Dell Inspiron 8100--Speedstep question-

[Submit]

Ok, so I went into the bios and set the battery mode to Maximum performance. The bios shows the current CPU speed at 1.0 ghz, while windows xp and wcpuid both show 730mhz

How can I make it run at 1 ghz ?

TIA


Edit: typo

 

[John]

uninstall the speedstep application.

 

[Submit]

I installed a fresh copy of windows XP pro. Do I need to install any additional utilities? I looked in the download section for Inspiron 8100 on dell.com and I didn't see anything for speedstep or power management..

confused..

 

[John]

I have Win XP on my Latitude CPx P3 650 and when i flashed ot the latest bios it made speedstep enable 100% of the time w/ no way to disable in the bios. I flashed back to the prior revision and I could disable speedstep again. Try looking for a smart cpu mode in the bios and disable it. You could also try installing this version of speedstep.

 

[Dug]

In XP go into power management and change the setting under power schemes to 'always on' This will change your cpu speed to full. You have to change it back to portable/ laptop for speedstep to kick in.

 

[John]

Dug, my laptop stays on "portable/laptop" and speedstep never kicks in.

 

[Derango]

When set to Portable/laptop XP dynamicly changes the speed of the processor, depending on whats going on. So speedstep might be kicking in, you just don't notice it

 

[Dug]

It is only on the 8100's as far as I know. And even then some of the configurations supposedly run the way they are suppose to. On mine and many others though you do have to change it to always on, no matter what the bios says.

The same goes with the monitor turning off when you close the lid. It seems half the people are reporting that the monitor turns off and goes into standby and the other half can't get the monitor to turn off no matter what setting.

 

[fr]

The SpeedStep is like this in Windows XP on all processors that support it unless you have a 3rd party utility.

 

[fr]

<< When set to Portable/laptop XP dynamicly changes the speed of the processor, depending on whats going on. So speedstep might be kicking in, you just don't notice it >>



Yeah, it's efficient that way.

 

[littlezipp]

If it says laptop, it is running at its lower speed, change it to Home Office/Desk, and that will tell it that you want it to go faster. You do not need to install Speedstep on XP, it is built in. It works great for my Compaq laptop.

 

[Derango]

<< If it says laptop, it is running at its lower speed, change it to Home Office/Desk, and that will tell it that you want it to go faster. You do not need to install Speedstep on XP, it is built in. It works great for my Compaq laptop. >>



Thats not quite how it works. when set to Portable/Laptop, Windows XP takes a look at how much you're using your computer (IE, how processor intensive the tasks you are running are), then decideds which speed to run the processor at. So if you were just using microsoft word and listening to an MP3...it would run at the slower of the speeds. If you were crunching SETI WorkUnits and playing Quake III, it would bump the processor up to the faster speed.

The Home Office/Desk setting works more like classic speedstep. It slows down the processor when the AC adapter is unpluged, and it speeds it back up again when it detects the AC adapter again.

The Always on setting turns off speedstep completly

 

[SteelCityFan]

Derango

What you describe is called "Enhanced Speedstep" not all chipsets support it... the chipset (815M) in the Inspiron 8100 does not. It only supports the Plugged in = Max, Unplugged = reduced Speedstep. The I4100 is using the newer 830M which does support Enhanced SpeedStep.