Processor slow down?

[Beige]

Well recently i was doing some early spring cleaning on my trusty laptop which is still in good condition even though its from 2003. Well my amd Athlon is expected to run at 1667 mhz which for most of you is probrably like well...to put it lightly, outdated. Anyway i recently used CPUZ or ZCPU to show my stats of my computer. Everything seemed fine except it showed my processor was really running on a speed of 1200 mhz as if it wasnt bad enough. It would skip u and down from 1667 to 1200. Now i know computers do not stay at a speed the whole time they are on but i thought losing more than 400mhz all of the sudden. I would like to hear some of your ideas and if there is anything i can do to atleast find out what is causeing this. Just for the record i have not tampered with this computer. The most hardware tampering ive done is change the battery. I have not tried overclocking or whatever you people call it.

 

[Wnh5001]

Power problem related? or maybe some programs are slowing your whole comp down therfore causing loss in speeds?

 

[HN]

check your power settings: right click desktop -> screensaver->power
under Power schemes, what is it using?

 

[Beige]

under home/office desk setting..but incase that is not what you meant it has a energy star input and has "AMD PowerNOW" technology.

 

[HN]

perhaps someone else can chime in on settings for CPU throttling. i'm not sure if there's something specific to AMD (my experience is with Pentium-m laps).

the problem also occurs when it's plugged in?