MBA2012 CTO model is turbo boost disable under windows 7

[unclewebb]

By default, Intel suggests that the Turbo Boost time limit should be set to 28 seconds.

They recommend that Turbo Power Limit #1 should be set to the TDP of the CPU and they suggest that Limit #2 be set to 25% more than Limit #1.

17W X 1.25 = 20W
25W X 1.25 = 31W
35W X 1.25 = 44W

Increasing these values beyond the default values will allow your CPU to use more Turbo Boost when fully loaded. You should see an increase in Geekbench scores.

Mobile 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ Processor Family
Datasheet – Volume 1 of 2
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...rd-gen-core-family-mobile-vol-1-datasheet.pdf

The 17W Dual Core Ultra CPUs (Core i7-3667U) have maximum limits of 24 and 44 watts.
The 35W Dual and Quad Core CPUs have maximum limits of 48 and 56 watts.
The 45W Quad Core CPUs have maximum limits of 60 and 72 watts.

You can search for your Intel CPU TDP rating here.
http://ark.intel.com/

If you use ThrottleStop and set these values sky high, your request will be ignored. Intel has set the above limits in the CPU and these limits can not be bypassed by any software like ThrottleStop so your CPU will be safe. ThrottleStop can not over ride the thermal throttling built in by Intel. If your CPU gets too hot when using ThrottleStop, it will still be able to thermal throttle no matter how you have ThrottleStop setup.

Edit: The Dual Core Ultra CPUs have a minimum Turbo TDP setting of 0 watts. This might be handy when trying to maximize battery life. The minimum Turbo Boost power setting for the 35W TDP CPUs is 24 watts and the minimum for the 45W TDP CPUs is 36 watts.

If ThrottleStop is not able to save and restore your settings after you exit and restart, make sure you have full read write access to the ThrottleStop.INI file.

If you are an Administrator on your account, you should be able to drag and drop a link to ThrottleStop into your Windows StartUp folder. You can also use the Windows Task Scheduler method. Check out the second post in the ThrottleStop Guide Thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

 

[oxfordguy]

By default, Intel suggests that the Turbo Boost time limit should be set to 28 seconds.

They recommend that Turbo Power Limit #1 should be set to the TDP of the CPU and they suggest that Limit #2 be set to 25% more than Limit #1.

17W X 1.25 = 20W

.....

The 17W Dual Core Ultra CPUs (Core i7-3667U) have maximum limits of 24 and 44 watts.

So for a (17w) i7-3667U Macbook Air would these settings be best/safest in TPL?

With Turbo Boost enabled its says:
Package Power Limit: 17 (for both Limit 1) and 20 (for Limit 2)
Turbo Limit time(S): 28 and 0 (should the latter be longer than 0? Otherwise will Limit 2 ever be used?)
Package Current Limit(A): 112

The "Lock" checkboxes are unchecked

I'm getting the same Windows Experience Scores as recorded before when the Multipier is set to "Turbo" and its Throttlestop is turned on (when I had Pacakage Power Limit as 25/25), so seems just as fast i.e. (non Throttlestop in brackets)

CPU 7.1 (6.4)
RAM 7.5 (7.2)
Graphics 6.4 (5.9)
Gaming Graphics 6.5 (5.3)
Primary Disk 7.9 (7.9)

 

[unclewebb]

The Windows Experience Index is not a great benchmark when fine tuning the Turbo Power settings. You need to use a benchmark program that can fully load your CPU like wPrime does. wPrime does a better job than the built in TS Bench when testing the Turbo Power Limits. With a fully loaded CPU, the ThrottleStop average multiplier that is reported will show you if the Turbo Boost multiplier is being throttled back. Set a power limit of zero while the test is running and you should be able to see what happens to the multiplier if the Turbo Power Limits are not set high enough.

The 28 second and 0 second limits are the standard time limits recommended by Intel. What this means is that your CPU can go over limit #1 and use Limit #2 for up to 28 seconds. After your CPU operates above Limit #1 for 28 seconds, Turbo Boost is reduced so power consumption automatically gets scaled back under Limit #1. The 0 seconds for Limit #2 means that your CPU can not go beyond Limit #2 for any significant length of time. The actual time limit is something like 10 milliseconds that your CPU can go beyond Limit #2. Basically the CPU will reduce Turbo Boost almost immediately to keep your CPU under Limit #2.

You keep mentioning the "Safe" word when you really don't have to. There are no settings that are going to put your CPU in some sort of wild and crazy unsafe mode. Intel CPUs do a great job of looking after themselves and will ultimately remain within the maximum power and temperature limits set by Intel no matter what you do with ThrottleStop.

 

[oxfordguy]

Okay, thanks for clarifying

 

[SoIsays]

I hope this problem gets taken care of very soon. My i7 is coming soon and I'll be working in Windows for half the time.

 

[KPOM]

I hope this problem gets taken care of very soon. My i7 is coming soon and I'll be working in Windows for half the time.

Agreed, but Throttlestop works in the interim.

 

[oxfordguy]

So, does anyone know if the Mountain Lion release actually fixes the i7 turbo boost issue under Windows? I'm assuming not, as no one has said anything about this :-(

 

[darthjones]

So, does anyone know if the Mountain Lion release actually fixes the i7 turbo boost issue under Windows? I'm assuming not, as no one has said anything about this :-(

I want to know as well. I was actually planning on picking one up tomorrow for development work. If Windows does in fact perform better with an i5 processor, I may have to go with that instead...

 

[oxfordguy]

I want to know as well. I was actually planning on picking one up tomorrow for development work. If Windows does in fact perform better with an i5 processor, I may have to go with that instead...

Well, even now, Windows *is* faster if using ThrottleStop, but its ridiculous that you have to use a third party utility to "unleash" the i7...

 

[KPOM]

So, does anyone know if the Mountain Lion release actually fixes the i7 turbo boost issue under Windows? I'm assuming not, as no one has said anything about this :-(

No. I tried it yesterday, and I still need ThrottleStop. Otherwise, it is the same as before.

 

[goinskiing]

Well, even now, Windows *is* faster if using ThrottleStop, but its ridiculous that you have to use a third party utility to "unleash" the i7...

Even with Throttlestop, it still doesn't feel quite right as it seems to manage the heat by throttling down to 800MHz after heavy load, something my 2011 i5 had no problem doing was managing the heat /performance tradeoffs. Sure wish my fancy i7 would do that.

 

[oxfordguy]

Even with Throttlestop, it still doesn't feel quite right as it seems to manage the heat by throttling down to 800MHz after heavy load, something my 2011 i5 had no problem doing was managing the heat /performance tradeoffs. Sure wish my fancy i7 would do that.

I agree we need a proper fix for this, come on Apple!

 

[goinskiing]

I agree we need a proper fix for this, come on Apple!

I haven't checked the drivers in a while from Intel, I'll see if there's any changes on that end of things...

 

[mike95]

I'm concerned about moving up to the i7 now because of all these issues. I was about to take the leap given the performance boost of about 15-20% from the i5. I purchased the 2012 11" i5 8GB/256GB thinking it would be better with heat & battery than the 11" i7 8GB/256GB.

Assuming the issue with the i7 and Bootcamp is resolved (Is it yet???) since so many of you have i7's...what's your take on the battery life & heat when compared to the 2011 11" i5? (that's the one I had previously).

Thanks.

 

[KPOM]

I'm concerned about moving up to the i7 now because of all these issues. I was about to take the leap given the performance boost of about 15-20% from the i5. I purchased the 2012 11" i5 8GB/256GB thinking it would be better with heat & battery than the 11" i7 8GB/256GB.

Assuming the issue with the i7 and Bootcamp is resolved (Is it yet???) since so many of you have i7's...what's your take on the battery life & heat when compared to the 2011 11" i5? (that's the one I had previously).

Thanks.

It isn't yet resolved. ThrottleStop still works as a workaround in the interim

 

[mike95]

I just finished taking home an i7 to compare and make a final decision before my 14 days were up. A loose key (the 'y' key) fell off twice and triggered the desire to confirm the i7 and if so return the i5 (the key was pressed on firmly and hasn't fallen off any more).

I did confirm the i7 has a lower cpu score under bootcamp as many have reported, however my goal was to finally get some concrete numbers from the i7 vs i5 on an identically configured machine except for cpu and sharing here in case any of the i7 people on this thread are considering going i5 or vice versa.

To make the test as realistic as possible, I cloned my i5's HD to the i7 straight out of the box, ran through a 30 min encoding keeping track of cpu temp, encoding time left, fan speed. I additionally re-ran the encoding while on battery monitoring the battery of both machines periodically to compare one with the other. I'm now performing the light load test and the results will be posted shortly in an update.

The full results can be found here:
http://michael.olivero.com/post/201...i5-vs-i7-Heat-Fan-Battery-Speed-analysis.aspx

 

[Wokis]

I just finished taking home an i7 to compare and make a final decision before my 14 days were up. A loose key (the 'y' key) fell off twice and triggered the desire to confirm the i7 and if so return the i5 (the key was pressed on firmly and hasn't fallen off any more).

I did confirm the i7 has a lower cpu score under bootcamp as many have reported, however my goal was to finally get some concrete numbers from the i7 vs i5 on an identically configured machine except for cpu and sharing here in case any of the i7 people on this thread are considering going i5 or vice versa.

To make the test as realistic as possible, I cloned my i5's HD to the i7 straight out of the box, ran through a 30 min encoding keeping track of cpu temp, encoding time left, fan speed. I additionally re-ran the encoding while on battery monitoring the battery of both machines periodically to compare one with the other. I'm now performing the light load test and the results will be posted shortly in an update.

The full results can be found here:
http://michael.olivero.com/post/201...i5-vs-i7-Heat-Fan-Battery-Speed-analysis.aspx

I guess by the pictures that this is concerning the 11" model which has a slower i5 than the 13", and also somewhat worse cooling due to the smaller size.

 

[mike95]

I guess by the pictures that this is concerning the 11" model which has a slower i5 than the 13", and also somewhat worse cooling due to the smaller size.

Yes, I realized I did not specify that anywhere. I have since then updated it to indicate the 11" throughout.

 

[SoIsays]

Still no updates from Apple on this turbo boost I did a windows experience test this morning using Parallels and my score went from 6.3 to 4.7. The processor and video both dropped down to 4.7. I was hoping that by avoiding bootcamp, I could get a higher score. Oh well.

 

[oxfordguy]

Still no updates from Apple on this turbo boost I did a windows experience test this morning using Parallels and my score went from 6.3 to 4.7. The processor and video both dropped down to 4.7. I was hoping that by avoiding bootcamp, I could get a higher score. Oh well.

I think a firmware update from Apple is going to be necessary, hope this arrives soon, now that Apple have got Mountain Lion out.

 

[oxfordguy]

Has there been any update on a proper fix for this from Apple? Thanks

 

[SoIsays]

I think Apple's abandoned us 2012 i7'ers. We're of no priority and they're waiting for people to be defeated and the complaints to disappear.

 

[oxfordguy]

I think Apple's abandoned us 2012 i7'ers. We're of no priority and they're waiting for people to be defeated and the complaints to disappear.

It beggars belief that Apple still haven't released a fix for this major fundamental flaw with the i7 MBA, nor even issued a statement about it! Surely they must know its an issue?

 

[wditters]

I am currently using this fix, and it works fine, without using Throttlestop

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4035733?start=15&tstart=0

 

[SoIsays]

I am currently using this fix, and it works fine, without using Throttlestop

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4035733?start=15&tstart=0

Boy I'd hate to mess around with the hardware since I'm knowledge limited in that area, but is this relatively easy? Just those quick changes using CPUID and the turbo boost will be activate in windows? Do you have to make the changes everytime you log into windows or is it once you make the changes they are permanent? I'd like to be able to bring it back to stock settings if/when Apple issues a fix.