Why did my Atom 330 equipped laptop suddenly lose half its CPU score?

[balane]

My Asus 1201N netbook with Atom 330 1.6GHz and nVidia ION has 4GB of RAM and runs Windows 7 64 Bit. It's always, since the day I got it, received 3.3 for CPU under the Windows Experience Index and around 680 for the CPU Passmark score.

Recently it started getting sluggish, I reran the WEI and it scored just 2.2. I reran Passmark and it now gets ~330 which is right about half of what it was.

I didn't make any changes to this laptop regarding its hardware or operating software. I've tried countless measures to restore the performance but I keep drawing a blank. Does anybody have any suggestions for locating the cause of this issue?

I currently have nothing loading up in MSCONFIG and all drivers are current 64 bit drivers.

Thank you.

Edit; Let me add that my laptop is not overheating. There is no dust in it and temperatures are in line to where they've always been. Mid 50's idle, low 70's load which is actually pretty good for a netbook.

[David (PassMark)]

Maybe the power settings changed.
e.g. you are now running in the maximum battery life mode, and not maximum performance.

[balane]

Thank you for your reply and that is a good suggestion but that's definitely something I checked. Not only do I have it set for High Performance but I went into advance settings and made certain that every entry for CPU level was adjusted to 100%. I can also verify my clock speeds at all time via Everest and CPU-Z, both always show 1.6GHz.

Only very seldom do I have to seek outside help for a Windows PC issue but this one has me absolutely stumped.

It almost feels as if there's a very low level issue going on here but the netbook's BIOS is severely limited in what I can change.

All of the hardware completely appears to be functioning normally and within its specifications but still, the CPU remains running at about half its ability. This is making an already slow computer (By today's standards.) unbearable.

[balane]

Well, I think I found it but I don't understand it.

WEI is now back at 3.3 and CPU Passmark is in the high 600's again.

What did I change? I've been messing with different things for a while now and the change which did the trick was in MSCONFIG, under the boot settings tab.

I had it set to use both cores while booting and also to do a non-GUI boot. Both of these were in an effort to get quicker load times. (The netbook has an SSD.) There is no reason I can think of this would permanently slow down my laptop but once I changed it back to the Microsoft default settings everything fell back into line.

I won't say I understand it and I can't explain why it suddenly started having a negative effect on the CPU speed but I'm glad it's fixed.

Thanks for the place to post.

.

[David (PassMark)]

There is normally no need to set the number of cores in msconfig. It should almost always auto-detect the correct config. Also I think the setting effects all operations on the machine once booted, not just the boot sequence. But if you had it set to 2 and you have 2 cores, then there should have been no effect.

[balane]

Yes, normally no need but it's a common speed tweak bantered about on the web. Some of the tweaks produce results, some not so much. This one would probably fall into the latter category. According to these tweak guides Windows, by default, only uses a single core during the boot process. Tweaking web sites state that manually setting it to use the specific number of cores available decreases Windows loading times. Supposedly turning off the GUI boot also makes it load faster.

From off to a usable desktop my primary gaming computer takes ~2 seconds less with these two modifications. Doesn't sound like much but if you think about it, two seconds is an eternity in computer speeds.

Clearly, on this netbook, it's advantageous to ignore these mods and have my CPU running at full capacity.

[David (PassMark)]

but it's a common speed tweak bantered about on the web

Ignoring this one exception. I haven't seen any evidence that manually setting the number of processes in msconfig.exe can speed up a machine.

The setting was made available for developers and system admin people to limit the number of cores in use by Windows. (i.e. make it use less resources and run slower).

[balane]

It looks like it is a bunch of BS. I was just reading this article. Oh well, live and learn.

http://www.withinwindows.com/2008/08/09/tweaking-myth-increase-boot-performance-for-multi-core-users-with-msconfig/