so that's good.
The slow one is running Windows 10, the fast one Windows 7, so perhaps that's the problem. I created a PuppyLinux LiveUSB, so I could boot identical OSs on both. Sure enough, inside Puppy, all 8 virtual cores are pegged at just under 800 MHz on the slow one (they vary on the fast one, depending on load, but many of them up around 2 GHz).
Running sysbench on Puppy, the single-threaded prime test takes 11.8 seconds on the slow one, and only 3.3 seconds on the fast one (3.5x faster).
/pro/cpuinfo is also showing each virtual core pegged at 799.26 MHz on the slow one. Every core has exactly the same value, whereas on the fast one, cpuinfo is showing most of them up above 2 GHz (including as high as 2.8 GHz), and a few slower than that, based on load (though I do see that two of the core on the fast one show 799.26 MHz).
The faster one is also running hotter, 55 deg C on the fast one vs 35 deg C on the slow one. The slow one hardly makes any fan noise, the fast one's fan is blowing a lot. This begs the question of what the fast one is doing to heat up running Puppy Linux (or why all 8 virtual cores are "spun up" all the time---not sure how it's supposed to work). But still, hot is better than 3x slow.
(For what it's worth, I have them both sitting on the BIOS screen right now, and the fan on the fast one is really blowing loud, while the fan on the slow one is barely running).
I checked the BIOS settings side by side, and they are identical. Exact same BIOS version number, and all the info displayed in the BIOS matches.
I even swapped the batteries (the slow one came with a battery that doesn't hold charge, but we're running both on wall power always anyway). I was thinking that there was some kind of power-management thing kicking in, but no change with good vs bad battery.
Opened them up, identical RAM chips inside (2 Samsung PC3 4GB chips, same model numbers). Noticed that the fast one has them in banks 1 and 3, while the slow one has them in banks 0 and 2. Not sure if that would make a difference, but for sanity, I tried moving the RAM to the other slots on the slow one---no change, CPU still slow.
In dmidecode in puppy linux, I'm seeing the same part number for the RAM chips. Both machines are showing 1333 MHz DDR3, Samsung, etc, internally.
I could try swapping RAM chips between them, but I'll hold off on doing that for now.
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?
What could be keeping the CPU core speed ratcheted down like this?