UPDATE: Finally working at full speed

[Naruto]

Update - Got my new 1.7ghz pentium M and the notebook is finally running at full speed. At first it booted up at 600mhz and ran 600mhz in the windows just like the odler cpu, but i refreshed speedswitch and it works fine now. Even boots at 1700mhz in bios now. Too bad my ram is still being ran at ddr266 (what a gyp ECS!) and my 3dmark2k1 score only went up by 1700points going from a 600mhz centrino to a 1.7ghz centrino. Now to see if there is anyway to get my ram to run faster.



I paid $800 for a ecs g551 barebone kit, which comes with i855pm chipset, radeon 9000 64mb ddr, sxga+, and centrino support. Ordered from the most reliable reseller that carried this product - Ewiz.com. Product came looking very new w/ covers still attached to lcd screen, no manual though, so not sure if it really was new. I was lucky to win a 1.3ghz pentium M bare cpu off ebay for $42 +$10 ship. Finally had time to put it together yesterday w/ the following specs:

1.3ghz pentium M 1mb L2
2x256mb so dimm pc2700 (samsung, pny spectek)
30gb hitachi travelstar 4.2k rpm

Well, it booted up fine, but the darn motherboard was running this thing only at 600mhz! The bios offered no cpu speed options, it was all auto detect. I tried to isolate this problem to any one component, and I it went straight down to either a bios problem on the board or the cpu is defective. I installed winxp, and intel cpuid did show that it was running @ 600mhz, 400fsb, 1mb L2, and was a pentium M for sure. I checked ecs taiwan site and they have a recent bios release for the G551. I look at the bios date on my laptop and its pretty old, dates to august 03. I also noticed that the laptop is supposed to support ACPI 2.0, but I never had the option to go to standby in winxp or have any options in the bios to set it so.

So I decided to flash to the latest bios. Took a win98 boot disk, booted to a: from startup. I ran the bios flash from the cd-rom drive and it said it updated fine. I even gave it a minute to end all processes before I went CTRL-ALT-DEL. After reboot, black screen, bad flash? I tried to find the CMOS battery, but i can't take it apart. I think this is ridiculous, product came with a bad bios version, and a flash that went flawlessly ends up in a bad flash? What should I do now? Thanks.

 

[eriqesque]

Im sure you will be able to fix the bad flash.
But I wanted to let you in on the Pentium M thats what they do is run at 600MHZ until you need more.
Once you use a intenxive program or the like it will ramp itself up.

 

[Naruto]

Originally posted by: eriqesque
Im sure you will be able to fix the bad flash.
But I wanted to let you in on the Pentium M thats what they do is run at 600MHZ until you need more.
Once you use a intenxive program or the like it will ramp itself up.

Really, is that true? My friend's pentium M reports 1.3ghz in windows, mine reported 600mhz.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Naruto

Originally posted by: eriqesque
Im sure you will be able to fix the bad flash.
But I wanted to let you in on the Pentium M thats what they do is run at 600MHZ until you need more.
Once you use a intenxive program or the like it will ramp itself up.

Really, is that true? My friend's pentium M reports 1.3ghz in windows, mine reported 600mhz.

It's something called SpeedStep?. Plug your laptop into the AC adapter and see if anything happens.

-Por

 

[Naruto]

Yeah i tried going only with AC adapter too, didn't work. It really is the bios... I geuss I need to RMA it to manufacturer or the store.

 

[eriqesque]

Originally posted by: Naruto

Originally posted by: eriqesque
Im sure you will be able to fix the bad flash.
But I wanted to let you in on the Pentium M thats what they do is run at 600MHZ until you need more.
Once you use a intenxive program or the like it will ramp itself up.

Really, is that true? My friend's pentium M reports 1.3ghz in windows, mine reported 600mhz.

Yes it is true
It's all in the power management if you set it to laptop/portable then it will do the 600Mhz until you need more
If you use always on it will run full speed all the time.
Also windows speed reporting is not always the most accurate.
I use a little program called SpeedSwitchXp as many others do.
It helps. But even still windows mis reports.

 

[Naruto]

Darn it, I should have done more research before I flashed the bios. But the bios reports the cpu speed at 600mhz, is that right? And when I used WCPUID to ID the cpu speed, I got a blue screen and a restart.

 

[Shad0plex]

From what I understood,after the flash you get no screen. That does happen. I have flashed maybe a few dozen boards and have had it go bad 2x. Even tho it said the job went flawless. I only had options to rma them or send for another bios chip...leaned towards rma when it came to that. If you get a screen then I would call the manufacturer and have them email you an older (original) bios to reflash with.

 

[Amused]

Your BIOS was set for adaptive (automatic) stepping on AC power. It keeps the CPU at 50% until the CPU load passes a certain %. I can set both of mine to do that as well (IBM T41 and R40). It's a nice feature for when you want to keep the thing cool while plugged in when using it on your lap.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: eriqesque

Originally posted by: Naruto

Originally posted by: eriqesque
Im sure you will be able to fix the bad flash.
But I wanted to let you in on the Pentium M thats what they do is run at 600MHZ until you need more.
Once you use a intenxive program or the like it will ramp itself up.

Really, is that true? My friend's pentium M reports 1.3ghz in windows, mine reported 600mhz.

Yes it is true
It's all in the power management if you set it to laptop/portable then it will do the 600Mhz until you need more
If you use always on it will run full speed all the time.
Also windows speed reporting is not always the most accurate.
I use a little program called SpeedSwitchXp as many others do.
It helps. But even still windows mis reports.

The nice thing about SpeedSwitchXP is that it uses it's own app to measure current proc speed, rather than the windows app which fails miserably. If you boot on Bat, then plug in, WindowsXP will NOT show the speed step up. But SpeedSwitchXP will. This drove me crazy until I discovered SpeedSwitchXP.

 

[Naruto]

Hope ECS will let me RMA, I live so pretty close to their RMA department, just 20 mi away. Can SpeedSwitchXP let me set the cpu speed? I would love to actually see my 1.3ghz Pentium M actually run at that speed. I tried running it w/out battery in and it was still 600mhz, i recall. But I never tried setting the power mode to "always on".

 

[eriqesque]

Originally posted by: Naruto
Hope ECS will let me RMA, I live so pretty close to their RMA department, just 20 mi away. Can SpeedSwitchXP let me set the cpu speed? I would love to actually see my 1.3ghz Pentium M actually run at that speed. I tried running it w/out battery in and it was still 600mhz, i recall. But I never tried setting the power mode to "always on".

Yes Speedswitch will allow you to run full throttle.
Taking the battery out won't change any of the power settings though.
Once you get it back up and running try the power settings and if they don't help
Use Speedswitch or just use Speedswitch and be done with it.

 

[AmigaMan]

Why didn't you follow what everyone told you in your previous thread?

ya big dummy...

 

[Naruto]

Originally posted by: AmigaMan
Why didn't you follow what everyone told you in your previous thread?

ya big dummy...

Forgot I posted that...

 

[ggelfan]

Naruto,
I have exactly same problem as you do. Same ECS G551 and same 600Mhz problem. I, too, successfully updated BIOS 040204 couple days ago, which killed
the system. But, I completely disagree with other members trying to calm you down with SpeedStep solution. Yes, SpeedStep is nice feature, but it has nothing to do with our 600Mhz problem. Running on AC power BIOS suppose to be able to identify full 1.3Ghz (in my case it's 1.6Ghz) core frequency by default. Instead it shows 600Mhz only. "CPU configuration" option does not show up, which tells me we are dealing with LOCKED processor that is fused to run at half speed on certain platforms. What you got of eBay might be non-retail version of CPU or engineering sample. (look for letters "ES" or "EQ" on label). This is the only logical explaination that comes to my mind. Good luck with RMA.

ggelfan.

 

[Naruto]

I have letters QS, no EQ or ES. My chip looks very similiar to this one, the model numbers are almost identical too here

 

[Abhi]

ggelfan.... did you try SpeedSwitchXP?

 

[ggelfan]

Naruto,
QS stands for Qual Sample, I thought so.



Abhi,
No, I have not tried SpeedSwitchXP. Are you saying this processor needs OS + high level app just to get running at full core speed - nah, I don't buy it.
BIOS should be able to set CPU to full core speed even before OS is installed. I'll find out, I have my resources.



ggelfan.

 

[Abhi]

I hope you know XP CANNOT handle speedstep properly...

These is some kinda bug it has...

I needed to download a file from dell's support site to fix it....

Buy it or not... your wish.

 

[Abhi]

Dont take my word for it.....

The speedstep fix...

 

[AmigaMan]

No, I have not tried SpeedSwitchXP. Are you saying this processor needs OS + high level app just to get running at full core speed
ggelfan.

Yes, the processor needs it. BIOS does not tell the CPU how fast to run when in Windows. XP does and it is based off the power scheme you set for it. Something is not set correctly in that. But instead of figuring out how to change your power settings, we're saying use SpeedSwitchXP.
If you don't want to try a FREE utility and would rather ignore all of the advice saying to at least TRY IT, then you just need to pack the computer up and send it back. You don't need to own such an advanced computer, stick with your playstation.

 

[Naruto]

What me and ggelfan are saying is that while not in windows xp, ie. bootup, pure dos, its 600mhz because the bios utilizes it as 600mhz from startup, which we think shouldn't be so. My laptop was sent back to ECS by the reseller and they just e-mailed me saying that they got back the replacement and will ship it to me today. Hopefully it can get here by tomorrow because I only live 40 miles away from the reseller. I will let you know if speedswitch xp works.

 

[Abhi]

Naruto...

I have an inspiron 8500 ... it has a p4 M chip... with speedstep.

I had the same problem. Cudnt get my 2.4 ghz chip to operate beyond 1200 mhz.

All i am saying is that trying a free small utility cant hurt...

 

[Naruto]

YOU GOTTA BE SH!TT!N ME!!! Got the replacement back. Put back my ram, cpu, harddrive. Booted up fine into Windows(because hard drive partition still works with same laptop/ same config). But upon shutting down, it just stalled at the final "windows is shutting down screen" I tried using the hold down power button to turn it off(no go), CTRL-ATL-DEL(didn't work), and it has no reset buttons. So I had to take out the power source. First I pull the plug. But it still had the battery in it. So I had to unlatch the battery to turn it off. Now when I turn it on, I get the black screen same as when I got the bad bios flash. This is getting ridiculous...

 

[Abhi]

Dude... Get a dell ....