e5-571g-5107 turbo boost not working

Hi 

i have the same problem ,same cpu i5-5200u ,and i have windows 8.1 .

this is what you need for bios update http://community.acer.com/t5/E-and-M-Series-Laptops/Aspire-E5-571-BIOS-update-v1-31-Error/td-p/380964

but for me it didn't solve the problem.

Might be an old thread, but as it's the first search result on Google, I'll resurrect it anyway... 

Long story short:

Turbo Boost of i5-5200U is broken by BIOS-Update v1.31 ("Intel ME Update"). Latest version v1.32 doesn't fix it.

We have two E5-571G in the family, so I had the chance to compare them. One was on the latest BIOS v1.32 when I noticed that the CPU never, ever used Turbo Boost. Windows 10 Event Log shows specifically that "System Firmware" is preventing it from doing that. Forget everything about Energy Settings, Driver Updates, fresh install of Windows 10, BIOS-defaults etc etc - won't help.

Why? The second Laptop was still running on BIOS v1.27 and Turbo Boost was used as expected (on AC and battery). After many attempts to fix the first Laptop I finally decided to test if it's BIOS related. As soon as I updated the second Laptop to v1.31 Turbo Boost was permanently gone. Flashing v1.32 didn't change that.

A BIOS downgrade seems impossible without trying a Recovery via USB-Stick - I'm not going that far, there's no Info about doing it for the E5-571G specifically. But at least for this model forget all instructions about modifying "platform.ini" inside the Windows version of the official flashtool - it won't work (.exe generates a new "platforms.ini" every time).

How I got Turbo Boost back when needed:

Searching (I did a lot...) shows many people run into this problem with the i5-5200u, not all of them Acer related. I found a strange solution on Intel's Community:

1. I deactivated the fast boot of Windows 10     //(didn't solve it for me, see below)
2. Reboot the system
3. Turn the PC off to "power save"-mode     //he means "Sleep Mode"
4. Reactivate Windows     //or simply put: "get it out of Sleep Mode"
5. Turn on fast boot again
6. Restart

Now the CPU uses turbo boost whenever it's needed. Don't ask me why...^^ But it works.

About Step 1: Just disabling Fast Boot of Win10 didn't help in my case, I had to disable Hibernation completely. Everything else stays the same (including re-enabling Hibernation in Step 5).

How it works:

You only have to do all of the steps once. After that Turbo Boost still doesn't work out of the box, but: If the Laptop is on AC-Power, simply put it to sleep mode and turn it back on (steps 3 &4). Turbo Boost should then be enabled until the next reboot. For some reason it only works on AC, not while on battery power.

But don't expect too much from it. If really stressing the system it won't use the higher frequencies very long - cooling system of this Acer-Model doesn't seem to be very effective.

Also build quality might play a role for you as well: When first testing Laptop #1, stress tests caused the temperatures to go up to 103° Celsius (!), causing emergency throtteling down to 500 MHz (which finally explained some crashes in games). Dissassembled it and I have to say, I've never seen that much thermal paste applied as on this CPU and GPU ! Cleaned them and applied new paste and now Temps rarely go above 70° in prime95. (This was before I figured out how to enable Turbo Boost)

The second Laptop doesn't have that problem. Makes me wonder if complaints about overheating made Acer fiddle with the BIOS-settings in the first place or if it's an honest mistake in v1.31. They didn't fix it with the next version, that's for sure. And throtteling a CPU definitely "solves" heat problems, yes...