i8600 limiting processor speed too much.

I was doing some a/v encoding stuff on my laptop and noticed that it seems slower in a lot of areas than my desktop.

My desktop is an older P4 1.8Ghz with 1 gig 266mhz RAM. The laptop has a Pentium M 1.8Ghz with 768mb of 333mhz RAM. Desktop has a ****ty GeForce 4 64mb PCI graphics card, but the PCI bus is too slow to use even that to its full potential. Laptop has a 128mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9600. Both have large 7200 rpm hard drives. So I figured it should be able to kick the desktop's ass in every area.

The video encoding part goes about 3 times faster in the laptop than the desktop, but the audio encoding is just the same or even slower. Like when I try to normalize a file, it takes the desktop about 30 seconds, but the laptop may take over a minute.

So I downloaded the I8kFanGUI or whatever it is called, and noticed that my CPU is only operating at 600Mhz the entire time! Even if I tell it to start normalizing 2 files at once it doesn't work one bit harder - it just slows everything down. It's only using about 10% of the processor, and working at 1/3 capacity. What's up with that?

The laptop is plugged in while I'm doing that, and I have it set to "Maximum Performance" on the Dell QuickSet thingy. Is there some sort of I/O bottleneck going on on the motherboard of the laptop? Or is a P4 of equal clock speed just that much better at number crunching than a Pentium M?

Also, I noticed that the CPU speed is limited to 800Mhz while I'm running on full batteries, but jumps back up to 1.8Ghz as soon as it's plugged in. I always leave it set to "Maximum Performance." I'd prefer it always runs at full speed unless I tell it otherwise.

What's going on here?

 

At the same site that you downloaded the fangui program, there is also a program called speedswitch. Download that and you can set it to how you want your CPU to run both on battery and AC. This applet is much better than the native one used in Windows XP. Give it a shot and let me know if it helps.

 

damn...I can't remember where I found fangui. It was a link in an old post here. And the vodka I've had tonite isn't helping me remember!

 

Here it is:

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

And I recommend using version 1.3 I just tried version 1.4 and the speed kept fluctuating even when I put it in max performance. 1.3 does not seem to have this problem.

 

Alright, I'll try it out. Thanks!

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