1.4 Ghz Centrino running at 600MHz

devinegsr · 08-13-2003, 12:29 PM

I recently purchased a Gateway 200x and installed RH9. I am a newbie to linux. Does anyone know why my 1.4 Ghz Processor is running at 600 Mhz?

sorrodos · 08-13-2003, 12:30 PM

Check your BIOS settings. Do you know how to do that?

devinegsr · 08-13-2003, 12:35 PM

ill check it, but everything should be fine....under windows xp, its running at 1.4

sorrodos · 08-13-2003, 12:38 PM

I don't really know what to tell you if the BIOS is correct. Where under Linux are you seeing that its running at 600Mhz?

The reason I tell you to check your BIOS is because when you have a power loss, some BIOS cut back on the speed on the CPU, mine does it nearly everytime I lose power. But then again, it doesn't cut back as drastically as yours has... mine only drops from 1Ghz to 750Mhz.

devinegsr · 08-13-2003, 01:25 PM

I am seeing that its running at 600Mhz at /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 598.067
cache size : 0 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm
bogomips : 1192.75

sorrodos · 08-13-2003, 02:29 PM

Thats really odd. I've never seen anything like that before. Keep bumping this up, hopefully someone will respond that knows more than I.

devinegsr · 08-13-2003, 05:06 PM

i did an up2date and restarted and everything seems to be working fine now...thanks for the help

ChaosX2 · 08-14-2003, 10:48 AM

Here is something to try, One plug the laptop into a AC outlet. Then turn the Laptop on and check the proc speed. If its still at 600 mhz. Then run something that really taxes the CPU and check it during that process. 600 mhz is the speed that your centrino goes down to in power saving mode. It should clock up to 1.4 when your using the CPU heavily and it should slow down to 600 mhz when your not really using it.

Hope that helps

ChaosX2 · 08-14-2003, 11:27 AM

Whoops.... Ignore my previous post, I guess I should read the posts a little closer. Glad up2date solved your problem

patrik · 08-16-2003, 04:12 PM

If you're still intrested, I have some more info about this. This is Speedstep... I think that with normal 2.4 kernels, the speed you get depends on if you have the AC cable connected when you start it. With 2.6 you can control it. Here are some examples:

Code:

pioneer root # cd /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/
pioneer cpufreq # ls
cpuinfo_max_freq             scaling_driver    scaling_min_freq
cpuinfo_min_freq             scaling_governor
scaling_available_governors  scaling_max_freq
pioneer cpufreq # echo userspace > scaling_governor 
pioneer cpufreq # echo 600000 > scaling_setspeed 
pioneer cpufreq # grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo 
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
cpu MHz         : 597.733
pioneer cpufreq # echo 800000 > scaling_setspeed 
pioneer cpufreq # grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo 
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
cpu MHz         : 796.977
pioneer cpufreq #

There might be a way to do this in 2.4 too, but I don't think so.

Anyway, I hope this was of any intrest

andrewfu · 08-23-2003, 01:21 PM

All the Pentium M chips 1.3-1.6 drop to 600Mhz when on battery power to save some juice. I know in the ThinkPad T40, there is an option to always run at the max speed, so I'd imagine that option would be on most Centrino laptops.