My Core 2 Duo is running at 1/4 speed!?!

August 3, 2007 8:44 AM

The new computer I built is way too slow, and the Mobo bios reports that the Core 2 Duo 2.2gig processor is running at 550mhz, and the FSB speed is 200Mhz. What am I doing wrong?

We had a big storm yesterday, which utterly fried my dev machine. So, I traipse down to the store and buy parts for another one.

All seems good, but it's way too slow, and the Mobo bios reports that the Core 2 Duo 2.2gig processor is running at 550mhz, and the FSB speed is 200Mhz. The Bios reports that the CPU is at 39c. What am I doing wrong?


Core 2 Duo E4500
MSI p965 Neo-F motherboard
Diamond Viper X1650 Pro video card
1 stick of 1gig Kensington DDR2667 (kvr667d2/1gr)

posted by Emera Gratia to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

The FSB the bios reports should be much lower than the CPU's advertised because it's multiplied. It's usually something like 4x, so what the MB is actually reporting in mhz should be multiplied by the multiplier. I think what you're seeing there is actually 800mhz. But I could be wrong.
posted by IronLizard at 8:53 AM on August 3, 2007

Oh, and here's the explanation for the CPU.
posted by IronLizard at 8:54 AM on August 3, 2007

What does CPU-Z say? Post screenshots at image shack.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:58 AM on August 3, 2007

In awards bios screens, there's usually an option to "autodetect" default settings for a cpu. Do you see anything like that?
posted by boo_radley at 9:05 AM on August 3, 2007

Response by poster: I didn't know about CPU-Z. Thanks! These are the results:

http://www.18giants.com/cpuz1.jpg
http://www.18giants.com/cpuz2.jpg
http://www.18giants.com/cpuz3.jpg
http://www.18giants.com/cpuz4.jpg

Well, as far as I can tell (please tell me if I'm wrong), cpu-z sez my system is running correctly.

So why is it so dang slow?? Is it my old Win2K OS?
posted by Emera Gratia at 9:12 AM on August 3, 2007

Looks good. How did you repair your old machine? Can you elaborate, because switching from one to two processors requires you to rebuild the HAL. This can be done by doing a repair install of windows or by reinstalling windows.

In task maanger do you see two processors like this?

That BIOS looks old to me. Visit the manufacturers website to see if there's an update.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:19 AM on August 3, 2007

Did you rebuild the machine including O/S?

And get rid of win2k, there's no good reason to be running it these days unless you are a glutton for punishment.
posted by iamabot at 9:20 AM on August 3, 2007

Why do you have PC2700 RAM with a dual core? You should be using something much faster.
posted by IronLizard at 9:20 AM on August 3, 2007

Nevermind, ignore that.
posted by IronLizard at 9:22 AM on August 3, 2007

CPU-Z is showing 333 for the memory.
posted by IronLizard at 9:22 AM on August 3, 2007

He's using DDR2-667 not pc2700.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:24 AM on August 3, 2007

Yes, I noticed. The last CPU-z screen shot threw me off. Even after I was babbling on about cpu multipliers I forgot about the ram multiplier.
posted by IronLizard at 9:27 AM on August 3, 2007

It's highly unlikely that it is hardware performing poorly. If you have doubts download unbuntu live CD and play around with that o/s, should be very responsive.

Best guess is the O/s wasn't re-installed from scratch.
posted by iamabot at 9:30 AM on August 3, 2007

Response by poster: Thank you! I will do a WinXP clean install.
posted by Emera Gratia at 9:33 AM on August 3, 2007

IIRC Win2K doesn't use the second core. (In those days you had to have the server version of the OS in order to take advantage of the second CPU.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:34 AM on August 3, 2007

Nope, win2k pro supports 2 processors. Its hyperthreading support is not so good, but c2d dont use hyperthreading.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:36 AM on August 3, 2007

Yeah, I was going to post a correction. It was hyperthreading that it didn't handle well. Back when I got my dual-Xeon I found that if I enabled hyperthreading for both processors, Win2K would only use 2 of the four virtual processors it discovered.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:50 AM on August 3, 2007

Response by poster: That seems to have been the problem; Win2K is just too dang old to work right on today's hardware. Now I have to find my Oblivion disc, so I can see how much POWER I have now. :)
posted by Emera Gratia at 10:37 PM on August 3, 2007