How can I know why this laptop is benchmarking at 60% of what it should ?

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Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 17, 2020
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94
Specs.
Gateway Laptop N Series (walmart specific model)
I5-1035g1
DDR4 @ 3200

I am running Cinebench R23
I am getting a score of 2600+-
The score should be around 4000+-

How can I know what exactly is causing the huge drop in performance.
I have gone over all the bios settings, and not one of them has made a difference in the benchmark score.
(I have not tried every single setting)

Right now it seems it might be Windows 10 21H1 that is causing the performance issues.

Are there any programs that I can run while I am benchmarking, that will tell me exactly what is happening and why the score is so low ?

I currently have all the power settings set, so they "should" not be slowing down the laptop.
The power mode is set to "best performance" which is supposed to stop power throttling.

THX for any help.
 
First thing to check-
How are your CPU temperatures and clocks under heavy load? Cinebench makes CPUs run HOT hot hot, It's very possible the laptop is thermal throttling in CB.

Second thing to check-
Can you see what power level (in Watts) your CPU is running at? Many Intel mobile CPUs can be implemented with various Power Limits and if yours is being limited to a lower power level than the one you're comparing in the benchmark (even being the same. CPU model) that would explain the disparity.

Third thing to check-
Is your memory configuration single-channel or dual-channel? This won't make nearly as much of a difference as the first two things and would be unlikely to affect CB score so significantly AFAIK but memory config is worth confirming on cheaper laptops.
 
First thing to check-
How are your CPU temperatures and clocks under heavy load? Cinebench makes CPUs run HOT hot hot, It's very possible the laptop is thermal throttling in CB.

Second thing to check-
Can you see what power level (in Watts) your CPU is running at? Many Intel mobile CPUs can be implemented with various Power Limits and if yours is being limited to a lower power level than the one you're comparing in the benchmark (even being the same. CPU model) that would explain the disparity.

Third thing to check-
Is your memory configuration single-channel or dual-channel? This won't make nearly as much of a difference as the first two things and would be unlikely to affect CB score so significantly AFAIK but memory config is worth confirming on cheaper laptops.

HWinfo says my memory is running DC.
& my CPU is only hitting 83 degrees max temp when running CR23

I have also done this registry tweak and it made zero difference
https://winaero.com/disable-power-throttling-windows-10-1709/

I even lowered the GPU frequency to 300mhz (from 1200), just to make sure it was not the GPU causing heating issues.

I just enabled the Ultimate Performance Power Plan - it made no difference in my CR23 score....
 
Last edited:
HWinfo says my memory is running DC.
& my CPU is only hitting 83 degrees max temp when running CR23

I have also done this registry tweak and it made zero difference
https://winaero.com/disable-power-throttling-windows-10-1709/

I even lowered the GPU frequency to 300mhz (from 1200), just to make sure it was not the GPU causing heating issues.

I just enabled the Ultimate Performance Power Plan - it made no difference in my CR23 score....
83C is quite good result for Cinebench on a laptop so it's not that. It sounds like Power Limit then- what does HWINFO report for total sustained CPU package power in CB?
 
Download the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility

Watch the cpu as you run CB23 and see what power it is drawing and what may possibly be throttling it.
 
OP- What makes you so sure it should be scoring 4000+? Do you have specific benchmarks with that laptop from someone else?
good q. highest ive seen was 3200+. this is a budget gateway from walmart, its probably gimped by the bios.


op, try what dookey just posted. it will tell you whats really going on and may be able to bump it up. whats the exact model?!
 
How many watts is the power adapter?
You could try userbenchmark.com to compare similar systems too.
 
Hi All.
I am back with more info & FRUSTRATION....LOL

What I have tried.....
Misc BIOS settings
ThrottleStop
SpeedFan (did not even detect a cpu fan)
Registry hack (ultimate performance power plan)

The Cinebench R23 score never really changed no matter what I did.

I left throttlestop running....and this is what I discovered.

The cpu runs @ 3.6 Ghz at idle and 5-15 seconds during the bench....as soon as the temp hits 80---the power switches to 15W & the speed gets downclocked to 1.8Ghz
The cpu stays at 1.8Ghz & 60 degress until the benchmark is over.

I never heard the fan crank up.

Is there no way to force the cpu fan to run at least 90% all the time...or force the laptop to run at the max frequency under a certain temp.
the thermal threshold is supposed to be 100 - yet the laptop does not go over 84.

seems laptops suck nowadays - if you want a sustained cpu frequency for more than 30 seconds....
 
Hi All.
I am back with more info & FRUSTRATION....LOL

What I have tried.....
Misc BIOS settings
ThrottleStop
SpeedFan (did not even detect a cpu fan)
Registry hack (ultimate performance power plan)

The Cinebench R23 score never really changed no matter what I did.

I left throttlestop running....and this is what I discovered.

The cpu runs @ 3.6 Ghz at idle and 5-15 seconds during the bench....as soon as the temp hits 80---the power switches to 15W & the speed gets downclocked to 1.8Ghz
The cpu stays at 1.8Ghz & 60 degress until the benchmark is over.

I never heard the fan crank up.

Is there no way to force the cpu fan to run at least 90% all the time...or force the laptop to run at the max frequency under a certain temp.
the thermal threshold is supposed to be 100 - yet the laptop does not go over 84.

seems laptops suck nowadays - if you want a sustained cpu frequency for more than 30 seconds....
tried xtu, as suggested?
 
Gateway GWTN156-1
Actually made by EVOO....I know the laptop blows, but I was having a similar issue with 1200$ Dell laptops...
I have a new Dell G5 - and it sucked for gaming, because I would constantly get huge FPS drops.....
 
its gimped by gateway, its a 1G with 3.6G boost and cannot sustain it due to limits gateway or intel set, probably due to the cooling. did you ever post where youre getting your "expected" numbers from?! did you try xtu yet and does it let you unlock or extend the boost time?


"GWTN156-1, dubbed Ultra-Slim—a rather generic consumer notebook that doesn't come close to unseating our Editors' Choice"
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/gateway-ultra-slim-gwtn156-1

"We found out who makes Walmart’s new Gateway laptops, and it’s bad news"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...almarts-new-gateway-laptops-and-its-bad-news/

ok...
 
The cpu runs @ 3.6 Ghz at idle and 5-15 seconds during the bench....as soon as the temp hits 80---the power switches to 15W & the speed gets downclocked to 1.8Ghz
The cpu stays at 1.8Ghz & 60 degress until the benchmark is over.

I never heard the fan crank up.

This sounds like power limits rather than a CPU temp issue since it's only at 60C and the fan isn't working hard. The "official" setup for Intel chips has involved 2 different power limits for a while. There's the lower one they publish as "TDP", which they are supposed to be able to run at indefinitely and a higher boost mode that only officially works for seconds. A typical desktop board will let you set the power limits and the max time for the higher turbo limit manually in the BIOS. Many even disable them by default. It looks like they set them to official specs if you're dropping to 15W after a few seconds. That's typical for laptops and pre-builts and they usually don't let you change them. 15W is the standard "TDP" for an i5-1035G1, though a TDP-up configuration of 25W/1.2GHz and a TDP-down configuration of 13W/700MHz are also supported. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...1035g1-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html

If you're seeing significantly higher benchmark scores for other or unidentified laptops with an i5-1035G1 they're likely set up for a 25W power limit. I lucked (2nd result in search) into a published Cinebench R23 multithread result that actually lists the TDP of the CPU for an Asus VivoBook with an i5-1035G1 at 46W/24W. 46W is presumably the short term power limit. It scored 4027. https://www.notebookcheck.net/i5-1035G1-vs-R5-4500U-vs-i5-1035G7_11411_11687_11401.247596.0.html
 
Power plans won't do anything for this and the Ultimate Power Plan is a bad idea for laptops because it can cause the PCH to overheat.

Try using Throttlestop to raise the PL1 Power Limit until you reach a balance between desired clock speed and thermals. That is the solution to laptop CPU power-limited throttling.

Regarding laptops not maintaining high boost clocks "these days"... that's just blatantly not true. You're basing that assumption that all new laptops "suck" on two of the absolute worst possible examples- cheap laptops, and cheap Dell laptops (the G5 series is widely considered one of their worst and has an outdated design inside and outside).
If you really need high sustained performance in a laptop, avoid Dell and HP and look to brands like MSI, ASUS, Acer, Gigabyte, Clevo derivatives, Razer, etc, stick with their "Gaming" lines, read reviews beforehand, and expect that some tuning may be needed to achieve maximum possible performance, as has always been the case for any computer ever.
 
You're basing that assumption that all new laptops "suck" on two of the absolute worst possible examples- cheap laptops, and cheap Dell laptops
"Gateway GWTN156-1" a cheap "ultra slim" so yes, i assumed...
could be the power limit stuff zandor is talking about
 
Power plans won't do anything for this and the Ultimate Power Plan is a bad idea for laptops because it can cause the PCH to overheat.

Try using Throttlestop to raise the PL1 Power Limit until you reach a balance between desired clock speed and thermals. That is the solution to laptop CPU power-limited throttling.

Regarding laptops not maintaining high boost clocks "these days"... that's just blatantly not true. You're basing that assumption that all new laptops "suck" on two of the absolute worst possible examples- cheap laptops, and cheap Dell laptops (the G5 series is widely considered one of their worst and has an outdated design inside and outside).
If you really need high sustained performance in a laptop, avoid Dell and HP and look to brands like MSI, ASUS, Acer, Gigabyte, Clevo derivatives, Razer, etc, stick with their "Gaming" lines, read reviews beforehand, and expect that some tuning may be needed to achieve maximum possible performance, as has always been the case for any computer ever.
Yep. Raising PL1 (aka the long term power limit) is what you'd want to do for sustained performance. That is, of course, if the rest of the system can take it. Just because it can run at 60C with the fan not working too hard doesn't mean they didn't cheap out somewhere else. I haven't played with ThrottleStop, but reading about it a bit indicates adjusting PL1 doesn't always work. Worth a try though, at least if you can afford to oops and break something. It probably won't break, but there are no guarantees.

I'd argue that rather than new laptops sucking the problem is that pre-built computers in general (laptops and desktops) and particularly laptops have gotten harder to buy. Once upon a time CPUs ran at X MHz. Then they started downclocking under light loads to save power. Then they got turbo boost... and now you have no idea how fast a CPU is just based on the model number because you don't know how much power it's allowed to use. Now it's more like every pre-built is overclocked and locked at the vendor's settings (not Intel or AMD, the computer vendor) and you have to try to figure out what they did. Or at least overclocked by an old definition. These days Intel says juicing the power limits is not overclocking. If you have the cooling you can feed an i7-10700 224W and it's not overclocked. I'm just picking on the 10700 because I played with one enough to make a frequency vs. power limit chart. IIRC 224W is stock PL2 for those, so it's in spec and if you have the cooling and PSU and your board has the VRMs to do it you can run at 224W and max all core turbo (4.6GHz) indefinitely. Realistically you only need ~170W unless your load uses a lot of AVX instructions. All of this is way easier when building a desktop. Include expected CPU draw when sizing a PSU, mainboard vendors will generally list VRM capacity in the specs unless it sucks, etc. Laptop? You still have the same set of power limit settings and other components but no control over the rest of the hardware. Have fun with Google search and hope you can actually find something or email the vendor and see if you get a reply.

I ran Cinebench R23 on my 2019 Lenovo ThinkBook 14S (i7-8565U, 16GB, 500GB) and got a score of 3387. It's 4c/8t like an i5-1035G1 and weighs about the same (4lbs), but it's in the "TDP-up" 25W configuration. Older architecture but more power draw and I'm smack dab in the middle between 15W and 25W i5-1035G1s. Also my fan goes nuts when running Cinebench. I find this 100% not surprising.
 
its gimped by gateway, its a 1G with 3.6G boost and cannot sustain it due to limits gateway or intel set, probably due to the cooling. did you ever post where youre getting your "expected" numbers from?! did you try xtu yet and does it let you unlock or extend the boost time?


"GWTN156-1, dubbed Ultra-Slim—a rather generic consumer notebook that doesn't come close to unseating our Editors' Choice"
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/gateway-ultra-slim-gwtn156-1

"We found out who makes Walmart’s new Gateway laptops, and it’s bad news"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...almarts-new-gateway-laptops-and-its-bad-news/

ok...
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i5_1035g1-937
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/post-your-cinebench-r23-score.213237/

I know this laptop is bottom of the barrel. It was purchased before I started at the company. I am just trying to get it to run as fast as possible.
 
Yep. Raising PL1 (aka the long term power limit) is what you'd want to do for sustained performance. That is, of course, if the rest of the system can take it. Just because it can run at 60C with the fan not working too hard doesn't mean they didn't cheap out somewhere else. I haven't played with ThrottleStop, but reading about it a bit indicates adjusting PL1 doesn't always work. Worth a try though, at least if you can afford to oops and break something. It probably won't break, but there are no guarantees.

I'd argue that rather than new laptops sucking the problem is that pre-built computers in general (laptops and desktops) and particularly laptops have gotten harder to buy. Once upon a time CPUs ran at X MHz. Then they started downclocking under light loads to save power. Then they got turbo boost... and now you have no idea how fast a CPU is just based on the model number because you don't know how much power it's allowed to use. Now it's more like every pre-built is overclocked and locked at the vendor's settings (not Intel or AMD, the computer vendor) and you have to try to figure out what they did. Or at least overclocked by an old definition. These days Intel says juicing the power limits is not overclocking. If you have the cooling you can feed an i7-10700 224W and it's not overclocked. I'm just picking on the 10700 because I played with one enough to make a frequency vs. power limit chart. IIRC 224W is stock PL2 for those, so it's in spec and if you have the cooling and PSU and your board has the VRMs to do it you can run at 224W and max all core turbo (4.6GHz) indefinitely. Realistically you only need ~170W unless your load uses a lot of AVX instructions. All of this is way easier when building a desktop. Include expected CPU draw when sizing a PSU, mainboard vendors will generally list VRM capacity in the specs unless it sucks, etc. Laptop? You still have the same set of power limit settings and other components but no control over the rest of the hardware. Have fun with Google search and hope you can actually find something or email the vendor and see if you get a reply.

I ran Cinebench R23 on my 2019 Lenovo ThinkBook 14S (i7-8565U, 16GB, 500GB) and got a score of 3387. It's 4c/8t like an i5-1035G1 and weighs about the same (4lbs), but it's in the "TDP-up" 25W configuration. Older architecture but more power draw and I'm smack dab in the middle between 15W and 25W i5-1035G1s. Also my fan goes nuts when running Cinebench. I find this 100% not surprising.
Thank you.
I am primarily a desktop / server kind of guy, but with Covid, laptops are becoming a necessity for the companies I am working for.
I am realizing I am kind of a noob when it comes to getting maximum performance with modern laptops.
 
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i5_1035g1-937
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/post-your-cinebench-r23-score.213237/

I know this laptop is bottom of the barrel. It was purchased before I started at the company. I am just trying to get it to run as fast as possible.
notice how neither of those are using your laptop model?

the second shows:
1640024345076.png

isnt even close to your "4000+"...

if we're using rando internet "benchmarks", the G4 version is over 4000, G1's seem to be ~3300...
1640024806229.png

https://gadgetversus.com/processor/intel-core-i5-1035g1-cinebench-r23/

your laptop is running as designed, kinda poorly.


I know this laptop is bottom of the barrel
I am realizing I am kind of a noob when it comes to getting maximum performance with modern laptops.
bottom of the barrel =/= maximum performance.
 
I was using the benchmarks for an idea of what to shoot for.
I certainly did not expect to get 4k, but I was hoping for something over 3k.

When you are given lemons, you make lemonade.

I have been overclocking & tweaking computers since 386 25mhz (overclocked to 30 or 33mhz - don't remember)
I am always trying to squeeze out every bit of performance that I can get.
Even if it is a bargain basement laptop.
look at the Intel Celeron 300A.....it was cheap but you could make it rock.
 
I was using the benchmarks for an idea of what to shoot for.
I certainly did not expect to get 4k, but I was hoping for something over 3k.

When you are given lemons, you make lemonade.

I have been overclocking & tweaking computers since 386 25mhz (overclocked to 30 or 33mhz - don't remember)
I am always trying to squeeze out every bit of performance that I can get.
Even if it is a bargain basement laptop.
look at the Intel Celeron 300A.....it was cheap but you could make it rock.
well you pick the only one i see that say 4000+ and focused on that.

that also requires sugar, this thing doesnt have any....

cool story bro, why do you think most of us are here.
 
I found that running CB with all applications closed & on high priority help a ton. You could even be adventurous & run it real time but there's a possibility of locking your system up during the benchmark.
 
I found that running CB with all applications closed & on high priority help a ton. You could even be adventurous & run it real time but there's a possibility of locking your system up during the benchmark.
yeah and on a gateway who knows what kind of preloaded crap is on it.
 
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