Dell Inspiron and Intel speedstep...wtf???

[pvanosta]

I have a Dell Inspiron 8000 with the Intel P3-900 speedstep cpu.
It was my understanding that, when the cpu was under stress, it would run at 900 MHz, while it would slow down to 700 MHz when idling.
The BIOS indicates this by showing a cpu speed as 700-900
There is also a setting in the BIOS to disable the feature (both under battery and AC power), and thus make the cpu run at 900 MHz all the time.
I recently installed WinXP final and the latest 21.81 drivers from NVidia, so I wanted to do some becnhmarking. No matter what I throw at the cpu, it will not run faster than 700 MHz.

What the hell happened?

[Monaco]

Well THAT's not good!:)

XP is so new I don't think you can buy it on laptops yet- I would look to Intel or Microsoft to release a patch of some sort to fix it.

Laptops are so proprietary they are completely different from home PCs, I doubt there is a "magic fix" to help you.

Does that BIOS switch have any affect on the problem?

[TC]

My understanding of speed step is that while on battery power it will slow down, or while on ac it could possibly slow down if it begins to overheat. I found out with my Dell that if I unplug it, it will slow down and it will not speed up again unless I shut it off completely and perform a cold boot with the ac plugged in - then it goes back up to full speed. Not sure if that's a bug or not, but that's how mine behaves.