Hello Aaron. Thanks for writing all that. I believe I understand, mostly.
It's not a laptop, but a desktop machine. So, no battery. I've only really experienced overheat problems with laptops, but you might indeed be right about the components. Still, my girlfriend's laptop keeps shutting down for precisely this reason. Yes, I understand what you mean about it being ridiculous to have the computer operating at maximum clock when it doesn't need to. I suppose that is the whole point of "throttling". I think you gave me a clue as to why, even though I thought I had set the plan back to "balanced", the speed according to several diagnostics was still hanging around 3500 to 4100 mhz. I'm still trying to understand exactly how the power plans function. I was wondering about the processor state and what exactly I ought to do with it, if anything. I should probably leave the max at 100%; right now the minimum is 5% and, based on what you described, I think this should be ok. It's also worth noting that the fans in my PC did need a serious cleaning. My builder guy is always asking me to check the temps on my computer but I just figured that's the kind of guy he is and never bothered on a regular basis. I take it most people usually don't, until their computer starts acting weird or shutting itself off at high temperatures. I also realised how much of a drain JAWS + Vocalizer was on my system. I told him that now that I'm back on Eloquence, the difference is basically night and day. This system more than meets the listed requirements but the performance hit, now that I can actually see (and hear) the difference, was drastic. He doesn't really understand this, but he's never had to use or bother with a screen-reader himself; I believe he thinks it's a lot more basic than it actually is. Cheers and thanks for giving my message some thought. -----Original Message----- From: JAWS-Users-List <jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com> On Behalf Of Valiant8086 Sent: June 25, 2018 8:10 PM To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] interesting thoughts/finding about CPU speeds, temperature and JAWS Hi. Try putting it back on balanced. You don't have a battery do you? there's no battery icon? If you do have such an icon, you should be able to press space on the icon in the system tray and you'll have a left right slider you can use to adjust the cpu's power consumption for better battery, better performance or best performance. You would want to see if you're on better performance. If not, selecting that will make the cpu spend more time clocked up, and be more eager to clock up to complete tasks, but won't force it to stand right at the max clock continuously. Btw, having the cpu stay that hot just cause it's running at max clock even if it remains under light load is rather ridiculous. Also, I'd be more worried about high temps like that in a desktop than I would a laptop. Desktop components may not handle high temps as handily as a laptop who's components are all likely built with higher temps in mind e.g. hdds. If you don't have a power icon tip you can get it to appear by plugging in a UPS that will support opperation with no drivers, it should appear as a battery and turn the platform role over to mobile. Lastly, you could experiment with minimum and maximum processor state. 1. open power options windows key+x, then o. 2. tab around to additional power settings link, hit that 3. tab a whole bunch of times to change power settings for the high performance power plan link, or what ever plan it is that you have now. Hit space on that. 4. Find the changed advanced power settings for the high performance power plan button, you may land right on it. Hit space on that. 5. in the resulting dialogue you'll be in a list of power plans, you'll probably be on the high performanced plan but you can select another if you want, just remember this doesn't make that plan take affect so you need select that plan after you finish making adjustments to see what you did. 6. Tab once, in that long tree view, find processor power management, hit right arrow on it. 7. You should have minimum processor state and maximum processor state both in here plus a cooling policy that you could also experiment with to see if it has any affect, I've never seen the cooling policy actually mean anything. 8. Right arrow on minimum processor state. You'll be able to up and down arrow here to apply a base percentage value the cpu will be forced to step at or above. If you have options for both plugged in and on battery then you need to down arrow to plugged in before you right arrow of course. Notes: 0 percent doesn't actually mean the cpu stops completely, it'll clock at the minimum possible speed, which for modern intel CPUs at least is 400mhz and also known as sleep mode, often used for performing basic tasks while the screen is shut or perhaps even asleep. Other CPUs won't go below 533, 800 or 994mhz or there abouts. You can mess with this value to set a minimum slowed speed you're happy with, for instance you may find that if you do 70 percent your c cpu bottoms out at 2.4ghz or some such, and runs fairly cool and is still reasonably responsive. Maximum processor state is also very useful but it won't help your problem most likely, unless you want to try forcing it to run at 2.4ghz and not go over or under that for some reason. Note also that most of the time the percentage won't be followed exactly, you'll get what ever the closest clock speed will be if the cpu steps up or down to match it e.g. if the buss speed is 99mhz it'll jump by 99mhz increments ignoring the setting change if you apply it smaller than that. Also, turbo boost (intel) or I forgot what AMD calls it, where the cpu jumps clock speeds way higher than the rated clock speeds at times, will probably get turned off the instant you lower maximum processor state below 100 percent even one percentage point, and thus the rest of the scale is from what ever your base clock speed is and below that, perhaps. Hope that's useful. Cheers: Aaron Spears, A.K.A. valiant8086. General Partner - Valiant Galaxy Associates "We make Very Good Audiogames for the blind community - http://valiantGalaxy.com"; <Sent with Thunderbird 52.1.0 portable> On 6/24/2018 7:32 PM, JM Casey wrote: > Hey everyone. > > > > So, I am running an AMD with six processors rated at, apparently, around > 3500 MHZ. My system has 8 GB of Ram and is running Windows 10, 1803, and > JAWS 18. My preferred voice is the premium Daniel Vocalizer voice. Yes, > these specs are all relevant to the topic. > > > > For some time now, I have noticed a certain tendency of my system to lag, or > lock up, for several seconds at a time. This only seems to happen when JAWS > is running. I'm aware that my choice to use this synth does negatively > affect JAWS response time, even on this reasonably fast system. Anyway, the > "freezes" seem to affect some programmes more than others, but perhaps > particularly Firefox and MS Office products. Sometimes, alt-tabbing between > open windows seems rather sluggish. > > > > Well, today I ran a utility from a company called Resplendent Software > called WhySoSlow. It's basically one of dozens of diagnostic software tools > available, that measures your computer's performance by calculating various > factors. It measures your CPU speed, memory load, and the temperature of > your CPUs using the sensors that modern PCs have. The system was running at > a cool 20-something celsius. It was also running at less than half its > advertised clockspeed, the programme informed me, and suggested that my CPUs > were being "throttled" to conserve power. > > > > Now, I'm aware that some of these third party utilities measure specs in > weird ways, or make strange and not always advisable recommendations. I've > completely gone off using registry cleaners or any such tools for this > reason. I'm also aware that modern CPUs can "clock up" when the load on them > becomes particularly intensive, but I don't know how well Windows for > instance actually manages this feature. However, I decided to try a little > experiment. I remembered fiddling a bit with the power settings in Windows > 10 previously, but not to any great extent - mostly just to prevent my > computer from "going to sleep" when left unattended. In the "power plan" > settings within power options, I adjusted the power plan from "balanced", to > "optimise for performance", to see if it would make a difference. > > > > I then ran WhySoSlow again. My computer is now operating at peak processor > speed, all of the time. I suppose it's also using a hell of a lot more > power, which might not be a good thing. It's also not "running cool" > anymore. In fact, the CPU temperature has doubled all across the board, > reaching as high as 65 C, according to this programme (even higher according > to the coretemp utility). > > > > However - JAWS is now behaving much more responsively. I haven't had any > freezes. Alt-tab cycles between programmes nearly instantaneously, and > Firefox seems much faster. > > > > I don't really have a question for the list. I just thought this was kind of > an interesting thing to share, and wondered if anyone else had observed > anything similar. It is a fact that with my current setup I am normally at a > speed disadvantage when placed against sighted users. This is, I believe, in > part because JAWS is somewhat resource-intensive, especially using this type > of synthesiser (yes, I have considered switching back to Eloquence). I'm not > sure if I ought to keep my setup this way. I don't particularly want a > really high power bill and I don't want my computer to overheat, though in > theory the automatic cutoffs should engage before anything really bad > happens. I actually think it's nice that Windows includes power saving > features, but not necessarily at the expense of system performance. > > > > > > For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: > http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
