I used to run Cygwin 64-bit on a Toshiba laptop, Portege R930. In particular, I ran pdflatex
on a report being composed. It took about a handful of seconds. That machine ran Windows 7. According to the vendor page, the processor is Intel's i5-3340M vPro, and it had 8GB RAM. Dual core, four hyperthreads.
I recently bought a Windows 10 laptop, TravelMate P2410-G2-M. The system information
says that it has i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors. The same Cygwin packages and versions (identical) were installed, and the same LaTeX document takes 2-3 times longer to compile. This, despite the ostensibly much more capable hardware.
Is there anything in particular about Windows 10 that I need to set in order to "unleash" the full potential of that processor?
Power settings
Thanks to "kicken" for pointing out a possible cause as battery-saving power settings. Yes, plugging the laptop in lets it Turbo Boost up to 3.4 GHz, and the execution is way faster. However, I only have one power plan, and that is the Balanced
plan.
Unfortunately, within that plan, I haven't found the setting to allow for Turbo Boost when operating off the battery. In Power Options -> Advanced settings
, the only applicable setting seems to be Processor power management
. It has 3 parameters, each one allowing a value for On battery
and a value for Plugged in
. The names of the first and last parameters sound like they relate to processor speed, but the values are the same for On battery
and Plugged in
:
Minimum processor state
- On battery: 0%
- Plugged in: 0%
System cooling
- On battery: Passive
- Plugged in: Active
Maximum processor state
- On battery: 100%
- Plugged in: 100%
Power mode on battery
Double-clicking the battery icon on the lower right corner of the screen
pops up a Power mode (on battery)
panel, wherein the performance
slider is already set to high
performance. It isn't clear what the slider position corresponds to
what behaviour:
The Battery settings
link opens up a Battery
panel, but none of
the controls look relevant except for those that activate battery saver
when the charge falls below 20%. My charge is well above that, so it
doesn't explain the curtailed speed when running off batteries.