L420 with quadcore i7 and 16gb ram

[myusername123]

Hi i  have just upgraded a L420 that had a i3 in it to a i7-2630qm with 16gb ram .. its actually running cooler now despite being a 45w TDP apposed to the i3 that was a 35w 
anyhoo this cpu is not offcially supported all is swell but i have a question  
how would i set it to 2.9 , the base speed is sitting around 2- 2.35 GHZ
average cpu temps are around 40- 55 , 55 under big load.
**i was told because the cpu is not officially supported that i would have to use throttlestop to raise freq* i dont know much about computers just wondering if that is true ?
anyhoo happy with this setup as its a 10 year old laptop and is faster then my i5 8th generation laptop . gpu sorta sucks tho which
any advice would be great as im trying to get this running as smooth as i can for Photoshop. thanks in advance if anyone can chime in . peace
any does anyone know the name of the guy who makes custom bios for thinkpad that does it online ?

Edited June 30, 2021 by myusername123

[NelizMastr]

It will only boost to 2.9GHz on a single core and if the BIOS can properly recognize the different P-states of the CPU.

All core of 2.4-ish is pretty typical I'd say. I'd think the laptop would melt if it would run 2.9 all core, lol.

[myusername123]

3 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

It will only boost to 2.9GHz on a single core and if the BIOS can properly recognize the different P-states of the CPU.

All core of 2.4-ish is pretty typical I'd say. I'd think the laptop would melt if it would run 2.9 all core, lol.

when you say "melt" hahha do you mean the motherboard wont handle it ? not sure what you mean by bios p states im a bit of a newb.. but the bios shows that it is a i7-2630qm. 

why will it not boost to 2.9 when using multi cores ?

[NelizMastr]

14 minutes ago, myusername123 said:

when you say "melt" hahha do you mean the motherboard wont handle it ? not sure what you mean by bios p states im a bit of a newb.. but the bios shows that it is a i7-2630qm. 

why will it not boost to 2.9 when using multi cores ?

The advertised max turbo in the Intel specification only applies to a workload that only uses one core. All core is always much lower. Current generation i9 chips don't do 5.3GHz on all cores, more like 4.3-ish. The reasoning is part marketing, part technical (thermal contstraints and power limit).

[myusername123]

5 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

The advertised max turbo in the Intel specification only applies to a workload that only uses one core. All core is always much lower. Current generation i9 chips don't do 5.3GHz on all cores, more like 4.3-ish. The reasoning is part marketing, part technical (thermal contstraints and power limit).

interesting thanks for filling me in on that as i thought it was the opposite.
im still confused as to why this 45w i7 cpu im using seems to be drawing less power to the i3 35w i had in it , im getting better battery life and it seems to be running cooler ?  although when i do have it on battery saver and i go into task manager it shows that the it drops down to below 1ghz eh as soon as it turn it up to performance it jumps back up to around 2.3ghz

[NelizMastr]

Just now, myusername123 said:

interesting thanks for filling me in on that as i thought it was the opposite.
im still confused as to why this 45w i7 cpu im using seems to be drawing less power to the i3 35w i had in it , im getting better battery life and it seems to be running cooler ?  although when i do have it on battery saver and i go into task manager it shows that the it drops down to below 1ghz eh as soon as it turn it up to performance it jumps back up to around 2.3ghz

With more cores it can likely just run at a lower clock speed to achieve the same performance. Thus reducing voltage and clocks, thus saving power. Makes sense.

[myusername123]

8 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

With more cores it can likely just run at a lower clock speed to achieve the same performance. Thus reducing voltage and clocks, thus saving power. Makes sense.

thank you for all the answers. you have been very helpful.

[unclewebb]

@myusername123 The specs show that the 2630QM can run at up to 2.6 GHz when all 4 cores are active as long as it is not power limit throttling or thermal throttling. 

 

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core i7 Mobile I7-2630QM.html

 

If you are not sure if your CPU is running properly, run ThrottleStop and post some screenshots.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

 

It has a built in benchmark called the TS Bench that allows you to put a load on the CPU so you can see what speed your CPU is running at when loaded. 

 

It is possible that if the BIOS does not fully support this CPU, that it is not setting the CPU up correctly. Post lots of screenshots of ThrottleStop and I can tell you if anything needs to be tweaked. There is no need for a custom BIOS as long as the CPU can be setup correctly. Run a TS Bench - 1 Thread test and take a screenshot while this test is in progress. This will show if it is reaching the higher multipliers that are available.