I bought a new laptop about a month ago. It’s a Compaq, model v2000. Its chip is a Turion ML-34.
The Turion ML-34 is supposed to run at 1.8 Ghz. But I noticed that when I right click on “My Computer,” it reports it’s running at 790 Mhz or so. I downloaded CPUZ onto the laptop, and ran it, and it’s confirmed: The chip is hovering around 795 Mhz.
Back when I first bought the computer, I noticed that “my computer” sometimes returned 790 Mhz, sometimes 1.8Ghz. It now never returns 1.8Ghz. The computer seems to have permanently slowed down.
However, I should note, I have never noticed an actual “feeling” of a slowdown–the computer has never seemed to take any longer to accomplish tasks than it did when I first bought it. So I’m hoping this is some kind of artifact of the way laptops manage power or something.
But, I’m hoping for knowledge, not just hope. So what’s the straight dope? Or anyway, what are dopers’ theories as to what might be causing either a slowdown or the false appearance of one?
AMD uses PowerNow! technology which is akin to Intel’s SpeedStep technology. In order to conserve battery life and heat issues the processor dynamically adjusts its speed. It is supposed to ramp back up when processing power is needed to this may be why you do not see a slow down but see a slower rated speed when idle.
Basically you should be able to test this by doing something processor intensive (video gaming, encoding an mp3, etc.) and check the clock speed at the same time. You likely haven’t noticed a slowdown because it doesn’t take 1.8Ghz to surf the Dope!
Yes, it would be good to check, because my Dell laptop was permanently stuck at 600MHz when it should have been at 1.5GHz - it turned out there was a rubber band stuck in the cooling fan, which meant that the CPU was constantly being throttled back to prevent it overheating. I run some fairly CPU-intensive programs, so I immediately noticed the slowing down. Took me a couple of weeks to find the rubber band and remove it, which instantly fixed all the problems. You might just want to check your cooling system - particularly the fan.