[G73JH-TZ207V] CPU clock locked between 1,9 and 2,077 GHz when playing games

[Araton]

Hello People!

I'm having a bit of an issue with my ASUS G73JH-TZ207V (the one with the i7 740qm CPU).
I'm running the fixed vBios (not the OC one) and BIOS v213 (the latest). The OS I'm using is the Win 7 x64, which came with the Notebook back in March, 2010. The fans are cleaned of dust using compressed air.

In desktop mode when I turn on High Performance Mode + Turbo mode in P4G I get frequencies 2,4 GHz - 2,80 GHz (sometimes even 2,90 GHz), but once I start a game (Supereme Commander Forged Alliance, StarCraft 2, Tomb Raider) the speed locks between 1,944 GHz and 2,077 GHz, which is very annoying because SupCom requires a really good CPU clock rate at times in multi-player.

I tried to run Prime95 to see if the CPU Throttles or something. I ran a test on 8 threads, CPU loads were 100% and the clock rate was between 2,60-2,80 GHz using Turbo and High Performance Mode. Interestingly this is not the case with games. I even installed the newest version of P4G, but no change 😞

Anyone with an idea, what should I do remedy this 1,9 - 2,077 GHz lock?

[Deathisgod]

open; realtemp, cpuid then run msi kombustor; oc test. See what happens, post results.

[Araton]

@ Deathisgod:

Hey, I ran MSI Kombustor 3.3 with RealTemp and CPUID HWMonitor. I'm going to upload the screen shots later on, but I noticed that the GPU intensive apps are running fine and the CPU doesn't get lower 2,3 GHz. Now, the problem I described above escalates when I run CPU intensive graphics stuff, such as when running Physix using the CPU in Kombustor. At 48% load the CPU goes down to 1,7 - 1,8 GHz (this is very similar to what I get when I run a game)!

Does this mean that the machine can't get enough power? I'm running these test on a system which has a dead battery, but that shouldn't actually influence this right?

Anyways here are a few screen shots:
This one is the worst result I got so far using the latest AMD 13.11 driver:



This one used AMD's 13.4 driver (still awful CPU performance):


This one is a normal GPU app runing in Kombustor without any significant amount of CPU load (running AMD driver 13.4):


I will post a few game tests as well in a few minutes.

[Araton]

Idle (some apps running in the background and Tomb Raider paused and ALT+TAB'ed):



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Playing Tomb Raider:


and here's another test on 8 threads in Prime95 (it seems that this one makes the CPU clock drop down as well, despite my previous Prime95 tests):



To me this looks like some kind of CPU throttling which is hard for me to believe, but I wanna hear what you guys have to say about this and what could be the definite fix to remedy this problem?

[Araton]

Ok, I guess I was enlightened, at the end by this review:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-740QM-Notebook-Processor.31146.0.html

Do you guys also get ~1,9 GHz in game on your G73Jh notebooks?

[Deathisgod]

Ok, this is my 4th attempt at typing this... I keep freezing my system doing stupid stuff trying to get to your temps...

1st thing first, yes, generally the clock speed will lower in relation to the number of threads thrown at it.
I cant get Physx Fluids working for some reason so I cant give you a definitive answer to whether its a normal occurrence you are seeing or not.

I also have a G74 though... So maybe someone with a G73 can assist with ^

Second, your temps are pretty high running prime. I hit 74 doing back to back prime tests (in-place large FFT was run last and hit 74). I also have 1 fan that isnt working properly.
This is where I froze my computer 3 times. Cpu temps I could only get to 65. But that was overclocked from 775, 1250, 1550 to 900, 1600, 1800. Gpu benchmark worked the first 3 times... but then... ... burn in was a no go the next 3 (max temp hit during the last seconds of burn in before it froze)...

If you have never done a repaste of the cpu and gpu I would think this is the time to do it (and make sure your fans are working properly ;). Then retry the tests.

[Araton]

Right, I talked to someone who also works at a computer repair service, and he said that these temperature are normal for these notebooks and that ASUS used a high quality compound when building these notebooks. After two years the pasting should still be in tact. I would like to hear what other users have to say and then I'll decide, but thank you for your input!

About the clock issue: So, I got this confirmed by more than 2 sources. It appears that the i7 740qm OCs only one core (#0) to 2,93 GHz, when running legacy applications optimized for single core machines. Since most of the games I play, all 4 cores are stressed and therefore all cores drop down to 1,73 - 2,077 GHz, which now makes sense. So, if I wanna reach 3 GHz on all cores, the solution would be to buy a new notebook, lol.

About your freezing issues: no clue man, this baby freezes rarely. Before the BIOS update it shut down some times because of overheating. It reached 90 degrees of C sometimes. Since the update, these temps have never been reached.

[Deathisgod]

I would very much question that. When I replaced my TIM it was blobbed all over the cpu and gpu, I wasnt very impressed. Noctua NT-H1 TIM dropped my idle temps by 8 degrees.

The freezing was my fault, I cranked the gpu clock way up with out testing it on the way. It wasnt an over heat shut down.