Processor Issue

[greyowl]

I have an older Dell laptop with a 1.6Ghz pentium processor and 512 mb of RAM. I

I recently noticed that when I click Properties on MyComputer sometimes it show:

1.60 GHz, 512 MB of RAM
----
and other times it shows: 591 MHz, 512 MB of RAM.

Does anyone have an idea of what is happening?

Thanks for your help.

[alanrf]

Can you post screenshots of the differing reports?

[YoKenny]

and other times it shows: 591 MHz

are you sure it is not saying 1591MHz?

[alanrf]

Or perhaps even 1.59 GHz?

[igor]

If it's a notebook, maybe it's a powersaving option... i.e. when the computer is idle, the CPU clock goes slower to consume less power.

[.: Mac :.]

If it's a notebook, maybe it's a powersaving option... i.e. when the computer is idle, the CPU clock goes slower to consume less power.

Exactly right igor. Intel chips (and im assuming this is  Pentium M) have a feature called intel enhanced speedstep technology.

It throttles the processor speed based on what you are doing, when the system is mostly idle it switches to a lower clock speed.

Here is Intel's FAQ:

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-028855.htm

[greyowl]

Thank you for this information which seems to have possibly solved the riddle. 
This issue did occur when the laptop was on AC power which is how I always run it.  The reference which you gave me was not clear if the step down occurred on both AC and DC power.  I would have thought it would only occur on DC power to save the batteries but maybe not.
Do you have any other thoughts on this issue?

Thank you so much for the help.

[Hard_ROCKER]

Yes, quit worrying as it's perfectly normal.

EDIT: When the computer is gonna need more cpu power it will go back to normal values ... 

[greyowl]

Oh, good.

Thanks for the reassurance.