Acer TravelMate B3 11 laptop with an N200 CPU Speed/Performance Limited?

ClimbingColorado

Hello,

I just purchased and received a new Acer TravelMate B3 11 laptop with an N200 CPU running Windows 11. Intel's Ark website states that the CPU can run at up to 3.7Ghz (link below). I've been watching The Windows 11 Task Manager and even under long periods of 100% load, the CPU has only shows brief moments as high as 2.2Ghz (usually hovers around 1.5Ghz). The Passmark CPU benchmark score for the N200 is 5,183. However, I just ran the Passmark 11 test, results below, and got an abysmal score of 3,867.

Also, the RAM is DDR5 @ 4,800Mhz, which should be blazing fast but isn't in this test result. Any idea why this laptop is performing so poorly?

[Edited the thread to add model number to the title]

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231804/intel-processor-n200-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/707770/acer-travelmate-b3-11-laptop-with-an-n200-cpu-speed-performance-limited

That is normal, this Intel CPU operates at 100 MHz by default, turbo boost won't kick in till apps really require that, the system is trying to run cool and conserve energy, if you want higher performance uninstall all bloatware and preinstalled programs, Ram is soldered so the 8GB DDR5 is insufficient VRAM for games or photo editing, this is a starter level laptop for basic tasks like web browsing and watching movies but will struggle with anything more.

ClimbingColorado

Thanks for the reply. The Passmark average score of 5,183 is a third faster than my score of 3,867. Looking for other Passmark scores online, I found a Microsoft Surface Go 4 running an N200 CPU (link below). It shows a CPU score of 5,429. So, the N200 CPU is certainly capable of more performance than I'm currently experiencing.

https://www.newsdirectory3.com/reviewing-the-performance-of-the-microsoft-surface-go-4-benchmark-results-and-comparison-with-surface-go-3/

I just did a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro using my own license key and software from Microsoft to see if software bloat (Acer build/add-ins) was causing the performance issue. After my fresh install, I performed all the OS patches and updates and verified Device Manager properly detected and installed all the required drivers for the laptop's hardware.

As you can see below, I had the exact same results. The hardware must be set to throttle the CPU somehow. Looking in the BIOS, there are no performance related settings. Any additional thoughts?

billsey

The limiting factor is the cooling. There are limits in a laptop design as to just how much air can flow though to cool the CPU. The higher benchmarks are done on a test system that doesn't have those limitations, so can run the CPU at the higher speeds without overheating it.