Most of the Google results I found when digging around on this subject pointed to usual boring causes of slowness: too many programs being run on startup (which you can test with ms-config if you’re running Windows), anti-virus software, and other boring stuff of that sort. In my case, I had been running Ubuntu so most of those tips are moot. But to be thorough, I did remove practically any and every resident program that was running on what should have been a zippy Dell Latitude E6520 with a i7-2720QM (2.20GHz, 6M cache) processor.
And yet, running a utility that averaged about 5 seconds on my desktop consistently took 30 seconds on my laptop. Except for every once in awhile, when it would take 6 or 7 seconds.
Before splurging for a new laptop, I decided to take a peek through my BIOS settings and managed to stumble across the culprit: the Intel “Speed Step” feature. On my Dell, this was under the “Performance” settings. I guess that the idea of Speed Step is that the i7 powers itself down when it decides you’d like your system to perform like a 486. Whatever the logic is that determines when to power down was clearly NOT working as intended on my laptop. After disabling Speed Step, I have been running for the entire day at speeds very similar to my desktop.
Hopefully someone else thinks to Google for this problem and find themselves helped by a similar approach. FWIW I suppose that this might mean that the laptop uses more battery, but you can be an informed consumer about whether you want to run fast or power-efficiently.
THANK YOU! so much Bill.
This has been frustrating me for ages. My Dell Studio XPS M620 2.66 has been frustratingly so slow. It has finally sped up past its Pentium 1 speed.
Cheers
Akash
My Dell M4600 with i7 had the same problem. UI felt very slow. I managed to do all those little tweaks (start up, services, themes…) before I stumbled on the SpeedStep hint. Turned it off and now all is good. Windows exp. index (WEI) went up from 3.7 to 7.4
Thank you!! I got my laptop about four days ago and was frustrated almost to the point of returning it with this problem. It was running like the 300mhz Pentium II laptop my friend had back in junior high. I mean, it was literally taking 30 seconds to open and load all of the icons in Control Panel. Whatever algorithm SpeedStep is using, or maybe it’s the way the operating system communicates… in either case, there is some VERY poor communication somewhere along the line.
Thanks a lot!
thanks alot..it has been almost one year that i m using dell i7.. i had headach of such slow speed.. by disabling speed step it is much better now. thanks again.
This needs to be sent to everyone who owns a laptop with speedstep – HUGE difference in speed.
I have been dealing with this slow issue since the computer was new. I decided to start using my MacBook Pro a lot more. I am just finding this now and will do what you suggest! Thanks a million! Go Internet!
OMG!
Magic! Applications start 2-3 times faster now.
I just googled the same issue and your page was the first in a row!
Many thanks!
I was so ready to set this laptop on fire, and buy a MacBook. Thank goodness for the Google. Problem solved!
I’ve had this issue on my work laptop, but in my case I know why. If I use a dell charger with enough W, my precision M4600 i7 2.20Ghz run FASTER with speed step enabled, because as well as slowing the cpu when not much is happening, it overclocks it when it needs to.
However, if I use the incorrect charger, it throttles the CPU down to about 800MHz and is really slow unless you disable speedstep. It also charges much more slowly!
Thank you SO MUCH! Have been frustrated with the speeds on my Dell i7 laptop for ages. I was wondering why it was so slow, when I paid for such a nice processor. Hopefully they get their crap together on that. So irritating. And how many users would think to check their BIOS settings AND know what to look for?