Why CPU speed is different

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Guest

Right click My Comuter to Property. In System Property box, General tab.
The bottom portion has CPU and Memory info.

My IBM T43 laptop has 1.8 Mobile CPU (Centrino) with 1 GB memory.

The WIndows XP Pro shows 3 different numbers.
First one is CPU 1.8 GB
The second is something else with 786 MB
The last one is 1.00 GB of RAM.

My other computers all have same numbers for the 1st and the 2nd numbers.
Why this one has different numbers? Whould this the cause my laptop is slow?
 
Since the laptop has an embedded graphics card, it likely shares your actual system memory. This would indicate that 256 Meg of memory is allocated to the video card, and the rest is available for use by your operating system. However, without the exact text displayed, its impossible to tell for sure.
 
tdavidc said:
Right click My Comuter to Property. In System Property box, General tab.
The bottom portion has CPU and Memory info.

My IBM T43 laptop has 1.8 Mobile CPU (Centrino) with 1 GB memory.

The WIndows XP Pro shows 3 different numbers.
First one is CPU 1.8 GB
The second is something else with 786 MB
The last one is 1.00 GB of RAM.

My other computers all have same numbers for the 1st and the 2nd numbers.
Why this one has different numbers? Whould this the cause my laptop is
slow?
Click to expand...



The most likely explanation is your laptop has shared video memory (common
for most laptops and PC's without separate graphics cards) where a portion
of the RAM is set aside for the video/graphics memory i.e. you might have 1
gig of RAM but it is using a little under 256 meg of RAM fr the
video/graphics memory, hence leaving 786meg for main system memory.

Only solution probably is to add more RAM eg extra 2 gig to total 3 gig;
Obviously the more memory the better performance the laptop will give.

You might also want to check things like your swap file size - generally I
think, it should be roughly double the size of the actual ram in the system
eg 1gig ram = 2 gig disk space for the swap file. Otherwise, leave windows
to handle the swap file.

Swap file ('virtual memory') is a portion of your disk space set aside so
the computer can swap out unused information in RAM and swap in new
information/applications/documents etc. rather than clogging RAM with stuff
that isn't being used, so it can make full use of the RAM available.
 
Are you running off the battery when you are seeing this?
If so, that is Intel SpeedStep. The cpu clock speed is reduced when running
from battery to extend battery life.
And yes, this is why your laptop runs slower when on battery power vs when
plugged in to AC power.

--
Larry Samuels Associate Expert
MS-MVP (2001-2005)
Unofficial FAQ for Windows Server 2003 at
http://pelos.us/SERVER.htm
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