My Pentium III 700 MHz maxes at 547 MHz

[watdahel]

I have an IBM Thinkpad T20 laptop with a Pentium 3 700 MHz CPU with Hyperthreading. I disabled the Hyperthreading in BIOS. POST shows it is a 700 MHz CPU, but under Windows XP(Control Panel - System) it shows as 547 MHz. With Hyperthreading enabled the CPU goes down to 450 MHz when idle but never goes above 547 MHz when active. Is there something wrong with the CPU? Sisoft Sandra shows it is a 700 MHz CPU.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

To be honest i've never heard of a pentium-m at 700mhz, especially with hyperthreading. So you might want to look into that.

Also, itss probably just active power management just underclocking the cpu. XP doesnt have any throttling settings built into the OS like Vista does, but there mut be something, somewhere in control panel to figure it out.

 

[Fox5]

Pentium 3's didn't support hyperthreading. If the bios supports it, it's only because the motherboard also supports Pentium 4's. I'd disable it.
Also, the Pentium 3 likely has the ability to downclock itself to save power. With hyperthreading off, will the cpu go up to 700mhz under load? If not, check the bios for any power saving settings, as well as windows. You may have something set to max power savings. Also, sometimes enabling C1E can lock a cpu to its lowest clock speed.

 

[Keysplayr]

Your Pentium III operates on a 100MHz FSB. And has a multiplier of 7 (7x100 =700). Perhaps your system has power saving features that reduce the multiplier by 1.5 (5.5x100 = 550+/-)
In your systems BIOS, disable all power saving features (speedstep, C1E if equipped, etc.) and also do the same in windows power settings if possible.

 

[Andrew1990]

I dont believe the Intel Pentium 3s had many power saving features besides the dropping multi. They also did not have hyperthreading as that was introduced with netburst based processors.

 

[watdahel]

Speedstep is what I meant and not hyperthreading. Nothing I do has worked. Is there a switch on the mobo I need to look at or can I just assume the cpu is damaged?

 

[eplebnista]

So, to confirm.
You have went to the control panel,
then to display properties,
then to the screensaver tab,
then clicked the power button towards the bottom of that section,
then set the power scheme to Home/Office Desk.

I had a similar situation and discovered the reduced cpu speed was because the laptop was set to the Portable/Laptop setting.

 

[aka1nas]

Is it plugged in? A lot of laptops with speedstep will never clock the CPU at 100% when not plugged in and with the laptop power profile set.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: eplebnista
So, to confirm.
You have went to the control panel,
then to display properties,
then to the screensaver tab,
then clicked the power button towards the bottom of that section,
then set the power scheme to Home/Office Desk.

I had a similar situation and discovered the reduced cpu speed was because the laptop was set to the Portable/Laptop setting.

There's your answer. I've worked on more P3 Thinkpads (T20/T21/T22/T23) than I care to think about and that's always been the first thing I set, otherwise they run slower than they should when plugged in. Make sure you've loaded all the Thinkpad drivers (get from the Lenovo download site) and then there should be what looks like a power plug just to the left of your system tray (bottom right of screen). Click that and set to a profile that runs CPU at full speed when plugged in.

If this doesn't help enough let me know, I have an old T20 I'm working on at home and can work with you better tonight once I have it in front of me.

 

[watdahel]

The laptop is plugged in to the AC. I removed the battery because it won't recharge any longer. The bios battery is also dead but I don't think that's the cause of my problem. The power scheme is set to "Always On" and I've also tried "Home/Office Desk" with similar results. Windows XP simply reports the CPU frequency as 547 MHz. Sisoft Sandra, Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility, CPUID on the other hand all show the frequency as 700 MHz. I'm starting to think that perhaps Windows XP is simply reporting the frequency wrong. Under TinyMe Linux it also shows as 700 MHz.

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
Speedstep is what I meant and not hyperthreading. Nothing I do has worked. Is there a switch on the mobo I need to look at or can I just assume the cpu is damaged?

Have you loaded up the CPU to max load to see if it cranks up to full speed then?
Use Prime95 if you don't have anything else in mind.

If CPU-Z (by CPUID) says it's running at 700 MHz then it is , don't know why XP reports it incorrectly .
Maybe when XP is loading up the CPU isn't under full load & so XP is reading the CPU speed at that point?

 

[watdahel]

I know the manual says the T20 only supports 512 MB PC100, but can I use PC133 anyway?

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
The laptop is plugged in to the AC. I removed the battery because it won't recharge any longer.

You should not run your laptop without the battery unless you're plugged into a UPS. Even then, I've read mixed comments about this. The only reason to remove the battery is to prolong its life, but it sounds like your battery already won't hold a charge. It can't hurt to leave it in, whereas you could experience problems if you leave it out.

That said, I wouldn't think this would cause your CPU to underclock.

 

[Assimilator1]

What problems does running without the battery cause?

erwin
Yes you should be able to as long as it isn't CAS2 PC133 & the module density is too high for the chipset.

 

[watdahel]

Originally posted by: CoinOperatedBoy

Originally posted by: erwin1978
The laptop is plugged in to the AC. I removed the battery because it won't recharge any longer.

You should not run your laptop without the battery unless you're plugged into a UPS. Even then, I've read mixed comments about this. The only reason to remove the battery is to prolong its life, but it sounds like your battery already won't hold a charge. It can't hurt to leave it in, whereas you could experience problems if you leave it out.

That said, I wouldn't think this would cause your CPU to underclock.

That doesn't make sense.

 

[Assimilator1]

Their maybe an issue of the charger alone not providing clean DC voltage, but we'll see what he says.
Either way it probably has no bearing on CPU clock speed.

 

[watdahel]

If you plug a laptop into the wall it will draw power from the AC and not the battery.

As for my problem I'll just chuck it up to Windows XP quirk not reporting speed properly.

 

[Assimilator1]

Are you sure about that? I thought it still drew power through the battery even with the mains plugged in.

 

[taltamir]

bios battery is dead? get a new one, they cost a dollar each.

 

[watdahel]

Positive.

 

[watdahel]

Here's an example: It takes two hours to fully charge the battery and only one hour to discharge it. When the laptop is plugged in the battery is charged and never depletes - that's because the laptop is now drawing power from the AC.

 

[reallyscrued]

..no, that's because when it's plugged in, it's constantly charging the battery

That's not even what the person was saying when he said it's better to leave the battery in, but fine, be ignorant. I do want to tell you though that Li-Ion cells, if left in a fully depleted state, will never hold a full charge again. It's best to keep them at 75-50% charge level to store them.

Anyway,

Windows doesn't have a real-time clock to check for CPU frequency, what you see in that window is simply Windows reading a string, I think in the registry, which may be corrupt. If every other program is reporting 700 mhz, and if the BIOS is reporting 700 mhz, its freakin' 700 mhz.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952978

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316965

And this really should be in SFF/Notebook section, you'd probably get better answers over there. Or possibly even Operating Systems.

 

[nyker96]

how lovely :]

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
Here's an example: It takes two hours to fully charge the battery and only one hour to discharge it. When the laptop is plugged in the battery is charged and never depletes - that's because the laptop is now drawing power from the AC.

Yea, through the battery .

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: erwin1978
The laptop is plugged in to the AC. I removed the battery because it won't recharge any longer. The bios battery is also dead but I don't think that's the cause of my problem. The power scheme is set to "Always On" and I've also tried "Home/Office Desk" with similar results. Windows XP simply reports the CPU frequency as 547 MHz. Sisoft Sandra, Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility, CPUID on the other hand all show the frequency as 700 MHz. I'm starting to think that perhaps Windows XP is simply reporting the frequency wrong. Under TinyMe Linux it also shows as 700 MHz.

Yeah... you might want to think again.