On my advice, my friend bought a CENOVO King Kong 4K Windows 10 Intel Atom X5 Z8300 4GB 64GB mini-PC.
After 2 months I noticed he wasn't using it as much as I thought he should use it. He complained it wasn't working well...
After some testing I had to agree. I noticed that the CPU often was flatlined and llimited to the max on 33%, 50% or 66%. Other values on which it flatlined were there too, but these numbers really stood out.
After some googling I found some relevant information, pointing to the Intel DPT (Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework) drivers. I found 1 post where someone solved it with installing Windows 8 drivers instead.
I found a bunch of possible drivers here:
https://devid.drp.su/?dev=ACPI%5CVEN_INT%26DEV_3406Now for the tricky part... After 3 weeks of testing, this is what I found out...
1. Opera has an option for battery saving. This option enabled wreaks havoc and the CPU is constantly seriously limited (among others; flatlined & low CPU speed).
It was one of the first options I disabled when testing the CPU problems. LESSON 1: YOU NEED TO REBOOT AFTER DISABLING THIS OPTION. It makes no sense; nobody asks for it and the option should work real time. But it doesn't... Keep this in mind! I also had an Opera portable which crashed its profile constantly. Which, among others, would re-enable "battery saving options" again (solved by running Opera under a 2nd Windows 10 account).
2. I tried many drivers. Especially the Windows 8.1 / 7 drivers often wouldn't install completely. And depending on the Windows 10 drivers used, all drivers would either install as a System Device OR under its own group (and both might have 1 device installed but not running properly, per yellow exclamation mark in device manager).
3. NB: factory reset of the machine ended with the Intel drivers not installed. I manually checked the system recovery partition; it indeed does not contain any of the files that would be needed... Bad service by Cenovo and it leaves me wondering how they imaged and rolled out these machines...
4. Disabling all devices in device manager does NOTHING to prevent CPU maximization below 100%
5. ThrottleStop v8.30 couldn't influence the problems at all...
6. The mini-PC does not have temperature censors to double-check if overheating is the problem (but I don't think so, especially because a quick reboot often would fix it for some time).
7. HeavyLoad findings... I could 'prove' something was really wrong by using Heavy Load. Its objective is simple: stress the CPU to the maximum. WHEN my CPU was limited and flatlined (or appeared not to be giving the maximum* otherwise) I would start HeavyLoad to push the CPU to the max. HeavyLoad graphs then will show 100% CPU usage BUT Windows Task Manager would only show (say) 33%... This contradicts each other but also shows there really is a problem! Grmbl
8. I found one driver combination that seems to keep my friend's PC running well:
Intel-FORCED-DPTF-81x64-7.10.0.2212-drp.exe.
There are a lot of other drivers and this one does not install all devices, BUT it works IF Opera options to save battery are DISABLED and the PC has rebooted AFTER disabling that said option...
The way to go now is to first remove all Intel Dynamic and Thermal Framework drivers (5 in total). I looked at Intel Power Engine & Intel Power Management IC Device devices too, but these drivers are native to Windows 10, so nothing you can change there. When you remove these devices in Device Manager be sure to also remove the drivers if the option is given.
Now search for new devices. If all is well, they are all 5 shown as unknown devices. If it again shows up as (partly) installed devices, an other driver was found by Windows 10 and you have to remove those drivers too. Repeat until all is well (eg: all 5 devices are not installed). To be sure: REBOOT. Install the driver I gave above. Remember Opera and REBOOT again!
Enjoy your normally working kick ass TV machine
Just don't look at device manager... ;p
9. When you want to test the other drivers too for your pc... Be warned! Despite what windows says, YOU MUST REBOOT YOUR PC.
For example, Dell has a very good official Intel driver available (Chipset_Driver_KVP8T_WN32_8.1.10600.147_A00.EXE) if you Google a bit. The link above also gives you
20151023 8.1.10605.221 Intel-FORCED-DPTF-NTx64-8.1.10605.221-drp.exe, which is slightly newer. Both failed though. Minimally, but they weren't working 100% for me.
To conclude...
Sounds rather simple, huh? But it took me a LONG time to get this solved. And as a technician I can't really call it 'solved' (missing devices!!). As a pragmaticus... It's working, no?
Some other programs seem to trigger these effects extra quickly. They are all video related (Ziggo GO App; Netflix App; video websites with Opera ànd also with Chrome, ....).
I hope this helps some. people...? Let us know!
Peace! For old times sake and for reseller support's sake
Devvie
* PS: for some of the drivers that installed correctly in device manager the CPU COULD appear to be working just fine in Task Manager. The CPU wouldn't flatline but it also wouldn't allocate more CPU when needed. Movies would stutter while objectively the CPU was working just fine without any stress... HeavyLoad showed the truth in those instances. Tricky sheit!
** device IDs for Google
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_22DC&SUBSYS_72708086&REV_22
ACPI\VEN_INT&DEV_3406
ACPI\VEN_INT&DEV_3400
ACPI\VEN_INT&DEV_3403
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Topic: Cenovo King Kong mini-PC: CPU limited to 33% / 50% / 66% (solved) (Read 9463 times)
