Clock Speed Problem on my Laptop

[jinsta]

I just recieved my Dell Inspiron 8500 in the mail yesterday. Everythings working perfect, most of the complaints i read about on message boards or non existant on this system. I have encountered one problem though, while changing the fan speeds on my system using a fan control program i checked my system info and noticed that it says its current clock speed is 1200mhz. I cashed out some huge money to purchase a 2.5ghz and its running at a much lower speed. I'm relatively new to the laptop scene, so maybee someone can elaborate on how i can fix this problem, or why it is happening. Thanks in advance for any comments you have.

~jinsta

[GroundZero3]

is this while you are on the battery or are you plugged into the wall?


There is a thing called Speed step which when you are running off the battery, the computer will automatically kick down to a slower speed to save battery.

[jinsta]

This is while i am plugged in to the wall, full charged if that matters, and booted from being plugged in...
i've heard of speed step before, and someone has also suggested that i go into my bios and change some setting from battery performance to max performance....however this setting does not exist in my bios? Any ieas? thnx

~jinsta

[mike_sanfil]

Windows XP turns down your processor to save power, but they did not include any options to control the clock speed. If you are using Win2000 Intel makes a speedsetp program that will keep your CPU running at full speed, but they neglected to write one for XP. I have found this third party program for XP that acts just like the speedstep program for win2000. You can find it here:

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html

I use this on my inspiron 8200 and it works great. (Also supports 8500)

[jinsta]

thanks alot mike, i just found it and installed it, it works great!