CPU performance help.

[comda]

Greetings CH!

I have a Toshiba Satellite L650D and recently due to its Slow Performance in windows 7 I purchased win8 and installed it. Right away i noticed a difference. The computer runs much more faster. However it still seems to lag and shutter a bit. I installed a Gadget on the desktop showing CPU and GPU speeds and so on. However i noticed that my CPU is running at 800MHz-1200Mhz only. The CPU im using is the AMD Athlon(tm) ll P340 Dual Core CPU that is to be clocked at 2.2Ghz. anyways i figured maybe this is why my system is so slugish. my Previous system was a P4 3GHz with a 1mb cache winning 7 and it did better then this! Is there any way i can crank the CPU to run at least at 2Ghz? i need the speed. Thanks
my specs are
AMD Athlon(tm) ll P340 Dual Core CPU 2.2Ghz
4Gb DDr3 RAm
500GB 7200RPm seagate drive
Ati mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series
Win 8 Pro

[DaveLembke]

If you go into the BIOS and disable the Cool n' Quiet feature .... this will suck down the battery life though running the CPU full power. Unless there is a need to have it running full bore frequency its best to keep Cool n' Quiet enabled as for if the laptop is running anything that it needs the full use of the CPU for, it will run at 2.2 Ghz for as long as needed, and when not needed it will bring the frequency back down to around 25% of 2.2Ghz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool'n'Quiet

*Also Cool n Quiet is named as such because it allows for the computer to run cooler and quieter when idle. If the laptop was at full frequency of 2.2Ghz the laptop will run hotter and could be noisier with fans funning 100% speed to keep cool.

I have tested my AMD systems with these processors with Cool n Quiet enabled and disabled and I did not notice any performance gain by running the CPU 100% frequency all the time. In less than a second it will jump from say 780Mhz to 2600Mhz without any noticable lag in performance.

AMD CPU List tested with Cool n Quiet Eanabled/Disabled:
Sempron 140 x1 2.7Ghz ( single-core )
Sempron 145 x1 2.8Ghz ( single-core )
AMD Sempron 2200 x2 2.08Ghz ( dual-core )
AMD Athlon 4450B x2 2.3Ghz ( dual-core )
AMD Athlon 4850E x2 2.5Ghz ( dual-core )
AMD Athlon II 620 x4 2.6Ghz ( quad-core )

Intel also has this same technology which is called Speed-Stepping! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedStep
*I have a Toshiba Netbook with Intel Atom 1.66Ghz CPU and SpeedStepping allows for it to achieve up to 9 hours of battery life. If I disable speed stepping, the battery life drains far faster 4 or 5 hrs and its drained.

[camerongray]

Your CPU is slowing down when it isn't being demanded to save power, this is by design.  Try running something CPU heavy and take a look at the speed, it should jump up automatically.  If it does not you may want to check for dust in cooling system as the machine may be running at a lower clock speed to prevent it from overheating.

[comda]

Thank-you both for your quick replies. I cant believe i didnt come to that conclusion. Yes as soon as i run grand theft auto san andreas or itunes or anything else the clock speed jumps back up. The battery on the device wont go longer then half an hour but its usually plugged in anyways. I didnt find any settings in the bios to change from cool n quiet to full tilt. I found those settings on my other desktop but not on this model. Thanks for your help but i guess this cpu isnt gonna run anyfaster then this. Is there anyway of boosting the graphics? Or whats the story bebind that?

[Salmon Trout]

In Windows XP, Windows 7, and I should think Windows 8, there is a Control Panel applet called Power Options or Power Schemes and you can select a power profile for the CPU - Max power savings, Balanced, or Full Power, and you can create a custom power scheme and set max and min percentages that the CPU will step up or down to. If you go for 100% all the time you should not see the clock go down from max.

[patio]

As to the other query in most cases nothing can be done with the graphics...you're pretty much stuck with what it is...

[DaveLembke]

Most laptops Do NOT allow for upgrading the GPU, however there were some higher end laptops that came with the ability to do so as well as laptops that have "socketed APU's" may be upgradeable if the main board supports an upgrade to a better faster APU.

Here is a link to a video card that is intended for a laptop video card upgrade, however the laptop that can take this video card likely cost in excess of $1300 when purchased new. http://www.ebay.com/bhp/hd3650-mxm-ii

For your model, I am not aware of any upgrade path for its GPU as for it was never intended to be upgraded by design. Here is info on your GPU http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5650.23697.0.html

I have yet to find a laptop that is a good choice for long term use with video games. I have a Toshiba Satellite with Athlon II x2 2.5Ghz running Windows 7 32-bit on 3GB RAM and 320GB hard drive, and it cost me $429 in November 2009. The fact that it came with the Radeon GPU for gaming back then and $429 price tag was great, however as of 2011 just 2 years later it was already starting to show that it was starting to overwork to keep up with games such as World of Warcraft that went through a major graphics facelift which demands even more processing power. On this laptop I ended up having to cut back on the video settings to get by from High settings in 2009 to Normal settings in 2011 and now in 2013 when playing WoW on  it I have to run on Fair settings to keep the 20+ frames per second. I also own GTA San Andreas, but i havent tried that on this laptop. This laptop was purchased mainly for being able to game while out on business trips from hotels, and it has served this purpose well, but in a year or two I may need to buy another more powerful laptop and sell this one to someone who doesnt game anything more complicated than Facebook games..LOL  Also when gaming on my Toshiba Satellite there is tons of heat roaring out the vent. I made the mistake of having a small pile of hershey kisses off to my left side by the vent the one night and when I went to go grab a hershey kiss I was quickly surprised with liquid chocolate in foil and they were a good 4 inches away from the laptop vent..LOL   With that kind of heat rushing out the side of the laptop I figure its only a matter of time before I cook the laptop even with the fans functioning correctly. I have cooked laptops in the past with games, a Pentium M Toshiba melted down, and a Core 2 Duo IBM Thinkpad melted down both when gaming and playing iTunes at the same time for background music. Those 2 were the companies computers so it was an oops... I guess I accidentally cooked it and, ok I need a new laptop moment on laptops that were less than a year old each.