speed step info on compaq x1000

[skisteven1]

I just bought a compaq x1000 series (x1058cl), which is a centrino using speedstep. The speedstep works fine on its own, but I thought I read once that it is possible to directly dictate the speed of the processor at a given time. Right now, if I start really working the proc (via prime95), it jumps up to full optimization at 1400Mhz. But if I'm not doing anything, it will drop to 800, 600, or even 300 Mhz, which extends the battery life by several hours. Is there a way to dictate the speed manually? I'm pretty sure you can do it in linux, but I'd prefer to stick with XP Pro.

thanks

 

[Accord99]

Try SpeedswitchXP:

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

 

[myocardia]

Why in the world would you want to change it? Both the processor and the motherboard are already optimized for providing the best performance, along with the best battery life. Even if you use it plugged in most of the time, what purpose would you have for wanting to run your processor at a higher speed than the apps you are using require?

 

[skisteven1]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Why in the world would you want to change it? Both the processor and the motherboard are already optimized for providing the best performance, along with the best battery life. Even if you use it plugged in most of the time, what purpose would you have for wanting to run your processor at a higher speed than the apps you are using require?

Whoever said anything about higher? Though yes, if I'm doing photoshop or something, I might want to garuntee that it is running at maximum speed, the main reason I wanted it was to make sure that If I am typing a paper or something, that it is at the minimum speed, therby maximizing battery life.

 

[skisteven1]

Originally posted by: Accord99
Try SpeedswitchXP:

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

I've been playing with this software for a few hours now, and it seems that you can tell it to be "Max performance" or "min performance"... which translates to either 600Mhz or 1400Mhz for me. It works, but I'd prefer something with a little more fine-tuned control, if anyone knows of something....

Ideally, if there is a program that can just change the multiplier from within windows, that would be great. It seems that changing the multiplier is all that any of the software (even windows itself) does.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: skisteven1

Originally posted by: myocardia
Why in the world would you want to change it? Both the processor and the motherboard are already optimized for providing the best performance, along with the best battery life. Even if you use it plugged in most of the time, what purpose would you have for wanting to run your processor at a higher speed than the apps you are using require?

Whoever said anything about higher? Though yes, if I'm doing photoshop or something, I might want to garuntee that it is running at maximum speed, the main reason I wanted it was to make sure that If I am typing a paper or something, that it is at the minimum speed, therby maximizing battery life.

So, what you're really saying is that you don't think the engineers at Intel thought anyone would be using either a word processor, or Photoshop on a Pentium M (aka Centrino) laptop?

 

[Verdant]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: skisteven1

Originally posted by: myocardia
Why in the world would you want to change it? Both the processor and the motherboard are already optimized for providing the best performance, along with the best battery life. Even if you use it plugged in most of the time, what purpose would you have for wanting to run your processor at a higher speed than the apps you are using require?

Whoever said anything about higher? Though yes, if I'm doing photoshop or something, I might want to garuntee that it is running at maximum speed, the main reason I wanted it was to make sure that If I am typing a paper or something, that it is at the minimum speed, therby maximizing battery life.

So, what you're really saying is that you don't think the engineers at Intel thought anyone would be using either a word processor, or Photoshop on a Pentium M (aka Centrino) laptop?

pretty sure that he wants to run prime95 at the same time... which would probably bump it to the highest settings, no?