What could cause a drop from Passmark 600 to 240?

[hmbsc]

Hi,

We have several ASUS tablets that after some usage suddenly drop from a 600 rating to 240. They all have the same configuration and the benchmarks look very similar on different tablets.

Operating System;Windows 7 Service Pack 1 build 7601 (64-bit)
CPU Type;Intel Core i5 U 470 @ 1.33GHz
Motherboard;B121
Memory;4GB Samsung DDR3 SDRAM
Videocard;Intel(R) HD Graphics
Hard Drive;KINGSTON SMS100S264G (64GB)



Yesterday I ran one app, copied 1 GB from a USB drive to the hard disk and the Passmark rating dropped from 600 to 240. This persisted even after a reboot so it can't be the app still running in the background or similar. All benchmarks are run with the power supply plugged in.

Here are the two benchmarks. It seems the CPU performance was suddenly cut in half.

	1	2
CPU - Integer Math	3467.7	1414.3
CPU - Floating Point Math	1092.6	455.5
CPU - Prime Numbers	4.8	3.2
CPU - Extended Instructions (SSE)	4.4	1.8
CPU - Compression	2177.4	899.4
CPU - Encryption	223.9	93.4
CPU - Physics	98.1	52.1
CPU - Sorting	1300.1	539
CPU - Single Threaded	721.6	268.8
Graphics 2D - Simple Vectors	9.5	4.1
Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors	72.2	28.4
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text	94.6	36.7
Graphics 2D - Windows Interface	53.4	22.4
Graphics 2D - Image Filters	225	106.5
Graphics 2D - Image Rendering	293	117.4
Graphics 2D - Direct 2D	3.2	1.3
Graphics 3D - DirectX 9 Simple	8.5	2.7
Graphics 3D - DirectX 9 Complex	3.5	1
Graphics 3D - DirectX 10	1	0.4
Memory - Database Operations	26.2	16.3
Memory - Read Cached	6508.9	2412.6
Memory - Read Uncached	4076.4	2164
Memory - Write	2334.3	2270.8
Memory - Available RAM	2702	2813
Memory - Latency	66.4	84.1
Memory - Threaded	4886.5	4510.2
Disk - Sequential Read	207.2	207.1
Disk - Sequential Write	163.4	173.2
Disk - Random Seek + RW	33.3	30.7
CD/DVD - Read	0	0
CPU Mark	1557.6	681.4
2D Graphics Mark	231.1	95.3
Memory Mark	684.3	430.6
Disk Mark	1460.6	1486.2
3D Graphics Mark	95.2	32.8
PassMark Rating	596.4	240.6

Does anybody know any tools that allow deeper diagnosis of this?

Thanks in advance,

Hans

[David (PassMark)]

CPU probably overheats and then throttles.
Or it is the difference between running on battery power and mains power.

[hmbsc]

CPU probably overheats and then throttles.
Or it is the difference between running on battery power and mains power.

It was running on power supply both times and the benchmark didn't change even after waiting for a while to let things cool down.

[David (PassMark)]

Does the measured clock speed change between the slow and fast states?

[hmbsc]

Thanks for the quick responses. Is the clock speed measured by Passmark or how would I find that out?

[David (PassMark)]

If you click on the CPU onn the 3D motherboard you'll see the CPU's measured speed.

For example on my PC (a i5 750 @ 2.67GHz) I see a measured speed of
2676Hmz [Turbo 3211 Mhz]

[hmbsc]

Interesting. On one system that's pretty fast at the moment the measured speed is at 1872 (Turbo 1872). On the other it's 1336 (Turbo). They are both the same hardware and both have the same power settings (performance). I wonder if there is a way to force the CPU to run at max speed?