I have a related question but for an older machine.
I have an Inspiron 9300 with a Dothan Pentium M 750 running at 1.86ghz with regular volages/multipliers of 1.356v/14x.
I've obviously had this notebook for years, and it until recently I haven't had any trouble with it like this.
I hadn't used this machine in a week or so, and when I turned it on yesterday it was incredible slow. Curious as to why, I checked CPU-Z 1.47 and it turns out the core clock was 798mhz, the core voltage was at .988v, and the multiplier was 6x.
Now these are all the settings the Pentium M 750 uses when speedstep is enabled and it's clocking down due to inactivity, but this shouldn't be happening for a couple of reasons. I have my power options set to "Always-On" which in the past has always kept the CPU locked at it's full 1.86ghz at all times. Also, it's not clocking back up to full speed when the CPU is stressed hard; it stays underclocked. I haven't done any changes software or hardware related in the last few weeks since it was working properly, so I don't know why it's doing this all of a sudden with no explanation.
My BIOS is the most current version available, so I don't think that's the issue. When I looked at the power-saving options in the BIOS, it gives only two options for the SpeedStep, either enabled or disabled. I have it set to enabled, because the description next to disabled says that disabling speedstep locks the computer in it's lowest performance state. When I tried disabling it to check if this was the case, it seemed to be true.
Even in the BIOS the CPU is listed as having a max clock of 1.86ghz, min clock of 800mhz, and a current clock of 800mhz.
Anyone got any ideas what the problem could be?
Thanks in advance.