P4 performance issue

[APOLLO]

I have an old P4 system that is showing reduced production after a couple of hours use. When I reboot the machine, the PPD shoots up to the amount it's supposed to be then gradually drops down to almost half what it was before. It appears like there's some throttling happening but I made sure I have any kind of thermal throttling disabled in the BIOS.

I experienced the same phenomenon when I had the GPU1 client running on the machine, so it's been in effect a long time but can't pinpoint the cause. I remember someone else posting about a similar problem last year and there was a reason for this. Could there be some throttling feature built into the processor itself? It did originally come from a laptop but it isn't a 'true' mobile P4. Anyone have an idea what I can do to keep the performance from dropping?

 

[Dan-515]

I think that all the P4s had throttling built-in, and that can't be disabled. What you're disabling in the BIOS will probably be throttling by a particular means, such as the CPU actually 'dropping' cycles rather than lowering the clock speed. The lowering of the clock is the one which I think is 'hard-wired' if you like.

At least this is my understanding of it.

Is there any names for the methods you can disable? (TM1 or something) Also, I think it's good that it's throttling regardless as you'd have one burnt chip!

EDIT: Is there a core temp tool for P4s? If you could check the temps it would tell you if it is a throttling issue, could be something else causing this (although I have no idea what).

 

[Sunin]

Hmm, my guess would be to look at your temps. I have a P4 @ 3.6Ghz and it never throttles. I also disabled about 3 items in the bios, which I do on all my machines. Thermal throttling, EISA or something liek that where it reduces the multiplier, and I'm trying to remember the third off the top of my head.

You can use CPUZ or everest to check cpu temps. Core Temp does not work on the p4 platform.

 

[APOLLO]

I'll try to check the temperatures. I've had several P4 machines in the past and none of them exhibited this kind of behavior before. I'm using the stock copper-core Intel HSF which was used on the other machines. It is only warm, not hot.

 

[tedkj]

Hmm, my guess would be to look at your temps. I have a P4 @ 3.6Ghz and it never throttles. I also disabled about 3 items in the bios, which I do on all my machines. Thermal throttling, EISA or something liek that where it reduces the multiplier, and I'm trying to remember the third off the top of my head.

You can use CPUZ or everest to check cpu temps. Core Temp does not work on the p4 platform.

But it shouldn't throttle down when a proc is putting good load on the cpu tho.. unless it's heat related?

 

[digital_exhaust]

It's a long shot... but maybe a memory leak?

Likely a problem with the thermal throttling setting in the bios, but I would check for a memory leak as well, being that you had the same problem while running the GPU client....

 

[SmokeRngs]

The P4s do have built in throttling that cannot be bypassed by the BIOS. However, it requires the CPU to get very hot before it will do so. Your best bet is to get temp monitoring software like speedfan to check it out. Also, it does not matter that the heatsink is only warm. That could indicate that the heatsink is not making proper contact with the CPU. The thermal goop could be bad, the heatsink may not be flat or the heatspreader on the CPU may not be flat. Any or all of these could be a problem causing thermal throttling.

Offhand, I can't think of anything else which would cause this but if you'd check the temps, that would be the first step.