dutchcow

I'll keep my eyes open for some nice cheap high end C2D. Thanks for the CPU tip by the way. Do you think OSX leans harder on the CPU caches than Windows? I didn't notice any difference under Windows between these CPUs but under OSX the difference is very noticeable. Finally no weird sluggishness anymore, OSX feels as snappy as on the D820. The CPU itself gets hotter when under load but I read its normal for the T8x00, 80C under stress is fine. It idles around 35C. So it should be all good. What do you reckon is the max tdp/CPU the D630 can handle without melting? The cooling bits aren't as big as in the D820, that thing stays so cool its not funny.

Yeah it's a T8100 sorry, and yes it fits and works. The Dell bios detects it as some weird string, but Windows and OSX detect it as a T8100 correctly. I can't really get a feel for it as I'm booting from usb stick into ML, but I'm getting 3000+ with Geekbench now. So it must be better than the T7100 for sure. It's also staying pretty cool with it's new TJmax of 105, shows around 35 idle when on load the core temps differ upto 10 degrees according to HWMonitor, but I guess thats normal. I'll stick my OSX disk in there later to see how much of a difference it makes. At least I got the laptop fitted with a slightly faster CPU. Good tip and lucky me I had one laying about. Where would I pick up a really cheap faster C2D for my D630? Can't find much on ebay for a nice price. To put it in context I picked up the D820 without HDD and only 1GB RAM for 70 euro. I don't want to spend too much on it.

What about a P8100? Would that be any good? I don't have socket p cpu's laying in a drawer It has 1MB more cache and it's baked @ 45nm. I'll just try it, its the only socket p cpu I have.

But it gives me no guarantees that it will fix anything. CPU wise the laptops are nearly equal, with the T7100 winning it. It is just the (whatever it really uses to test) the render tests of the user interface where the difference is. So whatever it tests there, specially the parts with the fonts and list boxes, the D820 outperforms the D630 up to 3 times. And at the same CPU speed the D820 still scores twice as much. So I don't really care if that test leans on GPU or CPU, the difference is there when it should be the same (in theory). I've ran 3dmark and other tools under Windows and the NVidia performs as it should. It is an OSX thing for sure here. I don't want to risk spending money on the D630 CPU when it looks like the problem isn't really there, how else do you explain the score difference at the same CPU speed? And if those results don't explain the huge difference in feel when using the OS what does?

But shouldnt the basic desktop performance be the same? I didn't expect the difference to be this big. I'm going to sell the D630 and see if I can get a Intel version. Or maybe a cheap hires screen for the D820. Once you boot into Windows on the D630 it is like having a new laptop, or pressing a turbo button. I just can't live with the sluggish desktop performance on the D630 when it sits next to a D820 that feels so much faster and nicer to use. Anyways, believe in the benches or not, it clearly renders GUI elements 2-3x faster on the D820 than the D630 and you really notice it. What exactly the cause is (gpu/cpu/etc) I don't know and I was trying to get help and figure it out on here. But it seems there is nothing more to be done. Even though they should perform equally they don't. I'm amazed you don't have it on yours. I got them sitting besides each other, both booted up with Lion and the difference is day and night.

That isnt my issue though. But it shows the reason why the D630 is sluggish compared to the D820 in normal use. The GUI is just not snappy. And I (or anyone here) can seem to fix this. That is my main problem at this moment. I don't really care if it's to do with the CPU or GPU, its just frustrating that 2 nearly identical laptops perform so much differently when you just use it to surf and do your things. Does your NVidia score the same as mine?

Yeah, it does actually run at the low speed of 600mhz, I didn't doubt that for a second judging by the cool cpu temps, haha. I did some benches and I'm done with it for now, will try and fix those niggles for now and see what todo with the D630. Here are the benches: Lowest - highest cpu freq value: D820: 996, 1162, 1328, 1494, 1660, 1826 D630: 597, 796, 995, 1194, 1393, 1592, 1791 Geekbench 2 results: D630 32bit: 2644 (conservative), 2635 (on-demand), 2635 (cpu max), 918 (cpu min) D630 64bit: 2868 (conservative), 2895 (on-demand), 2892 (cpu max), 1008 (cpu min) D820 32bit: 2577 (conservative), 2574 (on-demand), 2588 (cpu max), 1527 (cpu min) D820 64bit: 2825 (conservative), 2824 (on-demand), 2834 (cpu max), 1680 (cpu min) Xbench totals of graphics tests only: D630: 109 (conservative), 38 (on-demand), 117 (cpu max), 29 (cpu min), 58 (@995mhz) D820: 181 (conservative), 109 (on-demand), 208 (cpu max), 105 (cpu min) The geek bench results show the slight advantage the T7100 has. The other Geekbench tests are pretty much useless as they both have the same disk and 4GB dual channel RAM. The same brands even. So to be the Geekbench results don't really matter much as you don't notice those differences. The scores are too close to call when it comes to some differences on the D630 between the frequency states. Those are really only noticed in daily usage of the OS itself. Sluggish feel. Both systems use the same myHack+EDP install method and have nothing modified in /Extra other than the TJmax setting. It is the GUI/user experience that matters the most to me. The D820 feels so much smoother and snappier. Probably due to that the GMA is a bit more optimized for OSX? Also the difference in lowest 'clockable' speed is quite a lot. As can be seen in the Geekbench cpu min scores. I guess the GMA chips just perform better than NVidia ones under OSX when it comes to GUI tasks at least. I don't think the screen resolution (a bit more work for the GPU on the D630) should cause the difference in GUI performance. Anyways, it was fun testing all this, and with things set to conservative the D630 is a 100x more usable, but still a bit saddening it can't be as snappy as the D820, which other than the GMA are pretty much the same performance wise, so you'd elect the same result. Too bad I can't figure this out better, my knowledge is limited. Herve, how do your GMA D630s vs. your D630 NVidia score on the Xbench graphics tests as big of a difference as here?

Fresh ML installed, ran the Xbench tests as before with the same results. Thought to try to set it to "conservative performance" and test that too. Guess what? As soon as the bench started the CPU speed (bars in PSTatemenu) went all full, something that didn't happen when using on-demand, not as fast anyways. As soon as the bench was over the bar slowly went down. It nearly looked pretty! So it seems on my D630 on-demand and conservative are swapped I get the expected slower response in delivering full CPU when using on-demand, and when set to conservative the speed is given much quicker to an application. This is one weird simple solution to this. I will continue to test and install some apps. And monitor the CPU temps. This has all been very enlightening, lol. No wonder my CPU temps were in the low 30s, they are in the high 30s now the performance is given more often, higher load, higher temp all makes sense. Funny the modes got swapped. The same happens on my D820, setting it to conservative performance gives much higher bench results and even snappier UI experience. With the D820 still being twice as fast with the graphics stuff, but so be it. The system is snappier more usable than when using on-demand performance. Now if it would only remember it between reboots. Also the -v boot bug is back on a clean disk. Volume isn't remember between boots too. A lot of niggles to look into Does anyone else have the same when switching to 'conservative' mode? Or heard of this? Try it and see.

The bios is fine, I tried the settings from the thread, and my own which are the same with just devices disabled like modem. The lowest clockspeeds of the CPU that PState tries to set the CPU to is 595, does not exist for the CPU. I don't think 595mhz is a real speedstep supported by a T7x00. Anyways, its still strange that this only happens on my D630 and not D820. No matter how low I set the speed there, the GUI benches are always fast. Thats why I run those, I don't really care if it uses GPU or CPU, its exactly whats causing the sluggishness of the GUI on the D630. The lowest clockspeed Windows/Unix will try on my T7100 is 1ghz, and then one or two steps more till the max of 1.8ghz. But never as low as 595. If only PState would use the real speedstep-steps in and not something it gets from I don't know where.. Still though, this shouldn't happen. Very annoying. I will do the tests later. All PState really needs to get is a proper list of steps/frequencies supported by the actual CPU or a way to add/edit those values to the real values of the CPU. Finding documentation about the Info.plist and how to give it your own proper CPU speeds is unfindable to me. Right now I put a new disk in the D630 and re-installing 10.8. Made the USB stick with myHack + bootpack. Will do a normal install, boot up, install EDP, use stock values in EDP, reboot and run the benches. I won't edit or touch any config files. Once I have the results I will also get the info you'd like to see. But I really think this is caused by PState running my CPU too slow, like the lowest speed should be something like 1.09ghz and not 595mhz. Edit: Seems the solution is in patching SSDT tables so make sure PState will not try and set my CPU to a speed thats lower than the lowest supported speed, which I havent done, I did extract the tables as per wiki under Linux. But I need to learn about the patching I guess.

Well the culprit is VoodooPState, once I remove that kext everything is dandy. I don't know where to go from here though. Same thing happens on L/ML, once its removed the system is like a 100x faster, amazing. But howto get speedstep back? http://imgur.com/f1iF01f Left: Manually set to max frequency. Right: Set to on demand performance. The difference in user experience is huge, anyway to fix this? If I'd to believe htop the core syncing (VoodooTSync?) isn't working as well, unless some apps can actually only use one thread. I still don't understand how this only happens to my my D630 Hrm, it only happens when I force the speed at the lowest two speeds, which don't really exist.

I just had something odd. I installed SL with the myHack+bootpack and before installing EDP ran Xbench graphics parts only; scores over 150! Blazing fast. So I installed EDP, rebooted, re-ran the tests a few times, all scores well below 50, sometimes even 32. There is something going on there. Maybe later I will try the bootpacks as Extra on L/ML too just to see what happens. Any ideas so far what could possibly explain this difference? Just to be sure I re-installed EDP rebooted and retsted and then re-installed the bootpack Extra, using the bootpack kexts is os much faster than EDP. I can't even start to guess at what could cause this or the differences between the final Extra folders. I will look at it tomorrow when I'm bored again.

It only happens on certain brands/types of HDD on this D630 it happens with my Hitachi and Seagates, I'm not alone here, hence this tool. Just though it could prevent people from thinking their drive is broken. I read that Apple flashes their own firmware on their drives that interprets the apm signals differently than stock drives. There's a lot of forum posts from people with the clicking on their Macs after upgrading the drive to a non-Apple.

Thank for the info. There's really nothing else I would know to do, I'll wait and hope someone here knows something else to try. Else I'd just put this one up for sale and go for a well supported E series. On a side note, would it be possible for EDP to include some fix for the hard disk ticking noise created by OSX's silly way of enforcing the max power savings causing the heads to park every 10-20 seconds making this ticking noise. I use hdapm for it myself, but I don't know if they allow redistribution or if you guys even want such thing in the EDP. It could go in the fixes menu?

I changed the TJ values to a 100 they were both at 0 as you said, at boot time I did see some messages fly by I think. The temp on both is slightly higher be still well below the 40 point, not that I mind as long as the palm rests stay cool. Too bad there isn't much else you or I can do to troubleshoot my D630 I do have a plain myHack+EDP install, I use the same usb stick for the install, just a different Extra for each laptop. It would really suck if for some really strange reason my 3D/OpenGL stuff isn't fixable, kinda bought this machine to be a hackingtosh... Edit: I checked how OSX reports my card and noticed its a GeForce now, it used to display the right card, but that could be just cosmetics as they are essentially the same card right? Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS VRAM (Total): 128 MB Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Device ID: 0x042b Revision ID: 0x00a1 ROM Revision: 60.86.68.00.16 Wonder if you have the same ROM and revision as me on one of your D630s.

I think speedstep is working fine, I see the bars change to full when I'm doing heavy lifting and sometimes the fan kicks in a bit louder than the normal humming. I got a T7100 which scores about the same as the T5600 in the D820, overall it's a joy to use the D820 because its snappy as can be. I did just install GeForceGLDriver.bundle to try and it cut my Xbench scores in half, but the GUI experience seems faster somehow :S I will remove it again and re-test to see if I'm not dreaming and then try another patch I found, other than that I have no clue howto solve this, it happens under SL/L/ML. I have no OpenGL problems in Linux or Windows (I kind of assume its todo with OpenGL at this point). Do quite like learning this side of 'unix' though. Not too much of an Apple fan (hope nobody will hate me for that) but I like OSX a lot, the OS is great and having 'unix' underneath adds extra value to me. But I understand Apple can't have the user experience ruined by 10.000 hardware combinations like Microsoft. Anyways I'm rambling! As for the cooling, both my heatsinks were covered in a layer of hard old grease, I removed that and applied some bottle of cleaning agent that came with the thermal kit, I have no idea what it does exactly but it makes the paste bind much better. The TJ speed is reported at boot at 75 on the T5600 I think and I'm sure it's a 100 on the D630. (Just checked on the Intel site they're both 100, will check the info files) On my D820 I had actually ordered a new CPU fan because it didn't came on when I tested the laptop with the keyboard still loose to see if it all worked. I only found out after putting in a replacement that arrived this morning it also didn't worked but the laptop booted up fine. I booted up Linux and ran i8kfan 2 2 and low and behold the fan came to life! Right now, and I'm not joking the machine is idling in a 21C living room at 29C. The D820 is a seriously cool machine, if it wasn't for the low res screen I'd be using it right now. They can be had for spare change secondhand. Could you possibly share your Extra stuff for one your non sluggish D630's for me to test? I've also triple checked the bios and simply disabled all hardware I don't use on both laptops and made sure the advanced core stuff is disabled. BIOS config, software and nearly all hardware they are identical laptops. Thanks for the help so far by the way! I hope I can also help some people out with my gained experience troubleshooting. I can only say buying little apps like SuperDuper! is def. worth the money when playing about. Having a live copy of your install you can boot into on any machine at any time is just very comforting Oh, another little snag I noticed on the D630 is that sometimes the keyboard repeatsssssssss like that until I press another key, using the myHack PS2 kexts resolved this.

I've fixed the not being able to restart by deleting and re-installing EDP. But my laptops still boot with seemingly fixed chameleon flags, my D820 always boots with -v -f and my D630 with -v, I have to edit them at each boot. Which is just annoying, nothing too bad. Fixed thanks to Hervé; > That verbose boot could be a side affect of multiple OS X partitions on a drive where the 1st partition boot plist takes precedence... I think that is my problem too, I will figure that out, could it also be in/on the EFI partition? What does strike me as odd is that my D630 seems to be so much slower in day to day usage than the D820, even though they have pretty much the same CPU benchmark wise, and the D630 has an nvidia over the D820 Lion is much snappier on the D820, it makes me sad I cant seem to get Lion to work as well on the D630 as on the D820. Could you and others maybe share some performance tricks EDP doesn't automatically use? I've played around with some strings in chameleon but the geekbench differences are not significant. The geekbench numbers are very close, but the D630 always scores higher, its just slower in actual usage. Overall the graphics on the D820 seem faster than on the D630 with the same OS install (just bare osx for testing now) and EDP, nothing else, all stock settings. If anything they should perform the same right? Both machines even have the same RAM and HDD, the only big difference is GPU, and a X3100 shouldnt perform faster than an nvidia, graphics feel sluggish on the D630 somehow. I've ran htop and checked sysload loads and processes on both machines and they are similar, as well as the memory usage. The D630 allocates about 200MB more RAM at 900MB vs 700MB on the D820 running idle. I just can't figure this one out. Should I have bought a D630 with Intel graphics instead? I hope not. If anyone can help please do Edit: On a positive note, following Dell excellent service manuals I was able to clean both laptop's fans inside out, the heatsinks and replaced the thermal paste with new, Dell puts way too much on there. The results are pretty 'cool' for such a quick job, 30 minutes per laptop with a cup of coffee and the service pages open on another laptop. I got my idle temps in the lower 30s and 50s on load, the nvidia however didn't get much cooler and idles at 55. So if you're bored and have a screwdriver, clean out that laptop and enjoy the silence. Edit 2: The problem lies in OpenGL or somewhere near. I did some Xbench testing both laptops running Lion 10.7.5, the D820 scores 111 overall and D630 87 (just doing the 3 graphics tests) I find its weird the GMA is faster than the D630 specially for the OpenGL squares, the D820 scores nearly 200 there and the D630 not even 90. This must have the impact I'm feeling but not seeing in Geekbench as it only seems to test disk and cpu stuff and not graphics. What kind of things can I try to improve this poor OpenGL result?

I try to reboot or shutdown the screen goes black, hdd activity stops and it sits there forever. If I press the power button I get greeted with the login screen again. I've ran a full myfix, twice. Rebooting via a shell also doesn't work (shutdown -h now and shutdown -r now). What is wrong with my installations? I'm tempted to reinstall as it's driving me nuts. On top of that OSX always boots in verbose mode, no matter the setting in Chameleon.

I can confirm it is now fully working with the latest EDP. Thanks a lot! Now I can finally boot directly into ML and SL. Just don't know which one to choose yet, haha.

Oh thank you for confirming it is a bug. I was close to the looney bin Thanks for providing the EDP and this site. The funny thing is that on some machines like my D420 OSX runs miles faster than XP/Win7. Then again you can strip down OSX to about 4.5GB including all the apps I use with crap like iTunes/Quicktime removed. It takes ~700-800mb of ram. A lovely OS, too bad the hardware is just too expensive for the likes of me. I'll wait for the next EDP version and give it another go! Cheers.

HD swapping didn't work. But I did some testing and it's definitely EDP messing something up. I decided to install the latest EDP on my D420 and low and behold, the same boot issue. Booted via usb and installed the old EDP 1.9.2 and everything works as it used to be. Something in the current EDP is causing this on my D420 and D630, I can test it tomorrow on my D820 too, but I'm quite sure this isn't a user error as restoring an older copy of EDP fixes all problems. I was lucky to have old copies, only for SL and Lion though 1.9.2/2.2.

Hey that's a pretty good idea! I will swap my lion disk as the D420 has a zif connector. I will report back. Lets hope it is the hdd, I have enough of those. On a side note, doesnt OSX warn for SMART issues?

I'm using a rebranded broadcom card in all my hackingtoshes, they work perfectly. I can only boot ignoring cashes or other options via the USB, anything done from chameleon on the hdd stalls... If only there was a way to log what is happening, it's just too weird! I've also booted up without dsdt and generated one, also didn't help.

Yes, I've reinstalled it from the booted OS and also via myHack on the installation usb stick, both to no avail.

Yes I install the EDP package after everything is installed and OSX has been booted up for the first time this is also before I install any combo updates. It installs fine then when I reboot I get the stalling. Booting from usb to the installed partition works fine. I've installed Lion+EDP on my D820 without a flaw today, it is just the D630 giving this issue on all 3 OSX flavours right after EDP.

I'm running 3 hackingtosh notebooks, but only my D630 (nvidia model with stock A18 bios, ahci hdd) is giving me a headache. I can install SL/S/ML fine and it will boot fine after initial installing but as soon as I install EDP on it it will not boot anymore. It loads the kernel and then stalls. No errors, no grey screens, it just stalls on something like: Read HFS+ file: [hd(0,2)/mach_kernel] 4096 bytes Read HFS+ file: [hd(0,2)/mach_kernel] 7440004 bytes Then there is nothing. The weird thing however; when I boot from usb and select my newly installed SL/S/ML partition it boots fine and right after those above messages it will show something like "SMBIOS loaded". Things I've tried that didn't work (and yes I'm a noob): - Install Extras from bootpack - Install Extras from myHack (generic) - Move Extras to install partition - Move only the chameleon, bootlist, dsdt files over Other than booting up usb first and then booting into my OSX is the only way right now. Surely this can be better? Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks~