mobile i5 clock speed monitoring

[wolf]

I recently purchased a HP Pavilion DV6-3030TX, specs as follows;

Core i5 540M
2x2gb DDR3 1066mhz
ATi M5650

when I set the power plan to high performance in windows, the chip seems to permanently clock itself beyond the sticker speed if the thermal headroom is availiable (also researched this)

sticker speed is 2.53ghz, max turbo clock for both cores loaded is 2.93ghz and single core loaded is 3.06ghz, and from looking at CPU-Z a hec-of-a-lot I've never seen it drop below 2.80ghz.. but the weird thing is my gadgets and various other palces in windows allways report the sticker speed even when CPU-Z shows higher;

however when the clock speed drops the gadgets etc reflect the actual speed;

essentially I'm wondering where CPU-Z pulls the clock speed from, is it 100% reliable when it shows 2.80-3.06ghz? or is the rest of windows right in saying the speed is only 2.53ghz

not the most interesting question I know, it's more that I'm curious to know if this chip is indeed pretty much permanently clocking itself considerably faster than the sticker speed, cos if so thats pretty awesome, given the thermal headroom does seem to always be there even with both cores full loaded... also what is max temp on a mobile i5?

cheers TPU

 

[sneekypeet]

here is what I see.

In CPUz it is showing turbo in the first image. The second image is showing speed step. Both images show Everest reading its stock clocks with no variation.

 

[wolf]

here is what I see.

In CPUz it is showing turbo in the first image. The second image is showing speed step. Both images show Everest reading its stock clocks with no variation.

yeah depending on what I look at sometimes its always stock, sometimes it follows speedstep, sometimes it follows turbo mode.... I'd like to assume CPU-Z is always showing the ACTUAL speed, just want some confirmation on that, and maybe a reason why these other gadgets and apps dont know the 'actual' speed.

 

[sneekypeet]

CPUz is the reliable one between it and everest.