V2305 CPU Throttling

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum (but have been reading it for a few weeks) and the whole notebook scenary. I tend to blow most of my money on my desktop, and thought I needed a break from it, so I bought myself a notebook to play with instead.

I got this notebook a few days ago from EPP. And I love it. But I've ran into a couple of small problems. I completely wiped the original XP Home and installed XP Pro on it. I installed all the drivers, and a selected few HP/Compaq Software. (including the AMD drvers)

With the help of CPU-Z and MobileMeter, I've been monitoring my system through these and playing around with A64 Tweaker with the RAM speed as well.

Here's my system spec:
3000+ Sempron (might try to locate a cheap Turion MT some time down the road)
2x256 PC2700 (Getting 2x512MB, and going to try to conquer the DDR400 problem)
60GB 4200RPM HD (Might look to upgrade to a 5400RPM later on)
6-Cell + 12-Cell Battery
Got the Logitech MX518 to pair it up. (A little bulky, but the 518 is a great mouse)

Here's a small problem so far:
1. My CPU doesn't seem to throttle down even on battery power. I've left the system just idling not doing anything, and it's still clocked at 1.8Ghz. It doesn't seem to want to throttle down. It only throttles down once battery reaches low power level (~30%). So I was wondering if my install messed up anything because I was under the impression that the CPU would throttle down itself when it's not in use like the Pentium M. Is this normal? Or am I making a wrong assumption?

Any help appreciated.

 

One thing I think I could help some here would be RAM speed, I read a lot of people are running into RAM speed problem. I can explain why the RAM speed is clocked only a 163Mhz despite setting to 166Mhz. And yes, my ram defaults into 133Mhz at startup, and I have to use A64 Tweaker to turn it to 166Mhz and turn 1T timings on. (BTW, 1T will offer additional performance for those who wonder about it)

With Athlon 64, RAM speed is all relative to CPU speed. Default bus speed (HTT) is 200Mhz, and you have a multiplier. In my case, I have a 1800Mhz CPU, so my multiplier is 9. To run DDR400, you would have to use 1:1, which mean, the RAM divider is at 9, to calculate ram speed you use 1800/9 = 200Mhz which is your ram speed. And when you run your RAM slower than HTT, then you would have to use a higher divider.

For example in my case, my next divider would be 10, at stock cpu speed, my ram would be running at 1800/10 = 180Mhz (DDR360), and the next divider up would be 11, 1800/11 = 163.63. (Turion ML-34 and MT-34 would follow the same)

On the other hand, if you are running a Turion ML-37 or a Sempron 3300+. Your ram speed would be slightly different but generally the same.

Default Speed: 2000Mhz
Default HTT: 200Mhz
Default Multi: 10X
First Divider: 11X RAM = (2000/11 = 181.8Mhz)
Second Divider: 12X RAM = (2000/12 = 166.66Mhz)

So this would explain why some are seeing their RAM speed at 166Mhz and 163Mhz. Hope it's useful for some people.

And here's something I use on my desktop system. From what I find, using DOS Memtest, you can reach stable level generally easier than when you're in XP. Once you're inside windows, you should also run the Windows Memtest for a few loops just to make sure.
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

 

If you have reinstalled the OS, then the power settings might have changed back to the default setting of "Home Office/ Desktop". Might want to check that out & set it to "Portable/Laptop".

 

It is set as Portable/Laptop.

I'm going to backup this image, and load up the default image.

BTW, does anyone know how much space does the original OS take up? I've partitioned the 60GB into 10/50GB paritions.

 

You could try using CrystalCPUID to manage your speed and voltage instead, and undervolt while you're at it. Works for me.

 

Awesome.

I figured out what the problem was. With the new AMD drivers I downloaded from AMD, that doesn't seem to throttle, if I use the default one on the CD, it works fine.

Thanks for all your help.