Maximum Processor Speed Lower Than It Should Be

Question

If you look at the screenshot, you'll see that the processor should be running at 2.70 GHz, but the reported clock speed on the bottom right of the screenshot shows that the maximum processor speed it 1.90 GHz. On start-up the BIOS shows the processor clock speed as 1.80 GHz.

Is there any reason for this? My motherboard is an old Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L.

Answer 1

Sorted it out a while ago by resetting my BIOS settings. All is fine now. Sorry for not marking this as solved before, must've forgot about this. My bad.

Answer 2

It would appear that your system supports dynamic C.P.U. (Central Processing Unit) clocking. This is very common on laptops now-adays, but some desktops have it too. Basically in your B.I.O.S. (Basic Input Output System) or U.E.F.I. there is a setting that you may be able to enable or disable to allow the C.P.U. to self-under-clock when it's full power is not needed. If the C.P.U. has Intel Turbo Boost, AMD All Day Power, or similar features this is also used to access it's over-clock speed. There may be additional options present too, either listed as modes, or precise speeds.

If your O.S. (Operating System) has support, you can manipulate your C.P.U.'s speed from within your O.S., by changing the acceptable p-states (Power State), or in some cases choosing a specific power state. C.P.U.'s have power states (usually 2 or 3), which can be thought of like a built in stable level of function (usually low, and high or low, medium, and high). Any time the C.P.U. is at a different speed it's just temporarily between p-states. Unfortunately you cannot use p-state alternations to overclock, because you can only set to 100% of the C.P.U.'s max speed, over-clocking requires above 100%.

On Linux operating systems you can use, cpu-freq to change your p-state. It's a C.L.I. (Command Line Interface) tool, but there also used to a G.U.I. (Graphical User Interface) indicator add-on you could install in the Gnome2 days; perhaps it's still around. You can see it in the image above.

You appear to be using Windows 8 (like me). Windows 8 has built in support in the power settings area. It's a bit tricky for choosing a p-state, because you can't pick one, you have to alter the min/max C.P.U. speeds to trick Windows into falling into a P-state; it takes some trial and error to find them all. Since your goal is just to get the highest p-state that's easy-peasy. Just set the max, and min C.P.U. speeds in your power settings to 100%. If your C.P.U. has built in over-clocking like Intel Turbo Boost, or AMD All Day Power you will still get over-clocking on top of that. Because dynamic clocking is on the speed won't be exact because your C.P.U. still wants to under-clock, but it should be close (give or take temporary drops of maybe max 0.15ghz-ish below 100%).

Go to Control Panel\System and Security\Power Options, then click change plan settings beside your power plan, then change advanced power settings, then change settings that are currently unavailable, scroll down to processor power management, change the minimum processor state to 100% for both on battery and plugged in, change the maximum processor state to 100% for both on batter and plugged in, and then click apply.

EDIT:

While reading your question I totally missed the part about your cpu being max 2.70ghz, but reporting a max of 1.9ghz. Going back to Intel Turbo Boost, AMD All Day Power, and similar technologies (in your case Intel Speed Step Enhanced), in your B.I.O.S. or U.E.F.I. in addition to enabling dymanic clocking there may also be an option for changing to a lower p-state. I would guess you system has a 1.9ghz p-state.

According to the Intel website if speed step is enabled you will see a lower speed listed on your system. Just like you are seeing. As mentioned at the beginning of my post there should be an option in your B.I.O.S. / U.E.F.I. to disable, or change your p-state / dynamic clocking settings.

If Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology is enabled, two processor speeds will be listed. The first speed listed is the specified speed of the processor. The second speed is the current operating speed. The second speed will be less then the first speed.

• http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/203838.htm

Answer 3

Try this.

For me the solution was rather simple (once I read it somewhere) - in Windows power setting: change the CPU maximum processor state to 99% instead of 100%.

Apparently, it prevents the CPU from entering "turbo" mode, and BOOM the laptop flies once again.

Answer 4

More than likely you have Intel SpeedStep enabled.

From Wikipedia:

SpeedStep is a trademark for a series of dynamic frequency scaling technologies (codenamed Geyserville1 and including SpeedStep, SpeedStep II, and SpeedStep III) built into some Intel microprocessors that allow the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed (to different P-states) by software. This allows the processor to meet the instantaneous performance needs of the operation being performed, while minimizing power draw and heat generation

To put it in simple terms, the CPU determines that running at its highest setting isnt needed and it lowers its speed and power consumption.

If you run something very CPU intensive, you should see the clock speed ramp up to its full 2.7Ghz speed.

You can disable Speedstep in BIOS, but from what I have seen, its very reliable in scaling up and down as necessary.

Answer 5

Try updating your BIOS. According to the CPU support list, the Pentium E5400 CPU is supported starting from version “FC”, which is the third version available for this board.

You can probably determine the BIOS version using msinfo32. If unsure, post a screenshot of the “System Summary” page.

---

Also, why would they use letters for the version. D: