Hz attack

August 21, 2007 10:07 AM

Where did half of my processor go? 1.5ghz is showing up as 599mhz.

If I could figure out how to add an image, I would.
But My Computer>Properties reads as follows:

IBM Corporation
Intel Pentium M Processor 1.5ghz
599mhz, 504 MB of RAM

THose numbers are usually both 1.5ghz, and this makes sense as the computer has been slow/crashprone the last few days.

What's going on?

posted by penciltopper to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Is this a laptop? Im guessing it is since it a pentium-m. Its common for laptops to throttle the processor to save battery life. On AC power it shouldnt be doing this.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:10 AM on August 21, 2007

SpeedStep, also .. Why is my CPU showing the wrong speed.
posted by SirStan at 10:20 AM on August 21, 2007

Seconding damn dirty ape. It's called Speed Step.
posted by nilihm at 11:00 AM on August 21, 2007

Oops. Why does that keep happening?
posted by nilihm at 11:02 AM on August 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

if it's crashing and those numbers stay lower whatever the load i would guess the fan has failed.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:03 AM on August 21, 2007

Also, try updating your BIOS. And read this hotfix from Microsoft, it might help if you are having issues with speedstep.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:39 AM on August 21, 2007

Yeah, that's probably completely normal.

I actually just downloaded a plugin for Google Desktop that dynamically shows my CPU speed because I was a little suspicious that speedstep wasn't working right. Once one of my work laptops had a problem with the temp sensor and kept the thing throttled to 200MHz while keeping the fan whining away.
posted by Good Brain at 11:54 AM on August 21, 2007

Response by poster: It is a Pentium M. But it's been running on AC power.
Hmmm. I'll try a BIOS update.
posted by penciltopper at 12:10 PM on August 21, 2007

It's definitely possible that a laptop will throttle the CPU frequency even when on AC power without anything being wrong. Though clearly something is wrong.
posted by Good Brain at 3:20 PM on August 21, 2007

If it's throttling the CPU, running on AC power with the fans on, and crash-prone, the most likely cause is dust clogging the heatsink fins.
posted by flabdablet at 11:22 PM on August 21, 2007

Also, if the heat sink is all clogged up with dust or the fan has stopped working, the CPU will start to overheat and automatically down-clock itself to prevent meltdown. So blow out all that dust and check the fan's speed.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:47 PM on August 21, 2007

Or what flabdablet wrote already and I failed to read.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:47 PM on August 21, 2007