How Do You Found Out Your Processor Speed?

[MrPresident]

My friend is selling their extremely old computer and asked me how she could find out the specs for it. I'm not entirely sure why she asked me because I know little to nothing about computers. Anyway I spend a few minutes playing about on her computer (as well as looking for embarassing files) but I couldn't work out a way to find the processor speed. Can anyone help me?

 

[Rheinmetall]

Method 1. Open the case and see if you can remove the heatsink/fan to find out processor speed. If it's old P75-166 open the latch of the processor socket and look under the processor. it may be written there.

Method 2. If you have the motherboard's manual you can check the processor speed from the way the processor speed jumpers are configured.

Method 3. Go into the BIOS by pressing "del", "ins", "F2" or "F1" during boot sequence. Try to find something saying CPU or Processor. If it's old enough machine it won't be here.

Method 4. I don't remember for older windows versions but at least in 2000/XP right clicking "My computer" and "properties" shows processor type. This information will be inaccurate it the processor is overclocked.

Method 5. Get a program that can identify your processor. WCPUID is a good tool.

 

[FireBall]

Woah... Those are all more difficult than they need to be...

If your friend is running Windows, I believe it works in any windows, go to the Start Menu, Press Run, and type in dxdiag, press enter.

Wait, and it'll pop up a window with all your system information.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Method 4. sounds more basic to me.

 

[Goober]

Ohh, I just found out that I have an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ taht actually runs at 1.47 . . . and I have 768 Ram . . . nice, nice . . . thanks for that, I had forgotten how to do that . . . used Method 4 btw . . .

 

[ainwood]

Ohh, I just found out that I have an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ taht actually runs at 1.47 . . . and I have 768 Ram . . . nice, nice . . . thanks for that, I had forgotten how to do that . . . used Method 4 btw . . .

Athlon numbers are an attempt to indicate the computer power compared to a pentium (they used a shorter instruction set, so process more commands per CPU cycle). Eg. my AthlonXP 2000+ runs at 1667 MHz, but is apparently as fast as a pentium III 2GHz.

 

[DreadCthulhu]

Minor nitpick - the AthlonXP 2000+(which I also have, though I got it overclocked to 1.875ghz) is as about as fast as a Pentium 4, not Pentium 3, at 2ghz. The Pentium 3's never got that fast; they are also faster than the Pentium 4's clock per clock - i.e. the last Pentium 3's at 1.4 ghz are actually quite a bit faster than a 1.4 or 1.6 ghz Pentium 4.

And to further nitpick, AMD claims that the PR numbers are based on how fast an older Athlon Thunderbird core processor would perform when clocked that high, not how fast a Pentium 4 at that clock speed.

 

[Comraddict]

http://www.cpuid.com

 

[MrPresident]

Thanks a lot for all the help. By the way my friend used FireBall's method.