My laptop normally runs at 2400mhz, and is supposed to underclock to 800mhz on the battery. However, I noticed that in My Computer, the speed is frequently shown as 800mhz, even when plugged in. I'm running openSUSE 10.1 on a Gateway 7510GX. It used to do this in Windows too, but usually refreshing the page a few times would bring it back up to 2400, I can't seem to get it there at all in SUSE, once in a while it will read 2400, but it's rare.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Probably, your system is configured to only scale up the frequency when the system load goes up (that is, when the full computing power is really needed). You can check the current behaviour by looking at /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor.

The standard governors are:

• performance: always use the highest available frequency
• powersave: always use the lowest available frequency
• ondemand: scale the frequency depending on CPU usage
• conservative: like ondemand, but in-/decreases frequency step-by-step; better for battery-powered systems
• userspace: an external program (daemon) decides which frequency to use

I don't see a compelling reason to change your current settings, but if you really must always have the maximum performance (at least when on external power), you should start out by searching YaST for an appropriate option. Failing that, take a look at the SUSE documentation.

*feels like an idiot*

Yea, I found all of settings in YaST, and see how to change everything and the CPU frequency scaler. Thanks for your help!