Yet another CPU speed question.....

Question

Hi. when browsing for a new lightweight notebook to replace my old Inspirion 5000, I found this statement in an eBay seller's description and wondered how much truth there is to it? Can you shed some light? Thx in advance.

anthony

"Intel PentiumM Centrino Processor 725 1.6GHz, FSB 400MHz (Note: Dell design the 700m laptop in such a way that its processor will never run at full speed to save battery. It just operates at "good-enough" speed for a specific application. Thus in effect, there is basically NO performance difference between a 1.6GHz and a 2.0GHz processor for this laptop. And thus no need to spend extra few hundred dollars getting those 700m that are equipped with 2.0GHz processors.)"

SR45 · Answer

@quiltmaster wrote:
Hi. when browsing for a new lightweight notebook to replace my old Inspirion 5000, I found this statement in an eBay seller's description and wondered how much truth there is to it? Can you shed some light? Thx in advance.

anthony

"Intel PentiumM Centrino Processor 725 1.6GHz, FSB 400MHz (Note: Dell design the 700m laptop in such a way that its processor will never run at full speed to save battery. It just operates at "good-enough" speed for a specific application. Thus in effect, there is basically NO performance difference between a 1.6GHz and a 2.0GHz processor for this laptop. And thus no need to spend extra few hundred dollars getting those 700m that are equipped with 2.0GHz processors.)"

Its called speedstep, and yes it will run at full speed depending on what intensive application requires more cpu power. So the individual is wrong about that statement. Other's will weigh in on this subject, I'm sure...good luck

dsbInspiron · Answer

SR45 is right.  My 600m has the Pentium M on it and when you set it to dynamic switching, the CPU speed is adjusted to what you are doing.  Say you are just surfing the web, well the cpu will throttle down to say 599 mhz.  Now if you start doing more stuff, the CPU will begin to kick up speed.  For real intense apps it will run at full speed.  Of course if you use it plugged in,  just leave it on max performance and it runs at 1600 mhz (1.6ghz) all the time.  It might be important to point out to, that if the CPU gets real hot, then it will also throttle itself down to 'cool off'.

FIJIGabe · Answer

you can check this out by opening up the system icon under the control panel (or just right click on 'My Computer' and go to 'Properties').  it'll show you how much Ram you have and what your processor is running at.    to test it out, i ran the computer while plugged in... 1.6Ghz.  when on battery power, 799Mhz.   this is done to save power.  my old Sony Vaio did the same thing, but dropped the power from 1.2Ghz to 599Mhz.  this is done even on desktops now, particularly on the P4's considering they run hot and are noisy.

jocase · Answer

How do you set dynamic switching?

FIJIGabe · Answer

it is automatically turned on, but you can manage it through the bios.  i saw it there this morning.

dsbInspiron · Answer

I use speedswitchXP, you can google it to find it...it is free and very easy to use.  It lets you set the power settings for when you run your laptop on battery and for when you use AC.  When you start it up, it will list Max Power, Dynamic Switching, and Max Battery (very low performance).  You can set it on the fly to, so if you want to play a game just jump it up to max performance,  otherwise you can leave it on Dynamic Switching.

superfly.d · Answer

This is a crazy question on a crazy old post but I was wondering if y'all are still around/could help?

I'm trying to do some recording with an external audio USB interface and my 700m (Intel Pentium Mobile Centrino) speed seems to be affecting the recording. I get blips every 40 seconds that make it impossible to get anything recorded. When I turn on SpeedswtichXP to any of the power settings, the blip becomes more frequent and even more disturbing, about every ten seconds.

I'm running a Insipron 700m with Windows XP SP3. If it helps, the Audio/Midi interface is an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R.

My guess is that I need to disable Speedstep. But my BIOS does not have that option. NOR does it have an option to cahnge my IRQs, a seperate but related issue. I attempted to upgrade (flash) the BIOS from what Dell offers on its site but I must have th cureent version because nothing changed.

If someone could help me figure how to turn off Speedstep in the BIOS or modify IRQs of extraneous devices on my system, I will ask them to marry me... um, or not. I'll be super happy though. Thanks!

Locked Topics – Laptops General

Yet another CPU speed question.....

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