Hi
Run cpufreq-info and you can change it if you want, I’m guessing it’s
set to ondemand which is normal. Run something like prime95 or boinc
and you will see them all come up to speed.
This is probably not a defective chip. The AMD Phenom II X4 has a dynamic power savings feature. The clock speed dynamically adjusts according to computing demand. Given that power consumption increases at the square of frequency, slightly lowering CPU speeds can achieve an enormous savings in power.
To test if the chip is working correctly, try opening a number of computationally demanding programs (as was suggested by malcom). If the clock speeds don’t increase correspondingly, you might have a defect. You could also attempt over-clocking using you motherboard’s BIOS. Be careful, over-clocking can destroy your CPU and MB.
Thanks for this reply. I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to attempt over-clocking, so no worries about breaking anything! rotfl!
Are there any programs within SuSE that I can use to test the processor? I could hunt for bionc or prime95 and then try to figure out how to use them. But if there is something within SuSE that will similarly put the processor through its paces, that would be simpler for sure.
It’s not a defect, it’s a feature. Dual cores have it too. Sometimes I have one core running at another freq than the other. Yast’s hwinfo shows it like that. Another time they run at the same freq, hwinfo shows that.
