Processor Throttling In Windows XP

TomSlick writes "Michael Chu, a former Intel employee, has written up a fairly interesting and readable summary of Windows XP power schemes as they relate to Intel processor throttling. An old topic, but one still relevant as many business notebooks still use XP."

Re:Nice

[xtracto]

Yeah, I have known about this stepping options back when I used WinXP in my laptop, the program CPUZ shows quite interesting information and the current running frequency is one of them. What I did not know is how to manually change this profiles... [un]fortunately I am now running Ubuntu and I guess there is no easy way (not requiring a kernel patch or some magical .conf file mangling) way to set my computer to a low speed as in Windows.

Re:Doncha hate "Misread" headlines?

[Anonymous Coward]

for a second there I thought you had something interesting to say

Re:Many?

[yvajj]

From you post, I gather that you have not run Vista. I am running it comfortably on my laptop (~1GB ram with AMD cpu) and my desktop (AMD X2 3800) with nary a problem.

The only stuff I turned off is the animated windows and window transparency (which I hate in general). Desktop composition and other "eye-candy" is still on (I actually find desktop composition to be useful, since I can mouse over stuff on my taskbar thats hidden by other windows and view whats going on in a realtime thumbnail window).

This is undoubtedly blasphemy on this Linux-centric site, but I actually like Vista, and find the little nuances a welcome change from XP.

Re:Many?

[DAldredge]

My main windows box is a dual core Pentium @ 1.6 Mhz running on an Intel DG33TL motherboard, 2 GB Crucial ram, 300 GB SATA drive and Windows Ultimate. It isn't sluggish, in fact it runs rather quickly, nothing like a PII-300. Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

Re:Quick summary for the RTFA impaired...

[LLuthor]

So buy an electric radiator or two. They are cheap. No need to reduce the lifespan of your CPU and/or mobo just for heat.

Re:Many?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

Yep. Having 2 fucking gigabytes of ram and bragging about vista performance is wrong. It's a machine ideal for hosting a 50 GB Oracle database, not a home PC. If you think Vista will run quickly on a home pc (as in "a computer suitable for any other desktop OS"), try it on a single-core computer with 512 MB of RAM.

Re:Many?

[Anonymous Coward]

Acer Aspire 5100 (AMD Turion 2.0Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 200M Integrated Graphics) that was 400$ runs Vista Ultimate just as well as XP. Some things are even faster. Firefox, Thunderbird, WMP11, VLC, Skype, and Pidgin (the programs I use most often) all load faster (near instantly) than they did in XP. The search indexing works great, although that's available for XP for free from MS. The driver hell people always drag out is completely non-existent for me. I plug in a device and it works in a few seconds automatically, a little longer if it needs to download the drivers. I even like the new interface.

Sounds like you've never even used Vista for yourself.

Re:Many?

[bigstrat2003]

instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably

That is absolute bullshit. I can't speak for RAM, since I have 2 GB for gaming purposes, but I was running Vista on a single-core Athlon 3200 with NO problems whatsoever. Everything performed like a charm. A dual-core CPU isn't anything close to required.

Re:Many?

[sqrt(2)]

If your machine is relatively new, it may even run faster than XP would because Vista is better at using your RAM to cache programs. Every animation and effect can be disabled until you're back to what looks like XP. Most of the new stuff they added to the GUI is pleasing and useful though, the only thing I turn off is the transparency.

Re:Most business notebooks use Windows XP

[dal20402]

Even if it pushes back the dates, MS WILL eventually stop supporting XP, as they have all previous Windows variants. Businesses will have no choice but to upgrade at that point, as they already have from 98SE, NT4, and (mostly) 2k.

Vista really won't be that painful an upgrade once 1) much more is understood about application compatibility and 2) even bargain-basement office-bot PCs ship with 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor. (No need for fancy graphics if you turn off Aero.) Two years from now, no one will remember all of this Sturm und Drang. We had exactly the same things happen when XP replaced 2k.

Re:Many?

[esecasco]

It wasn't that bad...but it got on my f'n nerves. I couldn't use a bluetooth headset with it, and it refused to automatically install SD card drivers or joystick drivers. So I got XP OEM, and it detected my joystick in 2 seconds and was up and running, next on my list is the bluetooth(when I have time). Vista will go back on my laptop when it hits SP2 and I see that the difference in 3Dmark is less than 100 points(not to mention 20FPS difference in CS:Source)

not just businesses

[Devistater]

Its not just business laptops that are using XP. The vast majority of people still use XP. Heck, even amongst average gamers (where you'd expect ppl to upgrade to vista for DX10 games), less than 2.5% have vista and a dx10 capable card.