Computer underclocked itself

tehgils

After just formatting my hard drive and reinstalling programs i noticed that my system window said that my processor was only 1ghz . I then confirmed it with cpu-z.



What I want to know is why this happened and how to reverse it.

Crossfire

What was the original speed.

sinn

Were your BIOS settings recently reset? On some motherboards the BIOS will sometimes be reset to the default state. All that should be required is to open the BIOS settings and set it back to the correct processor speed/settings.

telcus

Most likely your CPU is throttling itself because you're not doing anything CPU intensive at the moment.

See the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_64

Most notably this section:

Athlon 64 also features CPU speed throttling technology branded Cool'n'Quiet, a feature similar to Intel's SpeedStep that can throttle the processor's clock speed back to facilitate lower power consumption and heat production[47]. When the user is running undemanding applications and the load on the processor is light, the processor's clock speed and voltage are reduced. This in turn reduces its peak power consumption (max TDP set at 89 W by AMD) to as low as 32 W (stepping C0, clock speed reduced to 800 MHz) or 22W (stepping CG, clock speed reduced to 1 GHz). The Athlon 64 also has an Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) which prevents the CPU core from accidentally being damaged when mounting and unmounting cooling solutions. With prior AMD CPUs a CPU shim could be used by people worried about damaging the core.

Daedalus

Yeah, like telcus said, modern processors, in order to save on power and generate less heat, turn down the multiplier when they're not under load. You can probably turn this off in the BIOS, although it means your electric bill will go up a little bit. You can also go into Windows's power options (in the Control Panel) and set it to "Always On". That should fix it as well.

The processor will automatically go up to full speed when something starts to require such speeds, though, so you might want to just not worry about it.

Oh, and this changing speed thing causes weird bugs in old games that use the Unreal 1 engine. This comes up in like every Deus Ex thread, for example.

-poe-

telcus wrote: »

Most likely your CPU is throttling itself because you're not doing anything CPU intensive at the moment.

See the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_64

Most notably this section:

Athlon 64 also features CPU speed throttling technology branded Cool'n'Quiet, a feature similar to Intel's SpeedStep that can throttle the processor's clock speed back to facilitate lower power consumption and heat production[47]. When the user is running undemanding applications and the load on the processor is light, the processor's clock speed and voltage are reduced. This in turn reduces its peak power consumption (max TDP set at 89 W by AMD) to as low as 32 W (stepping C0, clock speed reduced to 800 MHz) or 22W (stepping CG, clock speed reduced to 1 GHz). The Athlon 64 also has an Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) which prevents the CPU core from accidentally being damaged when mounting and unmounting cooling solutions. With prior AMD CPUs a CPU shim could be used by people worried about damaging the core.

99% sure this is it. My computer does this, too. Launch a few other programs, then check your speed after a few seconds, and see if it's still throttled.

tehgils

The Warlock wrote: »

Yeah, like telcus said, modern processors, in order to save on power and generate less heat, turn down the multiplier when they're not under load. You can probably turn this off in the BIOS, although it means your electric bill will go up a little bit. You can also go into Windows's power options (in the Control Panel) and set it to "Always On". That should fix it as well.

The processor will automatically go up to full speed when something starts to require such speeds, though, so you might want to just not worry about it.

Oh, and this changing speed thing causes weird bugs in old games that use the Unreal 1 engine. This comes up in like every Deus Ex thread, for example.

That seemed to be what it was, most of the time I have it set on the always on option so I never noticed it doing this before. Thanks for the help everyone.

wunderbar

my Pentium M laptop is currently running at 600MHz because I'm just on a forum. if I do a processor intensive app, it clocks up to the full 1.4GHz

Zxerol

Yeah, Cool'n'Quiet will knock the multiplier down to 5x when the processor is idling. Although, are you overclocking? The FSB should be 200 MHz (plus a 11x multiplier for the 3500+ = 2.2 GHz).

Raere

It takes only a microsecond to change the clock up to its max when it detects activity. If you prefer to have it running at full speed all the time, you need to disable Cool n' Quiet in the BIOS. Changing the power setting in Windows won't do anything.

Daedalus

Raere wrote: »

It takes only a microsecond to change the clock up to its max when it detects activity. If you prefer to have it running at full speed all the time, you need to disable Cool n' Quiet in the BIOS. Changing the power setting in Windows won't do anything.

Changing the power setting in Windows to "always on" keeps it at its maximum speed the whole time (unless you have some weird processor driver installed or something, of course). I could use fancy-shmancy ACPI terms here to explain this, but to be honest I'd have to look them up, since nobody, not even intel, understands the clusterfuck that is ACPI.

And changing the clock speed while a program is running can cause bugs in very old programs that aren't designed for it, but again, the only time that will affect you is if you're trying to play Deus Ex (or any other Unreal 1 engine game).

tehgils

I do have a slight overclock on my processor, though it still idles at 40°C. Unlike my graphics card witch is at 54°C right now.

Evander

I haven't been able tog et my CPU to go above 32 degrees yet.

I REALLY ought to overclock this thing, with the temperatures I am able to keep it at, and the 10x multiplier, it is just begging for it.

Rohan

Mine is doing it right now. It's a Core 2 Duo E6420 that runs at 2.13GHz, and CPU-Z is reporting it at around 1.5GHz, just idling.

FreddyD

I put mine on cool n quiet on purpose, but I wonder if it affects my game performance at all.

wunderbar

FreddyD wrote: »

I put mine on cool n quiet on purpose, but I wonder if it affects my game performance at all.

nah, it won't. Literally it's a 1/10000000000th of a second for the CPU to throttle up to full speed. there will be no speed difference.

Zen Vulgarity

Step processors

Raere

The Warlock wrote: »

Raere wrote: »

It takes only a microsecond to change the clock up to its max when it detects activity. If you prefer to have it running at full speed all the time, you need to disable Cool n' Quiet in the BIOS. Changing the power setting in Windows won't do anything.

Changing the power setting in Windows to "always on" keeps it at its maximum speed the whole time (unless you have some weird processor driver installed or something, of course). I could use fancy-shmancy ACPI terms here to explain this, but to be honest I'd have to look them up, since nobody, not even intel, understands the clusterfuck that is ACPI.

And changing the clock speed while a program is running can cause bugs in very old programs that aren't designed for it, but again, the only time that will affect you is if you're trying to play Deus Ex (or any other Unreal 1 engine game).

I was under the impression that Cool n' Quiet could only be toggled in the BIOS unless you had to drivers installed, then you could change it in Windows. Can Windows really toggle it without AMD's drivers?

Nozz

Raere wrote: »

The Warlock wrote: »

Raere wrote: »

It takes only a microsecond to change the clock up to its max when it detects activity. If you prefer to have it running at full speed all the time, you need to disable Cool n' Quiet in the BIOS. Changing the power setting in Windows won't do anything.

Changing the power setting in Windows to "always on" keeps it at its maximum speed the whole time (unless you have some weird processor driver installed or something, of course). I could use fancy-shmancy ACPI terms here to explain this, but to be honest I'd have to look them up, since nobody, not even intel, understands the clusterfuck that is ACPI.

And changing the clock speed while a program is running can cause bugs in very old programs that aren't designed for it, but again, the only time that will affect you is if you're trying to play Deus Ex (or any other Unreal 1 engine game).

I was under the impression that Cool n' Quiet could only be toggled in the BIOS unless you had to drivers installed, then you could change it in Windows. Can Windows really toggle it without AMD's drivers?

My laptop has it and I can turn it off in windows in a second