Dell Inspiron 2650 Clock Speed Programs

[byunews]

Hey guys. I hate to bore you with another "please help me" post, but I'm having more problems with clock speed on the computers in my house. I must have broken some computers by overclocking them in the past life or something. Call it karma.

I bought this Dell Inspiron 2650 notebook for my mom. I realized when we bought it that it was going to be fairly lame as far as speed goes, but I didn't quite notice how slow this laptop actually was. It was advertised as a 1.7 ghz Pentium 4-M.

One thing that I overlooked was that the laptop only came with 128mb RAM. My mom complained after a few months that it was impossible to get any work done since whenever she would open Firefox or Outlook or Word, the computer would grind to a halt. I watched her try to use it, and I could hear that tiny, 4200RPM hard drive thrashing its little heart out as the computer dived into its virtual memory. Dell's "128mb is ok for Windows XP" policy is pure fantasy.

We set out to buy some new RAM. In order to determine what kind to buy, I fired up WCPUID, which told me that the front side bus speed of the computer was 100mhz. I thought "100mhz? You can't get DDR100 memory. It must be PC100". It took a long time and a lot of money, but we finally hunted down a PC-100 512mb SODIMM for the laptop.

I went to install it, and - lo and behold - it didn't fit. I should have checked beforehand, but it turns out that the computer actually used DDR RAM. At this point I thought "what the hell is going on?". I fired up CPU-Z in order to get a look at the FSB and memory clock speeds, and sure enough, both were at 100mhz. What caught my eye was that, having a multiplier of 12, this gave the computer a 1200mhz clock speed. It finally dawned on me that Dell sold us an under-clocked computer by .5 ghz. The FSB should actually be at 133mhz, and the computer should actually be using PC2100 DDR SODIMMs. Later we're going to return the SD-RAM and buy the equivalent quantity in DDR.

Frustrated at how I had been duped into buying expensive, rare 512mb SD-SODIMMS by Dell's underclocking, I set about trying to clock the processor at its proper clock speed. Of course, when I opened up Dell's easy-to-use bios, I learned that there is no way to change any aspect of the CPU, FSB or RAM clock speeds.

So there are a few areas I need help in:
1) Do any Dell laptop owners have any idea how to change the clockspeed of the Inspirons? I know that some motherboard manufacturers make you press a key combination to access hidden menus (like Gigabyte). Is there anything I can do to change these settings in the BIOS?

2) If not, is there a way to overclock the FSB of this computer in Windows? Is there a program like Easy Tune that will work on this motherboard? Will Easy Tune work on this motherboard? Does anyone know of a program that will work?

3) Does anyone have any idea (from personal experience) if this Dell laptop has a RAM limit? Should I buy a 256mb stick and not a 512mb one?

Many, many thanks to anyone who can restore my sanity.

[John Prophet]

first off....just go to www.crucial.com and use their ram configurator (or whatever they call it)...that will tell you exactly what the ram is...also of course the dell site will tell you exactly what ram is on that comp

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as far as "underclocking"....you probably have one of the "variable" speed cpus where they do underclock when the battery is low or under certain other conditions

possibly you can go into the bios and turn off those underclocking features.



and definitely you need more than 128m ram


JP

[erhan28]

My mobo is locked on my dell, Why dont you return it because those losers(dell) sold you a underclock machine. Man i tell you if that happened to me, I would stick the labtop up Dell's Big Ace....

[Overclocked412]

Quote:

Originally Posted by byunews

We set out to buy some new RAM. In order to determine what kind to buy, I fired up WCPUID, which told me that the front side bus speed of the computer was 100mhz. I thought "100mhz? You can't get DDR100 memory. It must be PC100". It took a long time and a lot of money, but we finally hunted down a PC-100 512mb SODIMM for the laptop.

am I the only one who see's this statement as -way- wrong? the FRONT SIDE BUS has zippo to do with what type of ram you have, thats what the friggen processor is running at. If you want to find out what RAM you need, look for a chipset number (like 845gl for example), and google that. Or just look it up on dells site. I dont know why you didnt do that? And the memory running at 100 mhz does seem off, it should be 266 if there is a PC2100 stick in there (which should be, from the factory). Can you post a screenshot of what its saying. And you might want to download this really nifty program called PC Wizard 2005, its free and a great program with lots of info about your computer and everything in and hooked up to it.

http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php

[byunews]

Quote:

am I the only one who see's this statement as -way- wrong? the FRONT SIDE BUS has zippo to do with what type of ram you have, thats what the friggen processor is running at.

Well, Captain Caps, I assumed that Dell ran the memory and front side bus at a 1:1 ratio, as is common. Plus, I assumed that this was an early Pentium like the desktop P4 A revisions, which use PC-100 RAM and use a 400mhz FSB (which is exactly what this computer reported).
And additionally, Sir Shout, this turned out to be the case. The RAM was running at 100mhz. Here's the CPU-Z screenshot:

Note the wicked timings I'm getting on my underclocked RAM. 2-2-2-5. Nice.
Unfortunately, I want the clock speed more than I want low latency.

Quote:

first off....just go to www.crucial.com and use their ram configurator (or whatever they call it)...that will tell you exactly what the ram is...also of course the dell site will tell you exactly what ram is on that comp

[rabidaardvark]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Overclocked412

am I the only one who see's this statement as -way- wrong? the FRONT SIDE BUS has zippo to do with what type of ram you have, thats what the friggen processor is running at. If you want to find out what RAM you need, look for a chipset number (like 845gl for example), and google that. Or just look it up on dells site. I dont know why you didnt do that? And the memory running at 100 mhz does seem off, it should be 266 if there is a PC2100 stick in there (which should be, from the factory). Can you post a screenshot of what its saying. And you might want to download this really nifty program called PC Wizard 2005, its free and a great program with lots of info about your computer and everything in and hooked up to it.

http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php

It should be at 133 for pc2100 'member it doubles. Everyone else was right the cpu is just stepping the clock down to save power. If you plug it into the wall and start using the cpu it will jump back up to 133 (266) and so will the ram.

Quote:

It's plugged in. CPU-Z showed 1200mhz at idle and load. It's underclocked. A good tip, and thanks for making me aware of that, but I don't think it's the case.

[Overclocked412]

well, you do a awful lot of "assuming". I can assume I have a 78000GT and a Athlon96 9500+, but it doesn't make it true . Oh, and thanks rabidaardvark, forgot about that I guess its not called Double Data Rate for nothing

[rabidaardvark]

Oh yeah wait, P4 is quad pumped anyway so 100 is 400 right so it's the mulitiplier that should go up not the fsb clock. It must be late. So you should see the mulitiplier go up under load if it's plugged in. Dunno what the heck I was thinking before with the fsb thinger the chips are lower multi unlocked to throttle down.

Sorry for the confusion.

[Overclocked412]

I remember reading that if you set your power savings to all none (desktop-rightclick-properties-screensaver-power tab-) and change them all to none, click ok, apply. reboot (just for good measure), and check the speeds again. Even tho there isnt an actual listing in them for CPU throttling, it does it automatically depending on what is selected. try it

[byunews]

Whoops. Wow, you hit the nail on the head aardvark. I went back and editted the post.

Thanks for being so quick, helpful, knowledgable and polite.

Although I'm stuck with DDR266 RAM clocked at 100mhz, at least I get wicked low latencies.