CPU Question (Very Odd)

I just purchased a HP dv8210us, the specs indicate

AMD Turion 64 ML-32
1.8Ghz, 512KB L2, 1600Mhz Bus


When I go to my control panel and into systems, why does it say

AMD Turion ML-32 1.58 Ghz? When my laptop & HP.com state it should be 1.8 Ghz?

Thanks in advance.

 

the most probable answer is the machine is automatically undervolting to conserve battery power or resources. the cpu need not be in full blast when user is simply idlely using it. this is also a way to bring the overall temperature of the cpu and machine down by a few degrees which is good. you will notice that once you do resource intensive work (using photoshop, play games, and/or multi-tasking) the machine will adjust automatically and reflect a higher power cycle.

 

I think you have the wrong chip and need to contact them. I just booted my xps m140 for the first time, and I am idle doing nothing, and it shows the full 1.73 processor speed. You may have a problem..

 

It's as eatontop said, it's underclocking the CPU to preserve energy when you're not doing something very intensive. The Turion and Sempron chips do that to save energy, the Pentium M series does not, it just allocates energy in a way that makes it wonderful on the battery.

 

Seconded - it usually happens only on AMD-based systems (I have no idea why). My other notebook I used to have, an HP zv6000, used to give my false readings on how fast my Athlon was, but it was actually just reading off the CPU's current speed. Intel chips, I've noticed, seem to not have this problem for whatever reason.

 

cool to know

 

The Pentium M is capable of doing the same as well. Intel calls it Speedstep(EIST) whereas AMD terms it as Cool n Quiet or PowerNow. The only difference is that the Windows clock speed reporting utility reports the max speed in Intel chips whereas in AMD based laptops, it has some problems doing this and reports only the current speed. MS has a KB article out on this issue but they havent bothered to fix it.

 

If you want to easily know what CPU and (details) you have, download Everest home. Since the Laptop/Portable power scheme is probably selected, simply disabling this will disable the AMD powernow thing thats causing the lower clocks.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

 

Yeah, I was gonna say...not just on AMDs...

Depending on its mood, my 3 year old 2 gig P4m Inspiron 8500 will "speedstep" between 1.6 & 2 GHz seemingly at the drop of a hat.

...which kinda makes ya wonder...if dog years are 7 for every 1 human year, what're computer years like? *grin*

 

If you right click on My Computer and select properties with a Centrino chip it should tell you both the rated speed and what is is running at. Mine says:

Dell INSPIRON 8600
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M
processor 1300 Mhz
1.29 Ghz, 512 MB of RAM

The 1300 MHz is the rated speed and 1.29 GHz is what its running at (plugged in). I get anywhere from 500 mhz or so and up in 100 mhz increments (I think).

 

Odd enough how I had this question at the back of my mind. I figured it out only after putting two and two together (running more apps, hearing the fan kick into a higher speed, and refreshing the My Computers properties).

It scared me, to be honest, after spending $1500 on something that could have been a dud