MacBook idling at 1.5GHz?

[Nikhil72]

Hey everyone. I've had my blackbook for 1 week now and am absolutely loving everything about it. Everything on the computer is more or less set up now; the only thing I'm noticing is that in the last day, my battery life estimates have diminished a bit. Whereas before I was getting a reading of 4 hours while just web surfing over WiFi with the screen at about 50% brightness, my power meter now says 3 hours. I noticed that when noting things with CoreDuoTemp, whereas before my laptop would idle at 1.0GHz to 1.33GHz on Better Battery Life, it is now idling at 1.5GHz and occasionally running up to 1.67, 1.83, and once 2.0GHz. A restart didn't kick the clock speed down. Yesterday afternoon I installed 2GB of RAM from OWC and some software, but the running processes in activity monitor don't indicate that anything is using processing power; while typing this post, the highest I've seen out of processor useage is 5.2%. I don't have any processes running that are kicking the processing speed up either.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Mackilroy]

My white MacBook normally runs at about 1.5 GHz – that's when I'm running maybe 5 or 6 programs at once – and if I have just one open then it usually steps down to 1.33 GHz.

Hmm. As for your problem, that's rather odd. You just have Safari open? No other programs?

 

[WillMak]

same here my processor always idles at 1.5 even on better battery life.

 

[Nikhil72]

hey again. Yup, I just had Safari open at that time. Right now I have music playing in iTunes and one Safari window open. In the background, the only major things I can think of are Synergy and GMail notifier. With all of this running, the processor is only running between 3 and 9%.

The only reason I'm a bit perplexed is because I could have sworn I saw the processor hit the minimum of 1.0GHz. Maybe the power management does that on battery when the levels are at a certain level.

It actually just went down to 1.33 for about 5 seconds before kicking back up to 1.5.

 

[chairguru22]

mine usually runs at 1.5GHz

 

[Makosuke]

I've never seen my MPB idle at under 1.5GHz, and it's almost always at 1.67GHz even if I'm not doing anything. I rather wish it would idle lower (or I could even just pin it down there to save battery when I really didn't need the extra grunt), but it hasn't since the day it shipped. I'm hoping for finer control with 10.5.

 

[Nikhil72]

hmm. I guess I was imagining things then! Thanks.

I'll chime in and say that I beyond love my MacBook! I had a 1.67GHz PowerBook (the second to last revision of the line) and that pales in comparison in every aspect...the only thing I miss is the lighted keyboard but I sort of recognize it as a gimmick now that I realize that I don't even look at the keyboard without typing.

Anyways, thanks again.

-Nikhil

 

[sims]

Mine runs at 1.5GHz with nothing open, only ever seen it go down to 1.33GHz twice.