General tip for pre-built computer owners

[KnightRid]

Wlel I have ran into thison Compaq and HP, and I imagine more of them do it. They set the power scheme to lower your processor speed in order to save power. I really dont understand this one, but the HP I worked on was HALF the speed it should have been, and even my laptop was running 1/4 less than it should.

Fix - right click on your desktop and go to properties, then screen saver, then at the bottom click on POWER - change it to ALWAYS ON - then set your settings below. Problem solved.

to check your speed right now - right click on your MY COMPUTER desktop item and left click properties ( or go to control panel and click system ) at the lower right side it will say COMPUTER - then you stats and show you your cpu speed. This is the actual speed, not the AMD rated ( mine is 2.09ghz for a 3000+ Barton cpu )

Mike

Figured most people on here build there own, but just by chance if I can help 1 person with this I will be happy

[Dragon_Cooler]

My IBM thinkpad has kind of the same feature where if its running on battery it will throttle the cpu power down. Of course with the ibm software you can throttle it back up, or just plug it into the wall.

[NAiLs]

That's intentional for power savings. Windows will automatically clock the CPU faster when demand is there, but otherwise it'll stay downclocked. My laptop runs at 1GHz instead of 2.0GHz if I put it on the Portable Power Scheme. I leave it on on the Home always because it's almost always plugged into the wall.