[battousaidragon]

I have recently seen some sofware and cannot remember the name of it. It was only for use with Windows XP and was designed to slow down the CPUs processing speed. I.E. If you are normally running 2.0 GHZ, then you can actually slow your speed to 1.0 GHZ or whatever you wish. Does anyone out there know of this program? Thanks, everybody. B-)

[mphenterprises]

Hi Battousaidragon and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




I have moved this Discussion from the Windows Community into the Other Software & Services Community.

Now, I have no idea to what application you refer but I have a question for you. Why on Earth would you want to slow down the processor speed? That really does not make any sense to me. Is your computer overheating and you feel the only way to resolve this issue is to slow down the processor?

[battousaidragon]

I was looking into this for someone else. I have no intention of slowing anything of mine down. I make sure that my laptop doesn't overheat.........chill pad. ;) I just saw the said program on one of my searches and someone asked me about it, and I just went blank on it. They think that they might have some use for it.

[mphenterprises]

Okay, well unfortunately I am no help with this one. Maybe one of the other members can be of more assistance.

[battousaidragon]

That's okay. Thank you for your time and effort, though.

[matchbox2022]

There is PLENTY of software out there for that. However it depends on how new your processor is because the ones I use ironically won't work with newer cpus for a while (someone has stopped developing it :( .

Anyways, from a dosprompt, you can download something called slowdown. It's a very simple program that modulates your clock speed to a percentage you want, but it only works (well) with single core cpus.

The other and frankly better way is to download RM Clock Utility.


It is a small program created and maintained by a russian hacker ironically enough :P His name is Dmitri :P However he has since retired, so there is very buggy support for any extreme core intel cpus, and anything later is NOT supported yet. Anything from Core 2 Duo back and there is full and complete control.
From there, you can install the software and you can set it to take control of the cpu clock, and you can do anything with this program, from changing voltages and speeds to make it as slow and using as little power as you want :) I have a 3.2ghz cpu that I can overclock to 3.4, or downclock to 166mhz, and with my voltage at 0.95Volts for the cpu core, I can make battery power last 4 hours usually, as opposed to a little under two hours :D
Hope that helps :)
Btw, both work with XP, and are both kinda buggy in vista (doesn't do what I tell it to always) And also, don't randomly change the voltage too low if you decide to do that, otherwise the computer won't be able to maintain clock frequency, and will scream and die....jk...it will just reboot randomly on you.:P

http://cpu.rightmark...ownload/rmclock235bin.exe

[mphenterprises]

Hi Matchbox. Thanks for stepping in. I have never heard of an application that slows down the processor speed. I know there are things one can do to speed up the processor (overclock) but I did not know there was a process to do the reverse. Can you give an application of why slowing down the processor would be useful?

[matchbox2022]

In four cases really.

If your laptop is overheating, the processor naturally does something called throttling where it gives the cpu empty clock cycles to process, effectively like me handing you work to do while you're doing it fast, and if it's too fast, I'd give you a piece of paper that all you have to do is sign instead of do a page of calculus :P. Leads to by putting in empty cycles, you're effectively reducing current needed to the cpu, and therefore according to P=IV, I = current, the cpu cools down (P is power in watts, but it effectively becomes temperature, wattage consumed varies directly to temperature).

Second Case, you want to have a more energy efficient computer, or make your laptop run on batteries for longer.
Now, cpu frequencies in order to stay stable, need to be met with a certain voltage differential. The lower the cpu, the lower voltage required, and the higher the cpu, the higher voltage required to keep it stable (if not more so since the added heat involved makes resistance increase and therefore even more voltage is needed to essentially punch through that resistance and maintain clock speed, otherwise the system will hang. It's why cooling is soooo important for overclocking :P )

Now, if we want to increase battery life and time, and we don't need to be browsing the web at 2000 billion ghz :P, then we can reduce the clock speed to one that is nessicary for preformance, and also if we reduce the voltage to a new voltage that just meets this new frequency (let's say.....1ghz) then we effectively reduce the temperature of the system, AND we reduce power consumption resulting in more battery time, less temperature, and a cooler system, extending it's overall lifetime :)... to a point, you need to keep the voltage stable, otherwise not so. This is based on P=IV AND V=IR, which can be changed into P=(I^2) R. Resistance decreases due to decreased temperature from the lower voltage (from the new lower frequency being maintained.) due to P=IV, voltage goes down and so does power turned into temperature.

Since resistance decreases, we can decrease the voltage even further because we don't need to overcome resistance anymore! So now we're running even COOLER! And due to P=IV, you can see that we'll not only run cooler and safer, but the amount of power we draw is SIGNIFICANTLY less then before. (As you can see, the reactions to voltage are dramatic in both underclocking and overclocking, more bad in overclocking, but hey you want a faster computer then :P )


An example is....like right now. I'm Running my cpu while typing this at...2.866Ghz, at a voltage of 1.2615 Volts (which is called Vcore typically), and my cpu has a temperature of 52.6 C, while drawing about 33 Watts. That's pretty hot, and a lot of power.

Now I'm going to run cleaner and I want good battery life. I'm now downclocking.
I'm at 1Ghz, at the lowest voltage my motherboard will allow, 0.95 Volts, I'm drawing just under 25Watts for my cpu (not my whole system :P the video card uses 35Watts alone doing nothing :P) and my temperature is now 37.2C!! Without fans on, that's huge!

Every .0125Volts or so you drop gets you about 1 degree C cooler, and with what I have just done, my battery would run for 8W*Hrs longer, or about 30% longer for me then it usually would. The difference between two hours and two and forty extra minutes. That's a fair bit, plus I'm paying less money for electricity for my computer now that it doesn't need all that wasted energy to do stuff.
Of course, I put it back up to 2.866Ghz to play games again, since at this voltage, it would never be able to keep my frequency stable (much less run, it would probably simply reboot the computer if I turned up the frequency without doing likewise for the voltage.....always do voltage first when going up, and frequency first when going down, fyi :P)

So It is worthwhile :)

Third Case, you have a game that can't run properly on anything above 1ghz because of programming issues (the game is made to be locked with the clockrate, like older dos games, so it plays UNBELIEVABLY quickly...too quickly, so you need to put your frequency down in order to play it worth a damn. (Dos emulators tend to take care of this).

And fourth. If my lap is getting too hot. :P

Hope that helps! :)
-me.

[mphenterprises]

Wow, much appreciated. I figured that the reason would would mainly be for performance issues. Thanks for that info.

[matchbox2022]

Oh and to clear up some formula stuff...

P=IV
P is the power your cpu is drawing in Watts, which is converter into heat which needs to be dissipated and stabilized for a computer to function.
I is the current the cpu draws, it depends on how hard it's working. If it's working really hard this value might be 20, and not hard at all, 2. This value can't be changed unless you just leave your computer sitting there doing nothing. Intel has ways of adjusting it in so called sleep states.

V is the voltage in the cpu, responsible for maintaining clock frequency, unless there's too much and it's being wasted. Since when you're computer is doing nothing, the amperage it draws can't go any lower, the only way to decrease temperature and power consumption is by adjusting this....to a point. If it's too low it won't meet the cpu frequency set and the computer will crash. If too high, you'll be fine, but the temperature and power draw will be higher than they 'could' be :P. For reasons of temperatures, finding the lowest voltage needed for a frequency is critical for overclockers, and for reasons for power, well if you want good battery life, finding the lowest voltage for your 'new slower' frequency will dramatically help.





P=(I^2)R

since V=IR and P=IV, we can sub in IR for V and get the above formula. It's important only for heat really.

P is power draw again.

I is the current, now squared.

R is the resistance of the cpu. As Temperature increases the resistance ALSO increases, which since you're at one set voltage, and according to V=IR, the needed voltage will no longer be met, resulting in a crash, which is why you need sometimes extra voltage for overclocking to punch through the resistance (or you need better cooling so it never happens :P)

It's opposite for underclocking, which is good! Because less resistance caused by a lower temperature means you can decrease the temperature a little more since there's almost no resistance to punch through, and all that needs to be maintained is the lower frequency. (It's good to do some stuff with your computer while doing this though, since you need to make sure the voltage is still high enough so that when Current draw increases, due to P=IV, that it isn't enough to cause resistance to come back and crash your computer. So you typically find the lowest voltage you can use for that lowest frequency and raise it about 0.01Volts, as is the typical thing to do. It also provides the best balance between power savings and stability when doing anything at any current draw.)

I hope that all makes sense :P.


If you want something REALLY confusing, you should see the formula I made for my CPU itself, it involves detailed stuff for both cores and temperature calibrations. Hell why not.

This formula tells me for only MY computer (it won't be the same for other computers) how much voltage I REQUIRE barely to make the cpu function at any frequency.


Vmin = http:// Freq (Ghz) x... -0.3293298785) http:// (Temperature...r)) ) x 0.0125V 0.03V +/- 0.0125V

It works too! If anyone has a dell inspiron E1705, or an XPS M1710 with a T7 series processor, core 2 duo, merom, this formula should work! :)

Have a great day ;P.