I just got a Quad core

[kacation_man]

the Q6600. From what I've come to understand the defaut stock speeds should look like this :

But mine looks like this :

Some times it jumpes to what should be "normal" for a second then goes back down.

Windows still reads it at 2.4Ghz, but CPU-z is way down, whats the real issue here?

 

[Kyorisu]

Look in your bios you must have some overclocking feature enabled i.e AI NOS or similar. Basically when your comp is idle the CPU clocks down to save power and reduce heat. When there is a demand for processing power it'll ramp back up to or above 2.4ghz

 

[MrFish]

It's perfectly normal. It's called "Speed Step" and involves the processor lowering it's "multiplier" which in turn lowers the clock speed as someone has mentioned before, when it's idling. - see bottom left of your screenshots where it says "x6".

If you want to check that your processor is speed stepping properly, put it under load with something like Cinebench, Prime95 or some processor heavy app like photoshop doing some rendering and you should see your 6 become a 9 and the clock speed raise.

 

[-Psy-]

This is normal. I remember running CPU-Z with my laptop and it kept saying that my CPU speed was 1.8ghz instead of 2.4ghz.

It's a feature to save power.

 

[[Matt]]

You can turn off speedstep in your bios if you dont like it.

 

[Sedako]

Yup, Speedstep is the culprit. It's knocking your multiplier down compensate for power usage. For example, in the picture of the stock speed:

266.7 fsb x 9 multiplier = 2400.4

And for yours:

266.7 fsb x 6 multiplier = 1600.2

As you can see, it's simply a lower multiplier that's giving you the discrepancy.