Acer E5-551 clock speed issues.

[Mallowpuffs]

So my sister has an Acer Aspire E5-551 (A10 7300, 12GB RAM,) and it's been having trouble even doing basic things. I get that it's not a gaming laptop, but it should play games better than it does. I mean Minecraft is barely playable.

 

So I downloaded AMD Overdrive. What first got me wondering is that the thermal margin is as 6-12 at IDLE. We are about to check it under load.

 

 

But when I looked a little further.. It says target clock speed is 1900MHz. They are jumping from 1100MHz to 3800MHz idle. I feel like that's not right..

[SageOfSpice]

2 minutes ago, Mallowpuffs said:

So my sister has an Acer Aspire E5-551 (A10 7300, 12GB RAM,) and it's been having trouble even doing basic things. I get that it's not a gaming laptop, but it should play games better than it does. I mean Minecraft is barely playable.

 

So I downloaded AMD Overdrive. What first got me wondering is that the thermal margin is as 6-12 at IDLE. We are about to check it under load.

 

 

But when I looked a little further.. It says target clock speed is 1900MHz. They are jumping from 1100MHz to 3800MHz idle. I feel like that's not right..

That's perfectly normal. It's a power saving function. The frequency is dynamically controlled depending on the load. If the program requires more power, it'll bump up the clock to it's advertised speeds, or even turbo clock speeds.

 

Given that it's a laptop, your bigger concern is power saving functions. Usually, most laptops are configured to limit the maximum CPU utilization if the unit isn't plugged in, so you'll have to manually set that in Power Options. I don't remember if Windows 8 has issues with parking cores, but that might be another thing to look into.

 

6-12 what, if I may ask? I could see that being power draw, but that wouldn't be it's idle temperature.

 

A quick search shows that your processor should be able to handle Minecraft semi-decently, so it's just a matter of some issue with the configuration of your computer.

 

[Mallowpuffs]

1 hour ago, SageOfSpice said:

That's perfectly normal. It's a power saving function. The frequency is dynamically controlled depending on the load. If the program requires more power, it'll bump up the clock to it's advertised speeds, or even turbo clock speeds.

 

Given that it's a laptop, your bigger concern is power saving functions. Usually, most laptops are configured to limit the maximum CPU utilization if the unit isn't plugged in, so you'll have to manually set that in Power Options. I don't remember if Windows 8 has issues with parking cores, but that might be another thing to look into.

 

6-12 what, if I may ask? I could see that being power draw, but that wouldn't be it's idle temperature.

 

A quick search shows that your processor should be able to handle Minecraft semi-decently, so it's just a matter of some issue with the configuration of your computer.

 

That was my first thought when it was lower than the target 1900HMz, some kind of power saver. But the 2 things that confused me is that it'll spike up past 3500 at times/ And it's always plugged in.

 

As for the 6-12, it's 6-12C thermal margin. That's how AMD Overdrive does temps. It's the amount of heat needed before the CPU starts to throttle I believe.