what speed is my laptop running on battery?

[dpopiz]

I just got a new fully loaded p4 2.4 compaq laptop for my sister (WOWO), anyway I'm wondering what speedstep is trottling down to on battery power. If I look in system properties, it says 2.4GHz regardless of battery or wall power. How can I find what speed the cpu is actually running at?

 

[Kowan]

I think if you go into BIOS running on batteries, it will show the CPU speed.
It doesn't show it during POST?

 

[dpopiz]

it just has a full screen logo during post, and when I go into the bios on batteries, it still says 2.4. It's definitely noticeably slower on batteries though.

 

[Lizardman]

you can check what speed your running at in the windows menu. Or sandra does it too.
Edit: Its in system properties menu under the general tab.

 

[dpopiz]

like I said, the system properties shows 2.4GHz no matter if it's on battery or wall. I'll try sandra a little later

 

[everman]

Probably not as much as a 50% drop but it should be considerable to drop power needs.

 

[Xelloss]

You could also break out wcpuid. Very useful little tool. I discovered lots of interesting stuff on my own laptop (Fujitsu, PIII). Speedstep drops it down some. However, Fujitsu has its own power management tool which has an option for "cpu speed." Low and behold, turns out this cranks the FSB (and necessarily the CPU) down another notch. Very interesting indeed...

 

[Xelloss]

Oh, and of course there's always handy-dandy assembly language. w00t!

 

[dpopiz]

hehe I called a compaq tech today and asked him what it throttles down to and he kept insisting that it always runs at 2.4GHz, even on battery...well I just did a bunch of benchmarks in sandra and low and behold, on battery, everthing except the hd performance is just a little higher than half the speed when it's plugged in.