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Dell Defect Turning 2.2GHz CPU Into 100MHz CPU?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the making-the-pr-department-work-for-their-paycheck dept.

jtavares2 writes "In what is being dubbed Throttlegate, scores of users on many message boards have been complaining about nexplicably aggressive throttling policies on their Dell Latitude E6500 and E6400 laptops which cause their CPUs to be throttled to less than 5% of their theoretical maximums even while at room temperatures. In many cases, the issue can be triggered just by playing a video or performing some other trivial, but CPU intensive, task. After being banned [PDF] from the Dell Forums for revealing 'non-public information,' one user went so far as to write and publish a 59-page report [PDF] explaining and diagnosing the throttling problem in incredible detail. Dell seems to be silent on the issue, but many users are hoping for a formal recall."

3 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. OMG, I brought this up with them by 1080bogus · · Score: 5, Informative

    I called their Pro Tech support to help diagnose a very similar issue. The CPU's were running at 6-700Mhz. I spent 45 min on the phone with them until I finally found a forum explaining it had to do with the Intel SpeedStep feature. When you go into the BIOS, go to Performance, SpeedStep, and disable it. They said thanks, added to their Knowledge Base and gave us one more reason to get away from them.

  2. My experience and fix. Isn't 59 pages long. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dell has aggressive CPU throttling in the BIOS. I have an Inspiron 6400 w/ Core 2 Duo 1.83ghz. In XP, Vista, and 7, it would throttle way the heck down and not turn the fan all the way up. Because the fan was annoying. It would go down to around 200mhz.

    I fixed it in software by installing RMClock and i8kspeedfan. But my computer was usually around 55 and went up to 65 playing HD video, and the fan would kick in, and suddenly it's really loud.

    Also helped to get one of those cooling pads with a fan in it.

    So I took apart my laptop. There were 1" thick sheets of dust between the processor and graphics coolers and then between them and the output duct.

    Cleaning them out, put it back together, now at full speed it rarely goes over 55. The BIOS throttling that kicks in at 70C or 75C or so hasn't come on since the software fix. Don't even need the Targus cool-pad anymore.

    So basically, Dell builds a system with inadequate cooling, that is disabled from maximum speed even when system policy is set that way, and instead throttles you down in the BIOS 'til you can't even move the mouse until it cools down. No option to allow the fan to go to full-speed, no way to do it except 3rd-party software, and really darned loud when it happens.

    It must've sucked to have a 2.3GHz in this thing...

  3. MIRROR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I click on the link and well, I think it's being hosted by one of these Dells

    At the end of one of the forums, someone links to a mirror. You can find the report here:

    http://www.sigmirror.com/files/44490_iweoz/throttlegate.pdf