Beloved HP 15-xxxxwm

[sapphirescales]

Which should not be great but not awful

That processor is barely passable - and only if you have an SSD to go along with it. Even then it will choke on YouTube videos and you'll probably have to watch them in 720p and not in full screen. The absolute minimum Passmark score I've found acceptable is 2,500. Pair a 2500 processor with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD and it will be good enough for 90% of people.

 

[sapphirescales]

Certain adapters I guess were causing a ground loop or something

Uh, no. That's good old Dell for you, detecting a charger as non-genuine causes them to reduce the processor speed by 99%. The processor is slowed down so much that you can't even move the mouse cursor smoothly across the screen. If it does this with an original Dell charger then the identifier chip in the charger that says "I'm a Dell!" has gone bad and Dell thinks you're using a knockoff so it cripples your processor speed and refuses to charge the battery.

 

[fincoder]

has tried drivers - old and new. Snappy didn't help at all. Cursors work fine in BIOS and with Linux also while loading Windows 10 but after loaded - no go

I had one like this a couple of weeks ago, also with an AMD APU. Had a failed HDD, installed a new SSD and Windows 10 20H2. Mouse cursor was fine until automatic updates then lagging terribly. Moves fine for a second or two, then it stops for a second. Unusuable.

I resolved it by installing the graphics driver from HP and disabling automatic driver updates in Windows.

Those APUs have terrible performance, but with an SSD for very basic use they're usable. Mouse movement issues (if not a faulty mouse/receiver) are generally always GPU or GPU driver issues.

 

[frenchscottie]

I had one of these in for repair a while back with the same problem.
I know you said that you upgraded/downgraded drivers, but I found that I had to remove the display driver completely, and block it from reinstalling and just use the microsoft basic driver, as windows 10 just installs it within seconds.

 

[Diggs]

If it does this with an original Dell charger then the identifier chip in the charger that says "I'm a Dell!" has gone bad

Not always. Had one last week where the charging jack on the laptop had the plastic around the center pin receptacle broken. It could not detect the center pin on the laptop charger and always showed a non-Dell charger. I replaced the $8 power jack in the laptop and all was good. Took off at full speed again (and charged the battery) when it saw its Dell charger.

 

[NviGate Systems]

In response to to the cheap laptops that use underpowered CPU, there is a motive: profit.

I remember talking with a BlackBerry rep back when I worked for Rogers, a local telecom. I mentioned we had so many issues with the BB Curve models, high issues rate. He told me something I won't forget. Those models were never intended to be for the N. American market. They were for a different economic zone, like Africa. But when the telcos saw how cheap they were, they wanted to profit.

It's the same with many laptops. The E Series chip, a wimp of a chip that's still sold in some forms today, was never intended to be a mainstream chip. It was designed for embedded systems, where granular control made it possible to balance performance with cost, making it ideal.

I have a feeling some of the A Series may have had the same origins. There was also a C Series CPU from AMD, similar speeds. C-60 I think. I had a Acer tablet with one of those and it did not too bad for light duty.

I think somewhere there is a road map which shows the evolution of the current AMD CPU, and I think G56-TN, C Series and A Series all have a common lineage. But AMD never said those chips would lift mountains. But the OEM's sure love to claim it.

For example, I have a Dell Wyse Z90, which runs on a G56-TN. It runs Embedded 8, and can do one task at a time, but capable. I have an Intel Compute stick that is somewhat sluggish, crippled by a CPU that loves to entertain but can't cook worth anything. :/

Anyways, if chips did what they were supposed to and greedy company didn't try and rip people off, this conversation would be not happening.