hyper threading doesnt work

i have a 4 month old 5150, and it doesnt run very fast, in my opinion and doesnt multi task appropriately and i could be totally spoiled or wrong but i just feel like its much more sluggish than my 18 month old 5100  which runs flawlessly.

i suspected that hte hyper threading was not working so i downloaded a utility to check i t-- sure enough, the utility has failed everytime -- something about th e BIOS -- so i updated to the newest BIOS A36 and its still failing due to the bios --- also according to my system properties im running a P4 2.8 and  2.79 -- only the second number OCCASIOANLY drops down to 1.59 which should be normal under hyerthreading, yes?  but its very rare that it reads this way, and i do nothin to change that, just randomly, during the same session, im check back often and sometimes its 2.79, sometimes its 1.59 --- hbowever my cpu ALWYS clocks between 2780mhx and 2798 mhz, its never ONCE been down lower than that (when ive been monitoring)   

so whats the deal here?  anyone know?  i downloaded some DELL updates for my mobile P4, the newest ones but it doesnt seem to make any difference.

computer is still sluggish and running at one speed and constantly with 100% load?