Vista - Processor Power Management

After reading multiple articles on various site regarding how the processor power management works in Vista, I have yet to find a resolution to my current situation.

I am running Vista Home Premium 32bit on my HP Pavilion tx 2110 with an AMD X2 Mobile Tech TL-62 2.1Ghz and 3gb of RAM.

Whenever my laptop is unplugged from the wall and running on the battery, Vista seems to limit the processor frequency to 38% of the max (roughly 800mhz) no mater the power plan or processor load. While the computer is plugged in however, everything runs beautifully with the frequency at 100%.

Here is what the Resource Manager has to say about this:


The CPU graph on the left side is while the computer is plugged in, I believe I was reading some of the power management articles. The right side is after the power cord is removed, the spikes are when I was rendering a small fractal just to push the processor past idling.

Current power plan looks like this:


This is the default High Performance plan. Now from my understanding, while plugged in this should "force" the processor to maintain a 100% frequency regardless of the load while unplugging the cord should allow the cores to float anywhere between 5% and 100% load dependent, although this remains at 38% consistently.


What I would like it to do is whenever it is unplugged, it should retain either the 100% stable cap, or be allowed to range so that at high utilization the frequency may be allowed to range. Through messing with the "Minimum processor state" and "Maximum processor state" I have found that the 38% limit does not ever change, even if both setting are set to 15% or 100%, the while plugged in option however functions as it should, if I move the upper and lower limits it will mirror this change both in performance and in the resource manager.

Any suggestions on how to force my plan settings to take effect? Or is there a way to disable the power management and completely disallow processor states?

You might try raising the minimum processor state or checking to see if there is a bios limit being imposed.


Post Originated from http://www.VistaForums.com Vista Support Forums

There are 2 things to look for in the bios c1e state and also speedstep technology.

Checked in the bios (believe it is phoenix bios, very limited) and there is a power management option which limits the frequency based on whether or not it is plugged in. Changed that from the power saver to "Performance". Now I am capped at 76% frequency (1600 Mhz), great improvement. Changed the minimum now and it still caps to 76%, would like to be able to run at 100%, but at least now I meet the minimum system requirements for vista when I'm not plugged in.

Any other suggestions to completely release the cap?

"luftwaffle" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:e9d8d7258e965d20c7d457edbc833c51@xxxxxx-gateway.com...I can't give any advice on how to achieve 100% of CPU
design frequency, but one thing to consider is that you
will now have shorter battery life for two reasons, one
being greater power consumption by the CPU, and the
other being increased cooling fan operation due to the
increased thermal load. This is probably of no concern,
unless there's an occasion where you need max battery
time, and then it's just a matter of adjusting the settings
back to default. I have found that, even with XP, you
can notice the difference between min/max clock speeds
when opening apps, switching windows, etc.

Battery life is a non issue, even on all power saving options I can "probably" browse the internet for, 2 hours maybe due to HPs terrible battery design. When I unplug my machine it is usually to head to my programming class compiling takes longer on low frequencies (of course) and still consumes the battery.

For now I'm happy with 1600mhz unplugged. Thanks to all that helped.