Pentium M slows down with low battery?

[Stug]

I was discussing laptops with someone a couple days ago (I'm about to enter college, so I'm on the market), and they mentioned that someone had told them that the Pentium M will slow down when the battery runs low on power. I've read before that the M's slow down when idle, but I had not heard anything about slowing down as you run out of juice. Is this true?

 

[ViperV990]

I don't know about all P-M-based notebooks, but the Toshiba that I have has a power management software that lets you set the CPU speed, screen brightness, and time to powering off various components for 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% remaining battery power.

 

[Mellman]

they probably were just confused, when your not doing anything Intel Speedstep slows the cpu down, my dothan 1.7 goes down to 600Mhz when im not doing much and its on battery power.

 

[Roadraider]

All Speedstep CPUs do that (about 50% of the P3, most P4s and all P-Ms). It is so that they can save power and reduce Heat.

ALL systems that have these CPUs also have a suitable Power Management system. It can be accessed either through BIOS or throw Windows. Default setting is normally "Maximum Battery Life" or "Optimized Battery Life" which allows the system to drop the power to the CPU according to it's needs.

Change the setting to "Maximum Performance" and your CPU will always be running on High speed. Keep in mind that this DOES impact battery life signifacantly as well as heat eminating from the CPU.

Normally, the difference in performance is not that big but if you are using Windows you can use the Power Management icon to switch to Maximum Performance on-demand basis (i.e when you actually need it).