I have a Thinkpad T570 (i5-7200u, 8G RAM, SSD, integrated graphics, with a 4k display). Since the day I purchased it, I found it to be a bit "throttled". Large spreadsheets would be laggy. Going fullscreen on YouTube takes 2-3 seconds. Weirdest thing was that when I use Netflix app or PotPlayer to watch videos, fullscreen would cause frameskip, but not maximized window!
My thought at the time was: "Hey, the new generation of laptops are like that. Too bad the industry is heading towards this direction. Next time I'll just get a non-ULV-processor laptop instead. "
However, this week I bought a 4k monitor. I connected my laptop to the monitor via a USB-C to DP cable. It runs at 4k resolution @ 60hz, same as the internal one. I disabled the internal display when using the external monitor. After using it for two days, I suddenly realized that now everything runs smoothly. There is no noticeable lag. It takes less than 1 second to go fullscreen on YouTube. Fullscreen video in apps no longer skip frames. Large spreadsheets can be viewed without scrolling lag.
And things just got weirder... I just ran a benchmark test using XTU. No setting was changed, but the score is now 70 points lower than before (with internal disp.). This doesn't make sense!
What is going on? How can the internal display cause throttling? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
My thought at the time was: "Hey, the new generation of laptops are like that. Too bad the industry is heading towards this direction. Next time I'll just get a non-ULV-processor laptop instead. "
However, this week I bought a 4k monitor. I connected my laptop to the monitor via a USB-C to DP cable. It runs at 4k resolution @ 60hz, same as the internal one. I disabled the internal display when using the external monitor. After using it for two days, I suddenly realized that now everything runs smoothly. There is no noticeable lag. It takes less than 1 second to go fullscreen on YouTube. Fullscreen video in apps no longer skip frames. Large spreadsheets can be viewed without scrolling lag.
And things just got weirder... I just ran a benchmark test using XTU. No setting was changed, but the score is now 70 points lower than before (with internal disp.). This doesn't make sense!
What is going on? How can the internal display cause throttling? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Last edited: