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While playing a game few hours ago I noticed my computer suddenly became incredibly slow. The windows task manager showed that the cpu was using half its capabilities. I have been playing this game since 4 years, with this same 4 years-old laptop, and it had never happened before. I have to mention I installed windows 10 few days ago, which also changed my graphic card's drivers. I suppose it is a feature preventing CPU overheat. It may be a new feature, changed parameters that enables it sooner than before, or dust accumulating past 4 years that activates it sooner than before as @Bokan's answer suggest.

The problem is that this feature does not get disabled when I quit the game, making the computer unusable for several hours. When I first posted this question I had to wait about 8 hours before it came back.. by itself. The only other way to get this speed back is to restart windows in any safe mode, but that is not very satisfying. I have checked battery and power parameters, they are not changed and changing them does not restore the cpu speed. I have checked the graphic card's parameters, same.

What is this feature ? How to disable it or change its parameters ?

NOTE : I have an intel CPU that has the SpeedStep technology. But the normal speed is not back after reboot (as I read it does when SpeedStep reduces it), I do not see any option to enable/disable it in the BIOS, neither on the GPU desktop UI. Last time the normal speed was restored while the computer was active (see comments).

EDIT : I just completed the first reboot of the second time this problem appears, and this time it disappeared ! This is madness.

This question has also been asked on answers.microsoft.com :

You can admire how microsoft does not care about giving the **** name of this feature to its unanimous customers, not even mentionning speedstep or battery / power / cpu parameters.

Also on other website, mentionning speedstep :

Here on SuperUser but does not solve my issue :

On 'Answer Tech', live Microsoft's technicians all answer the same epic crap (they all prefer blaming the manufacturer, asking the customer to return his computer (!!!!) than answering that they do not know). This one was particularly good :

epic crap

Community
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Mouloud85
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8 Answers8

5

Having a "balanced" power scheme is not the issue.
It allows your CPU to downclock, go to 100%, and even turbo boost if needed.

If your CPU speed is halved, it may mean:

  • The CPU is thermal throttling.
    Intel's XTU utility can help you check this.

  • Your laptop feels like it's on battery power, yet you have AC on.
    Try removing your battery (you should remove it anyway when using from AC!) and try again.

  • Check if your power profile is really what is should be.
    Like "Maximum" is really 100%.

  • Sometimes turbo boost can cause throttling or issues on poorly cooled laptops, you can disable it by setting 99% in the Balanced power profile. It will still run your CPU at it's max clock speed, yet will not use Turbo Boost. It's also a great way to have a cool and fast laptop, minus the loud fans. I do this all the time on my laptop - because plenty of apps just waste CPU cycles for no reason.

Applying the latest BIOS can also be a good solution.
Just make sure you have your battery in the laptop, and it is charged > 60%.

Apache
  • 16,299
3

This sounds like windows using the balanced power setting. If you set it to high performance it should fix the issue.

Your graphics card may also have a setting, which you can find by clicking with your right mouse-button on the desktop, and choose Graphics properties -> Advanced parameters.

LPChip
  • 66,193
1

I experienced the same issue on my Lenovo Carbon X1 after upgrading to Windows 10. You might want to try resetting the power options (Change plan settings -> Restore default settings for this plan). This solved the problem on my laptop also I couldn't see any difference with respect to the settings I had made before.

futuremind
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1

Do you clean your computer on regular basis ? I mean opening it, sucking dust with a vacuum cleaner, then with both vacuum cleaner and pressurized air. Remember to lock fans while doing this.

You should do it every year on a laptop.

bokan
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0

I had same issues but in power settings it was on stable, and within this is minimum CPU speed when plugged in which was set to 5% , changed this and it fixed it.

philip hutchinson
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0

If you are absolutely sure your computer is not overheating and it is throttling by mistake you can use throttlestop: https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

This has nothing to do with speedstep, speedstep is inmediately disabled the moment the cpu has any significant load, and it is for energy saving, not for overheating, despite entering the same low-voltage-and-frequency state.

BUT judging by your post I supose the throttling has a real reason to happen, so you should check your temperatures (you can use the free utility hwinfo64, or even throttlestop, but do not touch anything) and if they are high (i suspect they will be) phisically clean the dust before doing anything.

It is normal that sometimes the normal performance is recovered fast and other times takes longer. It depends on many factor (heat built up on the inner components, air temperature, etc). A reboot usually helps (because the cpu will be able to cool down a bit) but sometimes it wont be enough if the case is severe.

Igb
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well i am using a hp pavalion gaming processor: i7 8750H and a gtx1050ti , moreover i also had this problem after hours of gaming my laptop onerheated and the performance got halfed ; but it is a normal problem which happens when your processor gets overheated , so not to worry in my case the performance came back after 10-15 hours ,just keep your pc shutdown it will recover fast from its problem of this speedlock ....

Abishek Birdi
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Is this a Steam distributed game? It could be the game itself has been updated, possibly without you realising. This could introduce small problems (like bugs, localisation changes, texture changes) or big changes (a complete rewrite of a rendering engine to make the most of DirectX 12, new to Windows 10).

So the machine may have taken x effort for the machine to run prior to an update (that Steam would insist on), but 2x effort to run after the update.

And unfortunately if this is the case there is nothing you can do about it - it is not possible to roll many games back to a previous binary.

David Vernon
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