Why is Pentiem M 1.7Ghz showing as 598Mhz?

walshki

Howdy,

Of the many of you who are more enlightened than myself maybe someone knows the problem here.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1300. Its got a Pentium M 1.7Ghz. 1 gig ram. 80 gig hard drive. Usual crappy built in graphics. I tried to load BF2 and while I wasn't expecting much I was trying to see just how bad it would be compared to the desktop and whether it would be at all playable (I thought it might run on low settings).

Anyway, I installed and it wouldn't run so I looked at EAsyinfo. It shows my processor speed as anything from 598.5Mhz to 1695Mhz (which it accepts). However whenever I try to run it the screen goes black for about a second then goes back to the desktop without actually running it.

Any ideas? Like I say I didn't have high expectations but I thought it might run. Has anyone got it running on an Inspiron 1300? If I try to load the NVidia drivers it says it doesn't support the hardware so that may well be the problem.

Karoma

The speed of the Pentium M (As with other 'mobile' chips) varies - running at slower speeds reduces power consumption. Games tend to be designed with desktop-PC chips in mind...

hshortt

It's called Speedstep. The demands of the applications you run change the speed of the processor. If you don't care about power consumption and battery life, then turn it off in the BIOS. This will fix your processor to run at the speed specified.

Cheerio
Howard

andrew163

It's a battery power saving feature. All Pentium M's and the new Core 2 Duo's have it... It automatically kicks back up to full speed when any sort of processing load is put on it.

BF2 not running probably has more to do with your graphics chip than the CPU clock speed though..

the_syco

See if plugging it in to the wall helps.

TerrorFirmer

the Integrated graphics is the problem, not the cpu...you will not get bf2 to run on the gma, it's not possible. battlefield vietnam does work if thats any consolation.

and eh...why would the nvidia drivers work on intels hardware...?? They are, unsurprisingly, only for nvidia cards.

walshki

Cheers for the quick replies lads. I've a feeling that like andrew163 and Havok says it might actually be the graphics chip which stops it running. If any has got it running with the built in chip in the Inspiron 1300 I'd like to know. But by what Havok says - probably not.

I might try turning off the powersaving as suggested by HShortt and see if that makes a difference.

I have it plugged into the wall but it still doesn't run even when its showing it as having full processor speed.

Anyway - mostly only curiosity.

Havok - thanks for pointing that out re the drivers - I was clutching at straws when I tried that.

TerrorFirmer

Is it definately the graphics chip, there is no disputing that. The 1300 comes with the GMA, generally a very poor performer in modern games, but as I always point out, it's senseless to badmouth it for such as many people do because it was simply not designed for games.

Pretty much any Dx8 title will work relatively well on the GMA900, but Dx9 titles are hit and miss. Older dx9 titles like BF Vietnam and Call of Duty will work, newer ones like Far Cry, Doom 3, Half Life 2 all technically work but so poorly its not worth even trying. When I say 'so poorly' I mean choppy and jumpy at the lowest possible settings. Half Life 2 is an exception, it works if you force it to run in Dx7 mode on low settings.

Newer games like Battlefield 2, Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, FEAR and what have you will not even boot up on the GMA900 let alone play.

If you like Battlefield 2, may I suggest War Rock as an alternative - it's free and is essentially a clone, with support for 32 players, tank, aircraft, humvee and various soldier classes much like BF2. www.warrock.net The minimum requirements are much, much friendlier then BF2 and it still looks quite good, and performs quite well on the GMA900 as I've heard.

Take a look at this, Intels offical GMA900 compatiability list, to get a good idea of what will and won't work. Intel are surprisingly honest to their credit, listing games that do work but very poorly as 'not compatiable' rather then just leaving them as 'working' to make the GMA look better then it is. Anything that's listed as working, works smoothly. It's a good and trustworthy source.

B00MSTICK

As regards to speedstep, you can download a program called Notebook Hardware Control that lets you set the speed maually

Ghost Train

B00MSTICK wrote:

As regards to speedstep, you can download a program called Notebook Hardware Control that lets you set the speed maually

Or changing the power scheme under power options in control panel will normally do it for me, might be dependant on your hardware and drivers