600X 2645-5FG - 650Mhz pretends to be a 500Mhz?

[Azoro]

Thanks to you all I was successfull in installing XP on my 600X, everything is working fine... but win xp is saying it's 500mhz. Same thing for CPU-Z, 500 Mhz - 99,7 x 5... Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks a lot!

[whizkid]

What does EZSetup say your CPU is?

[Azoro]

What does EZSetup say your CPU is?

Coppermine PIII E

From the bios I can see "650Mhz", maybe XP thinks it is too fast I guess it's a driver problem... I tried with p3.sys driver and intelppm.sys but I didn't see any change......

[pkiff]

Am I doing something wrong?

Probably not. You have a PIII 650MHz CPU with "SpeedStep" technology. SpeedStep will drop the speed of your CPU from 650 down to 500 in order to save power when you are not using the extra CPU power. Up to Windows XP, you needed to install an Intel SpeedStep applet to enable and control this function. In Windows XP, the SpeedStep CPU "throttling" functions are built into the OS. However, lots of people have had various problems getting their SpeedStep CPU to run at maximum speed under XP when they explicitly want it to do so. XP is reported to be aggressive about throttling the SpeedStep CPU speeds.

I have three recommendations.

The normal, first recommendation is to ensure that your have your "Power" settings set to "Always On". But even with those settings, sometimes some people can't get their CPU to run at max speed. For more information about the power settings and SpeedStep CPUs, check out Bay Wolf's SpeedStep FAQ. You don't need to leave your power settings at Always On, but if you set it to Always On and you are STILL unable to achieve your 650MHz speed, then there may be a problem. If you do reach 650MHz under Always On settings, then you know your CPU is working correctly.

The second recommendation is to say that you should only use original IBM batteries, or "refilled" IBM batteries that retain the original IBM circuitry inside. Many, many people find that they are unable to achieve maximum CPU speed on a SpeedStep CPU in a Thinkpad 600X when they use clone/generic batteries.

My third recommendation would be to use Christian Diefer's SpeedStep applet called SpeedSwitchXP. I personally use it on all my 600Xs with XP. It provides access under XP to all the original functions of the Intel SpeedStep applet plus some others. And it does a better job of it all than the built-in XP functions.

There are a couple other things you can do after checking these three recommendations out, but one of these three should fix you up in 95% of cases.

Phil.

[Azoro]

What does EZSetup say your CPU is?

Coppermine PIII E

From the bios I can see "650Mhz", maybe XP thinks it is too fast I guess it's a driver problem... I tried with p3.sys driver and intelppm.sys but I didn't see any change......

I tried with "always on" but I didn't see any change. My battery is dead, I'm always working with the AC adapter.
I don't know if this could help you, I have the "suspend" option grayed out...

[pkiff]

I tried with p3.sys driver and intelppm.sys but I didn't see any change......

You should not need to change the CPU driver on a standard 600X with an original PIII 650MHz running XP. I don't see how you would do any harm by changing these drivers, but I personally would not recommend it. I would only fiddle with the CPU drivers after trying the other things I recommend first.

Phil.

[pkiff]

Maybe this can be useful: under power managment, cpu, I have only "automatic" or "disable".

That is normal. Leave it at "automatic".

Phil.

[Azoro]

Maybe this can be useful: under power managment, cpu, I have only "automatic" or "disable".

That is normal. Leave it at "automatic".

Phil.

Ok. Installed SpeedSwitch, nothing changed

[pkiff]

Ok. Installed SpeedSwitch, nothing changed

Mmmm....Try rebooting, then check again. And just to check then:
1. you're plugged in to AC
2. you've got an original IBM battery
3. you've got SpeedSwitch set at "Max Performance"
4. in SpeedSwitch main window, when you detect max speed it says ~500MHz (or ~497MHz, or whatever)

Phil.

[Azoro]

Ok. Installed SpeedSwitch, nothing changed

Mmmm....Try rebooting, then check again. And just to check then:
1. you're plugged in to AC
2. you've got an original IBM battery
3. you've got SpeedSwitch set at "Max Performance"
4. in SpeedSwitch main window, when you detect max speed it says ~500MHz (or ~497MHz, or whatever)

Phil.

yes to everything except 2. , I don't have a battery right now, I had two but they are dead, so I prefer not to leave a dead battery in my 600x.

[pkiff]

yes to everything except 2. , I don't have a battery right now, I had two but they are dead, so I prefer not to leave a dead battery in my 600x.

Bingo. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to reach max CPU speed without a battery installed, and that's the likely culprit here. An almost dead battery will be as good as a brand new battery here, but you are right that you shouldn't use a truly dead battery (one that won't finish charging or that won't hold a charge) as you could cause other problems and it won't help you with this anyways.

Phil.

[Azoro]

yes to everything except 2. , I don't have a battery right now, I had two but they are dead, so I prefer not to leave a dead battery in my 600x.

Bingo. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to reach max CPU speed without a battery installed, and that's the likely culprit here. An almost dead battery will be as good as a brand new battery here, but you are right that you shouldn't use a truly dead battery (one that won't finish charging or that won't hold a charge) as you could cause other problems and it won't help you with this anyways.

Phil.

Well, even though running at 500Mhz this 600X is pretty much usable, like the T22 which I had and just died

I have a T41 and a T60 too... but this is another story

Thanks a lot for your help!
Ciao!