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Do notebooks run at full speed when on AC?

post #1 of 4
4/4/06 at 5:28pm
Thread Starter 
I'm interested in moving a bunch of my apps to a notebook to dedicate for those purposes, but I wanted to double check that the notebook isn't going to tune itself down by default unless an app calls for more power when on AC.
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post #2 of 4
4/4/06 at 5:43pm
The default Windows power management scheme should have it running at full speed when on AC power. Of course, if you install Notebook Hardware Control on the notebook, you can take manual control of power management and ensure that it is running at full speed at all times.
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post #3 of 4
4/4/06 at 5:45pm
The processor speed of a laptop can be controlled in software, so it can run at whatever speed it's told to.

In general, there are three settings:

Full speed all the time
Minimum speed all the time
Change processor speed based on demand

In practice, I use the third option all the time when plugged in. The processor scaling back to 800 MHz doesn't slow things down because, if it is, the driver will just increase the processor speed to 1600 or 2200 MHz (on my machine).

To answer your question, then: Yes, you can turn off frequency scaling so that your machine runs at full speed all the time, but that's not really needed; you don't lose performance by letting the machine pick its own clockspeed.

Disclaimer: All of my experience has been on AMD notebooks. It's possible that Intel's frequency scaling might not be as responsive, causing a small performance hit. That would surprise me, however, since it's a relatively easy thing to do.
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post #4 of 4
4/4/06 at 6:37pm
cpu-z shows realtime cpu speed
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