[Elric Ward]

Until just recently when I started PC Wizard 2006 it would tell me the following under the processor tab:

Processor : AMD Engineering Sample
Frequency : 800 MHz - (current : 2967.41 MHz)
Support :
Cache L1 : 128 KB
Cache L2 : 512 KB
Voltage : 1.550 V
Processor Temperature : 40 °C
Processor Fan : 1087 rpm
FPU Coprocessor : Present

I ended up downloading a new driver for the Integrated Graphics card, to use until my replacement for my burned up 9800 comes in. Now however it tells me this

Processor : AMD Engineering Sample
Frequency : 800 MHz - (current : 797.53 MHz)
Support :
Cache L1 : 128 KB
Cache L2 : 512 KB
Voltage : 1.550 V
Processor Temperature : 34 °C
Processor Fan : 1054 rpm
FPU Coprocessor : Present

The Frequency is considerably lower then it was. I bought this as a barebones system. It's a VIA K8M800 Motherboard, with an AMD 64 3400+ CPU.

Any idea what that Frequency number means and is it slowing my system down now that it's been lowered?

[Advertisements]

Looks like an error reinstall the latest verison of PC wizard, your CPU will be at the same speed unless youve noticed a horrendous drop in speed its fine.

[warriorscot]

Looks like an error reinstall the latest verison of PC wizard, your CPU will be at the same speed unless youve noticed a horrendous drop in speed its fine.

[Elric Ward]

I really haven't noticed a huge drop in speed, but because my video card burned up I really haven't had the chance to put any load on the system. Running an old card, I'm fairly well banned from my gaming experience and loading a web page doesn't seem to be too much slower on a Celeron 800 then an AMD 64 3400+

I installed Everest and CPU-Z and they both tell me that my CPU Clock is now at 797.xx Mhz. 199.37 MHZ FSB (Original 200 mhz) CPU Multiplier 4.

It was running at almost 3K mhz previously. I updated my Via K8M800 drivers right before it occured. Did it somehow change the settings? I've been in the BIOS and I don't even see a place to change the multipler. I'm actually kind of worried about this, but I don't even know how I could go about testing if it's any slower right now with my normal video card out of commission.

[Neil Jones]

This sounds like typical behaviour for Cool & Quiet.

What this basically does is reduce the speed of the processor when it isn't doing anything. Fire up your virus scanner and give it a run while CPU-Z is open. You should then notice, while the virus scanner is running, that the clock speed jumps from 800Mhz to 2200Mhz. When it finishes, the speed should fall back to 800Mhz.

This basically means the processor is auto-throttling itself to the demands of the computer. The benefits of this are: The processor isn't running at full load all the time so its extending its life, using less power so saving you a bit of money and therefore emits a lot less hot air hence saving you noise from having lots of case fans

[Elric Ward]

I haven't installed Cool N Quiet however, and I don't have the minimal power scheme available in my Power Options in the control panel. I could try installing it to see what happens, but it just seems permanently stuck at 800 mhz.

[Elric Ward]

I was able to resolve the problem. I installed a Geforce MX-4000 card, disabled the onboard video completely and it's shared RAM and it bumped the CPU Multiplier back up to 12....no idea why, but it seems to have it fixed.

[Neil Jones]

Hmm, that's a new one on me.

[Elric Ward]

You're telling me, it's completely replicable though...as soon as I put the shared ram back on, the speed drops. Must be some kind of bios glitch...

[warriorscot]

That is a weird one, if you update the BIOS youll probably fix it seems a rather glaring glitch that they would fix as soon as possible.