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    Why 8600 CPU Speed Drop

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by sluk, May 11, 2007.

  1. sluk

    sluk Notebook Guru

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    Any idea why my 8600 1500MHz cpu speed only shown as 599 MHz instead of 1.5GHz? Why speed dropped and any utility to turn it back to full speed? Would it be a failure fan inside and is it possible to identify it? Many thanks!

    [​IMG]
     
    sluk, May 11, 2007
    #1
  2. coriolis

    coriolis Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Because it's stepping down it's clock speed when its not necessary. The Pentium M chip, as well as the Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and future mobile chips all have Speed Step technology, which clocks the processor down when its not needed. For example, if you are encoding a video, it'll use 1.5ghz or all of your processing power. But when you are surfing the web, it clocks itself down to 600mhz as its not needed for such a simple task. This results in a cooler running notebook and a longer lifespan.
     
    coriolis, May 11, 2007
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  3. sluk

    sluk Notebook Guru

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    Seems not to be the case as my other 8600 always shown as full 1.5GHz speed. I look into the System Properties of this notebook because recently I found it running very slow while compare with the other with the same hardware config and it is using AC Alway On Power but not running under battery.
     
    sluk, May 11, 2007
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  4. mujtaba

    mujtaba ZzzZzz Super Moderator

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    Try the CPU-Z utility that should work.
     
    mujtaba, May 11, 2007
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  5. sluk

    sluk Notebook Guru

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    Confirmed, problem caused by a dead CPU fan, thanks for all the advices here.
     
    sluk, May 12, 2007
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