I am running a computationally intensive program that will take some time to complete. I have divided the task into many separate Windows console programs, which are equivalent except for the starting values. I have four machines which I have dedicated to the task. I run one program for each thread on a machine, which is easier for me than trying to learn how to write a single multi-threaded program.
Now, three of my computers are all running at roughly the same speed. But, ironically, my newest and best computer is doing about half the calculations that the others are doing. This is an Asus laptop. I was initially thinking maybe it is being throttled due to heat. But whenever I looked at task manager the CPU speed was always at maximum. But what I have noticed is this. After some specific time, between 4 and 5 minutes, the Performance graphs show that the CPU utilization drops from 100% to 25%. As soon as I interact with the computer again the utilization immediately goes up to 100%. So the problem is obviously not thermal, because it can't magically cool down and go back to normal speed the instant I start using it every time.
The only thing I can think of is that this must be some kind of 'feature' that reduces power or something if no interaction is detected for 5 minutes, or whatever. I have searched for any kind of setting that could be related to this but have found nothing. I did stop as many processes and services as I could before I started running the programs, so the environment should be as unencumbered as possible. I have looked through all Windows settings and through some Asus utilities that came installed, but nothing seems to be relevant, and is not running in the background anyway.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on or how I can diagnose the issue?