laptop CPU speed

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rookie1010

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Hello

I read on howstuffworks that the operating system slows down the CPU when the computer is not in use. do you guys know how much does it slow down by

say e.g. if one has a 1.5 GHz processor, does it slow down to 1 GHz, i guess the clock dividers must be getting reconfigured
 
on my particular centrino 1.6Ghz, the cpu slows down to 800MHz when idle or simple word processing. i dont know about others tho
 
aha

thanks for the replies guys
so most of the mobile processors, have an automatic sensing of idle periods and when they go into idle mode then they half the processor speed, correct?

with speedstep, what are the other ratios used for?
 
it depends on the system. my dad's Laptop has a Pentium 4 1.6, which throttles down to 1.2 when it is on batteries, and sometimes drops to over 800MHZ when the battery is low.
 
thanks for the reply

so when a laptop is used whilst using batteries, it actually is operating at a lower frequency to save power?

how does one check the cpu speed at a particular instant
 
thanks for the reply

i did right click My Computer -> properties.
my desktop says 2.6 GHz, with a laptop would this be variable depending upon the mode it is in? or would it show the max speed of the processor?
 
my notebook has an intel centrino proccessor that runs at 1.7ghz max. but if its just idle then its around 760mhz. i have heard of it being called speedstep technology or just stepping. the new core 2 duo's also have stepping technology to save power for notebook computers.
 
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