Vostro 1400 - videos are laggy

[ervinke2]

I installed Mavericks on my Dell Vostro 1400. C2D T7250 2 GHz, 8400M GS 128MB, 3GB RAM. For the first look everything looks good. The transitions are little laggy but it's okay.

 

The real problem is when I start a video on youtube or start a 720p movie from my hdd. The image falls apart. I thought the VGA is the problem but then I saw this. According to this picture my CPU is running on 0,54 GHz. I think the speed step doesn't work. 

 

What should I do to fix it?

 

Edit:

I turned off SpeedStep in BIOS, but videos are still lagging.

[npjohnson]

Have you edited custom video connector information? Is your Video card recognized as the correct type?

 

Your processor problem might have something to do with multiple core, boot with cpus=1. And see if it gets the same results, if so, it isn't using multiple cores and I might have an idea to fix that.

[ervinke2]

What do you mean at custom video connector?

 

I think my VGA is recognized well. 

 

If I boot with cpus=1 OSX recognizes my CPU speed well, 1.99GHz, if I don't use it it thinks it's running at 1.81GHz. Unfortunately cpus=1 doesn't resolve my problem. Videos still lagging.

 

 

 

Geekbench still thinks my cpu running at around 5-600 MHz.

 

 

[Hervé]

There's nothing wrong with your CPU and you don't need to boot with option cpus=1. You don't have anything to do with your video connector either. Those are wrong & misleading paths.

 

Two very important points about your BIOS settings:

1. do not turn off SpeedStep, it's required for adequate CPU power & frequency management; re-enable it or your CPU will only run at lowest frequency, i.e. 600MHz in your case (T7250).
2. if the parameter is available and since you have a Merom CPU, disable IDA (Intel Dynamic Acceleration). OS X does not  support the feature for the Merom Core2Duo CPUs (only for Penryn) and it'll slow FSB and therefore CPU frequencies by about 10%. For instance, your CPU would not run at 600MHz but something like 540MHz at low speed, or 1.8xGHz instead of 2.0GHz at high speed.

This being said, it's "just" your CPU & GPU management settings that need to be adjusted. Look for the performance tuning explained in the following article, that should normally help on the video front:

http://www.osxlatitude.com/tuning-performance-with-fakesmc-smbios-plist/

 

There was a good recent testimony too:

https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2673-performance-tuning-with-fakesmc/

 

Your Vostro1400 looks similar to Dell Latitude D630/D830 nVidia laptops. As such , you can safely opt for those MBP5,1 settings mentioned in the article.

 

NB: Bear in mind that the 2.0GHz T7250 Merom CPU is far from being the best performer of the FSB800 T7xxx family and its small cache (2Mo) can be a real slowdown. If you can update for cheap, do not hesitate. T9300s are great.

[ervinke2]

Thanks for your help! Everything is running smoothly.

 

I have a little problem. When I shut down my computer everything goes dark but my laptop doesn't turn off.

[hackintoshnewbie]

Hi,

 

Can you explain how you turned your Vostro 1400 into a Hackintosh?

I have very similar specs.

Attached is the CPU-Z report.

DELL1400-PC.html

[ervinke2]

You need a working OSX, an OSX installer, and an at least 8GB pendrive, or external hdd.

(I downloaded an image of an OSX to run in VMWare. Then I downloaded Mavericks from the App Store.)

 

Then you have to download a bootpack from here. I used the Dell D630 with nvidia graphics, because it's really similar to the Vostro 1400. After you have that you need myHack. In myHack you need to select Create OS X Installer. Select 10.9, select the drive where you want to create it, then select the place where the installer is. I think myHack can find where is the installer. It will ask if you want to use a general extra folder or a specific. At that point you have to select the specific extra folder, and select the bootpack which you downloaded before. When that's ready you can boot from your pendrive or whatever you used. The installer should boot up. 

 

After you installed OSX and booted into, you have to download EDP. In EDP select Dell D630 with nvidia graphics, it will install the kext you need. There is one more thing you need to select, go to fix section and enable cookbook fix/ acpi. When it's finished you will need to reboot. After reboot you need a little tweaking.  But everything is written down in this topic.

 

I hope I could help you.

[hackintoshnewbie]

Thanks!!! It worked