Ultra-Thin

[FIPOLINIO]

So I recently noticed that my Acer laptop has an issue when it comes to gaming. The speed of the CPU gets really low when starting a game, I didn't noticed this until just a couple of hours ago...I was playing Borderlands 2 and I disconnected my laptop to move it to my desk and I noted that my FPS went up almost the double of what they were before, I plugged my laptop again to the charger and I started looking at the CPU's Cores, the speed of each core got preatty low and fluctuated between speeds. I tested this with all my games, and all had same results, for example an area in Borderlands 2 when plugged in the performance was about 18-22 FPS, but when unplugged from the charger the FPS went up 34-48 or even more. I have tried and read a lot of things over the web, and can't find a solution to this...

Another test I made was with Dolphin Gamecube emulator, the FPS when playing The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker varied between 22-26 or lower on heavy areas, when unplugging my laptop from the charger I got constant 30 FPS in those same heavy areas.

Also with Counter Strike Global Offensive, the game normally ran about 50 -60 FPS in all maps, then tested without the charger plugged in and got 70-120 FPS on all maps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6Hwgedqmo 

This video demonstrates exactly what is happening to me, except that I have an AMD GPU and CPU.

My Acer Aspire V5 552 Specs are.
Windows 7 X64
8GB RAM
AMD A8-5557M @2.1GHz - 2.8GHz Turbo
AMD 8550G GPU
I have all latest drivers and updates installed.

The charger is not damaged, its the original one that came with the laptop. 

[IronFly]

Are you sure that the charger is working good?

there 2 options here:

1) Power Options not working good, check in Control Panel - Power options 

check if you can "force" highest performance and try again with and without charger

or check advanced settings with AC charger connected

2) the AC charger output is not correct, maybe giving less wattage or amperes to the notebook.

[FIPOLINIO]

The charger is working as it should, I even tried with a generic charger and its the same result..

How do I exactly force that in power options, because when I go to change my power settings on the profile am using everything is on max, but under ATI Graphics Power Settings>ATI Powerplay Settings on battery and plugged in both have maximize performance, but when plugged in with maximiza performance the results still the same, fluctuating cores and not staying at 2.8 GHz, however when setting plugged in to Maximiza Battery Life it stays at default speed 2.1GHz but still framerate is not good.

When on battery is set to maximize performace it would stay at 2.8 GHz turbo mode and the cores would not fluctuate. I really dont know what is causing this...

[IronFly]

As power option, i mean the windows power options not the ATI power options.

By the way is something wrong on the cpu frequency control.

Years ago i used a program to set it manually but i can't remeber the name.

[FIPOLINIO]

nothing wrong with it, the only time that fluctuates like that while plugged in and using the maximize performace is when I play games, and yes I also tried the windows power options with no luck.

[IronFly]

Are you using drivers from Acer website or ATI website?

[FIPOLINIO]

Yes official drivers all up to date

[IronFly]

Can you check on BIOS (press F2 at boot) if any power setting is available?

if so, set to maximum perfomance, disable cool&quite or C1 and C6 state if any.

about AC charger, the generic charger has the same specs?

[FIPOLINIO]

No power settings avilable, only options I found were Quite boot, network boot, and so... the generic charger has different voltages, I can set it up to 24V, I tested using mu laptop with that, and the cores doesn't fluctuate as much as before but still fluctuate between 1.7 GHz (the lowest I saw) and the max 2.8 GHz, still better performance and stable 2.8GHz when unplugged.

[eddie_beltran]

I´ve got the same problem dude, it´s a BIOS malfunction, but Acer won´t do anything till we make some noise, look at this thread:  community.acer.com/t5/Ultra-Thin/Performance-slow-when-plugged-in-V5-552/td-p/202767...

Lenovo user got their problem solved with a BIOS update, i´ve been contacting support and they only make excuses and repeat the same: Are your power settings on high performance?.  never buying Acer Again.