my system is "underclocked"...why?

[garyellis]

I tried a new program to give me a status of my system.. One of the things it identified was something it called "possible underclocking"...I don't really understand the message, but essentially it is telling me that the voltage setting is low, thus my processor is running lower than it can run. I have an old processor... Athlon 3200+ ...... The status program says the processor is running at 2.1 Mhz and could be running above 3 Mhz...

Anyway...Any idea what I can do about this...The program mentioned something about Vcore. I have an MSI mobo and the documentation says something about a program called "digicell" for changing voltage settings. I've never used it.

Thanks for any help..

Gary

[steven017]

Here's a thought:

Check your bios to see if you have AMD Cool n Quiet enabled. That would "underclock" your system depending on the system load. If it is enabled, then this is not a problem, as your system will automatically adjust as the system load increases.

If you don't want to use it, you can disable it.

[troycheek]

Is the Athlon 3200+ actually a 3200 MHz (3.2GHz) CPU or is the "performance rating" what's really 3200? AMD likes to advertise their CPUs not by actual MHz but rather by how fast a less efficient Intel CPU would have to be to match the performance. In other words, AMD is saying that their 2100 MHz chip performs as well as a 3200 MHz Intel.

Edit: My AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ is (according to CPU-Z) actually two 2100 MHz cores.

[gplasky]

As with the earlier versions of the Athlon, the number in the name doesn't refer to the processor's clock speed (the XP 3200+ clock speed is 2.2 GHz). "3200+" refers to AMD's estimates of the amount of work the CPU can do compared to a Pentium 4.

Gerry

[stanger89]

The 3200+ would be about a 2.2GHz chip, my 3400+ is 2.4GHz.

[camus]

My 3000+ is 1.8 GHz.




Just thought I would chime in too.