Underperforming CPU
A confused novice in these matters seeks the wisdom of gurus...
If my comp's nominal CPU speed is 2.53 GHz and tests, including a processor ID utility from the manufacturer, find out it's only working at 1.89 GHz, what's the most likely source of trouble and is there a way to fix it ? It's an Intel Pentium 4, if that helps.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
Is it a Pentium 4 M (Mobile)? Is it a laptop? If so that's probably your deal, Windows if set up to do so will throttle your CPU depending on certain conditions, like being on battery power or idleness. I have a problem with my work laptop, that whenever I unplug it accidentally, it automatically scales the CPU way back and won't ever throttle it back up to full speed.
Edit - Try getting and running this utility: http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php and post the data it gives you on your CPU. It'll help us figure out what might be causing this.
Last edited by Whacker; 03-21-2007 at 03:33.
"Justice is the firm and continuous desire to render to everyone
that which is his due." - Justinian I
Re: Underperforming CPU
It probably has speed step, which is normal. It jacks the clock speed back to normal when it goes under some load and lowers it back down to conserve power and reduce heat. There are options in the bios (depending on laptop/desktop/maunfature etc...) to turn off speed step. Post the cpu-z screenshot first before we confirm that this is the case.
EDIT: Here is a screenshot of my pentium M, it says 1.73GHz under specification, but is currently running at 800MHz. This is normal. It will kick up to 1.73 when I put some load on the cpu.
Last edited by BlackAxe3001; 03-21-2007 at 04:14.
Re: Underperforming CPU
Right, here you go:
I can't say I know much about the whole specs/performance ratio thing, but I know the machine apparently can't run games that require 2+ GHz processor.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
It's a Northwood. That CPU in particular should be on a 25x multiplier, it has likely stepped down to 19x due to thermal throttling caused by overheating. Check the heatsink and fan.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
Unless you have been messing around in the bios for overclocking purposes, then check for dust I guess. I will keep thinking about it... interesting...
How recently did this occur btw?
Re : Underperforming CPU
Those suggestions you people make sound good, but if they're not it, I'd like to throw in one as well. Maybe the speed of the memory is not so high, so the CPU automatically runs at a lower speed. Just a thought that came up :)
Emotion, passions, and desires are, thus peace is not.
Emotion: you have it or it has you.
---
Pay heed to my story named The Thief in the Mead Hall.No.
---
Check out some of my music.
Re: Re : Underperforming CPU
Forget what I said earlier, a 25 multiplier seems a bit high.
It would appear that your CPU should be running on a 133MHz FSB. If the FSB is set to 100MHz in the BIOS setup, then that would cause it to run at exactly the speed you're getting now. It could also be that your motherboard doesn't support a 133MHz FSB, though unlikely. If corrected it will give 2.53GHz on a quad pumped FSB of 533MHz using the same multiplier of 19x.
Last edited by caravel; 03-21-2007 at 16:08.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
Post a screenshot of the motherboard tab in cpu-z so that we can look up your chipset. Maybe it has always been this way and you just now noticed it.
Re: Underperforming CPU
Very weird stuff, and make sure you don't overclock your RAM if you should set the FSB to 133.
But for now, I agree that the motherboard and maybe the Memory Tab would be useful.
"Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu
Re: Underperforming CPU
My thoughts too. clockspeed/multiplier = about 133mhz, the speed the FSB should probably be. Multipliers are normally fixed, so it's probably that. Go hit the BIOS until it works.Originally Posted by Husar
Re: Underperforming CPU
Sure, here's the board tab:
...and memory:
Make any more sense ? Granted, given the state the blasted fans are in some heat-related issue is also more than probable if that's a possible cause...
Could also have been this way since the comp was bought of course. Nothing's just started whining about insufficient CPUs before the recently bought Armed Assault...
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
The Asus P4S533 is your motherboard. It should have an FSB of 133MHz (533) with that CPU, I cannot think why this would be otherwise unless you have DDR200 SDRAM in there or unless it has been incorrectly configured in the BIOS setup. You may need to physically change a dip switch or move a jumper on the motherboard to go from a 100Mhz FSB to a 100Mhz one or you may be able to change it in the BIOS.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
That sounds vaguely daunting to my greenhorn skills in these matters...
Lemme see now... how did you go about messing with the BIOS ? System boot ?
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re : Underperforming CPU
Boot the computer and then during the POST messages (when you see all the text going by) or during the graphical screen instead of these messages, press Delete. At least, I'd have to assume it's Delete to enter the BIOS :)
You can check the motherboard manual to be sure.
The BIOS revision is 1007. I'm not sure but I have a hunch that it's an old one and possibly needs upgrading to a newer version just in case.
Emotion, passions, and desires are, thus peace is not.
Emotion: you have it or it has you.
---
Pay heed to my story named The Thief in the Mead Hall.No.
---
Check out some of my music.
Re: Underperforming CPU
The mainboard should support FSB 133, you should be able to set that in the BIOS.
But, you may need to run in asynchronous mode depending on your RAM, if you have DDR200 RAM and run that at 133MHz(which would be 266MHz effectively), it might be a bit overclocked and you could end up having to buy new RAM. I don't know whether old mainboards have any security mechanisms to prevent that.
This old review I found in google talks about how the FSB is set in the BIOS(they don't explain, just mention it). Well, you may want to have a look at your BIOS setting and if you are in doubt, don't change anything, but just browsing the various settings cannot hurt, it's how I got familiar with it.
"Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu
Re: Underperforming CPU
Putting in slower ram does not lower the fsb UNLESS the board is locked to 1:1 ratio, which is unlikely. Besides, it would overclock the ram by doing so anyway, not lower the fsb. That would kill performance. At any rate, something is fubar. Reset your bios to defaults and see if that fixes it. It's pretty hard to troubleshoot a problem like this using only a forum...
Re: Underperforming CPU
I'll see what I can do.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
I'd advise against that. Resetting to factory defaults can often cause a lot more problems that it solves. Then there is the added annoyance of enabling disabled hardware causing windows to detect it.
A lot of the motherboards from that era (AthlonXP/P4) are locked to a 1:1 or only allow ratios where the memory clock is higher, so slower RAM on a faster bus tends to get overclocked. As I said before, some of these boards have an actual jumper to change the clock frequency from 100MHz to 133MHz.
Another possibility is that the BIOS version doesn't support the CPU. Simply updating the BIOS may fix this.
-Edit: I've checked it out and you can alter this from the BIOS setup if the motherboard jumper has been set to allow jumperless operation (which it should be). In this case it's as easy as going to advanced options in the BIOS and setting the "CPU Speed" to "manual" and the "CPU/PCI Frequency (MHz)" option to "133/33", though you shouldn't have to do this as the CPU should be automatically detected. If you can check to see if "CPU Speed" is on "manual", change it to "automatic", save changes and exit and see if that fixes it. If not, then I think you're looking at a BIOS update.
-Edit: Your BIOS firmware does look like it needs upgrading. The latest stable release is v1010c. There have been a lot of bug fixes and support for new CPU's added since v1007. I would advise you do this before messing about in the BIOS.
Last edited by caravel; 03-22-2007 at 11:17.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
The thing actually has a manual jumper for adjusting the output. Well, had, for all it matters now; trying to update the BIOS bombed for some reason, and now the whole machine refuses to boot up...
Oh well, we were thinking abut upgrading the MB and processor anyway.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
So you jumped in there without any guidance, links or detailed instructions and just went for it? Did you boot from a floppy and did you make a backup of the old BIOS?The thing actually has a manual jumper for adjusting the output. Well, had, for all it matters now; trying to update the BIOS bombed for some reason, and now the whole machine refuses to boot up...
Oh well, we were thinking abut upgrading the MB and processor anyway.
I do think you were rather too hasty, a lot more information needed to be gathered about your motherboard first, before you were sure about which BIOS image to download.
What do you mean "refuses to boot up"? If you're seeing and hearing nothing at all, I'd advise you to remove the coin cell from the motherboard for about 1 minute and unplug the PC from the mains. Then replace the coin cell, connect up and try to boot up again. If you still get nothing at all then you've probably flashed with the wrong BIOS image, there are different versions of the P4S533, so this is entirely possible. If this is the case, with no backup BIOS on that board AFAIK, you're in trouble.
Also the manual jumper you mentioned, did you change that?
Last edited by caravel; 03-22-2007 at 16:54.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
Only once did I flash a BIOS.
It was the AOpen AK-73Pro or so and the tool was quite nice, it showed me whether the copy process was successful or not so I repeated the process until it showed everything was fine(it wasn't in the first few tries) and then rebooted, worked fine. Since then I never flashed a BIOS again and wouldn't have advised you to(too late obviously), because of the dangers involved.
Well, time for a Core 2 Duo.
"Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu
Re: Underperforming CPU
Ouchy...
if you didn't change any jumpers and resetting the CMOS doesn't help, you are most likely SOL.
This trend of events goes back to my statement about troubleshooting a problem like this over a forum... It should really be done using irc or something.
Also, restting the bios would have been a better idea than flashing it to a new version... much safer for someone who is inexperienced...
Re: Underperforming CPU
I have upgraded the firmware in many different types of devices such as PC motherboards, printers, graphics cards, CDROM drivers, routers etc, and never once had a problem. If done correctly, from an MSDOS boot disk and with the correct BIOS image, it is trouble free. Sometimes a BIOS update is necessary so it is not enough to simply not do it.Only once did I flash a BIOS.
It was the AOpen AK-73Pro or so and the tool was quite nice, it showed me whether the copy process was successful or not so I repeated the process until it showed everything was fine(it wasn't in the first few tries) and then rebooted, worked fine. Since then I never flashed a BIOS again and wouldn't have advised you to(too late obviously), because of the dangers involved.
Well, time for a Core 2 Duo.
In this case I would say that it was necessary but wasn't carried out correctly. In fact from the symptoms described I'd say that entirely the wrong image file was used.
As to resetting the factory defaults, that wouldn't have worked as the CPU was probably unsupported by the BIOS anyway. Supported CPU's are simply detected and set to the right speed, unsupported ones are not.
I must admit Watchman, that I did not expect you to immediately go and try to flash the BIOS yourself. If you feel that you did this acting on my advice, then I must apologise sincerely for not wording the post clearly enough. I was rather assuming that your next post would be something to the effect of: "ok so how do I flash the BIOS"?
Last edited by caravel; 03-22-2007 at 18:12.
“The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France
"The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis
Re: Underperforming CPU
Eh, I have a tendency to occasionally try a bit too much. Usually the results of, uh, 'slightly overestimating' my abilities aren't irreversible, but...
I didn't quite think a manufacturer update program would go and gut the whole thing.
Ah well, live and learn. Replacing the hardware - in the end, pretty much everything except the floppy, CD and DVD drives - was actually easy enough if a little time-consuming, but the new SATA-compatible motherboard doesn't want to talk to the old IDE hard disk which means swapping that thing too which means a Windows re-install which is by all accounts better done by professionals, to whom we indeed turned the matter over today. They said it should be done by Monday.
A system upgrade was planned anyway, so we ended up doing it the hard way then. We may actually have gotten off with less expenses than buying a whole new comp would have involved, but a lot more running around and hassle to compensate.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
They got it delivered Tuesday morning, fair enough. So now the old Wormbox has been transformed into Tha Rudebox.
Incidentally, as this thing now has two hard disks would it be sensible to use the one which the OS etc. aren't in for installations and so on ? I have dim recollections of sometime somewhere seeing some vague mentions that didn't hurt...
And that compression/packaging thingy you can do to folders and entire drives, is it any good (except for storage space natch) or a good method to shoot yourself in the figurative electronic leg ?
And what's the deal with those real-time defragmentation programs anyway ? What I've seen of their actual value has been a bit on the ambivalent side.
"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. --- Proof of the existence of the FSM, if needed, can be found in the recent uptick of global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Apparently His Pastaness is to be worshipped in full pirate regalia. The decline in worldwide pirate population over the past 200 years directly corresponds with the increase in global temperature. Here is a graph to illustrate the point."
-Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Re: Underperforming CPU
Don't compress what you actually need to use. Backups only.
As long as your backup drive is as fast as your main one I don't see why installing things on it wouldn't be bad. Personally thought I'd stick to just using the backup one to store music and videos and documents, as then you can easily move it between machines without registry issues.
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