Centrino Speed

Dempsey

My friends Centrino Laptop seems only to at 600Mhz instead of 1400Mhz. I want to run at 1400Mhz regardless of Battery or AC Mains. How would I do it?

galwaydude18

I dont think that you can! Laptops slow them selves down to reserve battery power when they are ran off the battery! Not sure does the same apply to when it is being run off AC mains! Id reckon you should move this to the laptop fourm!

bp_me

Search for an app called "Speedswitch XP". I use it on my dell i8500 because it never wants to run at 2ghz. It customizeable depending on whether you are on a/c or d/c.

Mutant_Fruit

Install Speedswitch as mentioned already, and when its on battery, you should set it to Max Battery (i.e. slowest speed) to conserve battery power.

Battery Optimized means it'll be at the slowest speed most of the time, except for when it really has to clock up to do whatever it is you're doing.

Dynamic switching basically runs it at the slowest speed, but whenever CPU usage increases above about 50%, it clocks up a notch. Meaning you get max performance when you need it.

Max performance means you always run at fastest speed. You shouldn't really use this, Dynamic switching would be better. Dynamic switching means its at full speed only when you actually need it.

Dempsey

Im downloading it now. When does the settings from Speedswitch take effect. Its the bootup thats very slow. Does the Centrino not do dynamic switching anyway?

Mutant_Fruit

Speedswitch is a windows program, so it can only affect the speed as it runs.

Unfortunately the windows built in speed control is a bit crap, and often doesn't speed up even when you're at 100% CPU usage @ slowest speed for a while. I ended up having to install speedswitch, as windows wouldn't ramp up beyond 600mhz when i was mp3 encoding.

Dempsey

Nothing in the BIOS to control the Clock speed?

I have AC and Battery on MAx Performance and its still showing 597MHz instead of 1400MHz, help

Inspector Gadget

I'm going to ask what might be an *incredibly* dumb question here, but bear with me...

WHY???

I mean, the fact that the computer is smart enough to realise that 1.4GHz is overkill for the amount of work its currently being asked to do and drops a couple of gears to reduce unneccessary power consumption, how hot your lap/desk gets (as a consequence of unnecessary power consumption being dissipated as heat), and how often/hard/long the cooling fans have to work, should be (IMHO) a good thing???

(As an aside, you do realise that if the computer senses that 600MHz isn't enough for what it's being asked to do, it will crank the speed back up to suit???)

In practical terms, this approach to power management will allow the laptop to run longer when it's on battery, and draw less power when it's on mains (most people agree that running a laptop off the mains all the time is the express route to wrecking your battery, from what I've read, so that's not exactly a genius manoevre either, it seems - anyway, on the whole, keeping the machine's power consumption down is good for the environment, and your ESB bill)

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something (I certainly hope I am), but it sounds like you're trying to do the computing equivalent of welding your car's accelerator pedal to the bottom of the footwell just because you feel you should be able to...

I hope this doesn't come across as condescending or rude (it's not how it's meant, honestly), but I'm experiencing significant (and perhaps misplaced) bewilderment here...
Gadget

Mutant_Fruit

Well, sometimes the accelerator has no effect when you press it Thats the problem i experienced. I run Speedswitch on either Dynamic Switching (For AC) or Max Battery for battery.

Running it on Max performance all the time is a bit of a waste of power. But windows' built in control is a bit crap.

Inspector Gadget

Ah, fairy 'nuff

Gadget

Dempsey

To answer your "WHY" question, i want to know if the CPU was running at 600Mhz during the bootup because the windows welcome screen appears for a very long time. I wanted to know if the CPU was increasing the clock speed to meet the demand or not.

Windows should give the user the choice to control the speedstep technology like you were able in Win 9x/ME/2k. The fact is windows is very dumb on when to put the foot to the floor.

Mutant_Fruit

if it still runs at the slowest setting with speedswitch set to dynamic switching or max performance, then make sure you havn't disabled the speed contorl in your bios.

With my computer, if you disable the speed setting in bios, it runs at the slowest speed regardless of what you try to set it to.

Dempsey

Check the BIOS Boot Speed is set to 1.4GHz and Speedstep is Enabled. The laptop is configure to connect to the UCD network and techican that set up the network on the laptop reverted back to XP SP1. I have a feeling that its some network setting causing this slow down.

astrofool

Li-Ion batteries begin to lose the ability to hold charge after about 18 months no matter what way they are treated, they do not have memory like the older nicad/nimh batteries.

After the 18 months the drop off becomes exponential, you cannot physically hurt these batteries by having them on charge the whole time (unless you have a magic battery that does not obey the laws of physics). What can hurt them is if you drain the power completely and then keep trying to turn the device on with no battery left.

The only thing that can stop these batteries aging slightly, would be to keep them in a fridge when not in use, but this isn't really practical, and doesn't really make a difference anyway.

Gerry

If you disable speedstep in the bios, that should do it.

Mutant_Fruit

no no no. disabling speedstep in the bios (at least for me) makes the processor run permanently in the slowest speed. Its wierd, but thats what happens to my dell d505 laptop.

Dempsey

SNAP!!, Its a D505 im fiddling with:)