Dell Dimension 2400 Underclocking

[Krazykaveman]

My parents have a Dell Dimension 2400 that was running with a 2.4GHZ Celeron 128KB L2 Cache, painfully slow. So I ended up with a spare Pentium 4 2.4GHZ Northwood Proc, it runs at 533MHZ FSB. I put it in the Dell and it runs ok, But a quick look at CPU-Z shows that it is only running at 1.2GHZ with 400MHZ external clock. I posted on the dell forums but they weren't any help. The Bios is locked up for any settings for the CPU except to disable Hyperthreading or make it run even slower in "Compatibility Mode".

This should give you the picture:

Code Name Northwood
Specification Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Package Socket 478 mPGA
Family/Model/Stepping F.2.9
Extended Family/Model F.2
Brand ID 9
Core Stepping D1
Technology 0.13 um
Core Speed 1196.2 MHz
Multiplier x Bus speed 12.0 x 99.7 MHz
Rated Bus speed 398.7 MHz
Stock frequency 2400 MHz

Now what can I do to remedy this problem? Anybody have any idea? In the documentation for this computer this processor falls well within the supported category. Perhaps there are some jumpers that need to be moved around but I'll see what your advice is first.

Thanks

 

[dhc014]

"Intel Pentium 4 Processors that are enabled with Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology allow the operating system to adjust the processor clock down when running applications that require less power. Increased power efficiency brings savings." - Source

The multiplier is lowered from 18x to 12x when your system is idle to save energy. Start up a DVD movie, or some other application which will keep the CPU busy and restart CPU-Z to see if it shows the correct speed.

If your P4 doesn't have SpeedStep, then for some reason BIOS is incorrectly setting the multiplier. If you can't change the multiplier yourself, then try resetting everything to defaults.