Intel Mac Clock Speed

[ironic23]

Reading from the manual, if you select better power savings, the CPU supposedly runs at a lower frequency and if you put it to better performance, it will run at a higher frequency. Is there a way to check what the frequency is in Mac OS X? or some third party software? thanks.

 

[Makosuke]

CoreDuoTemp 2.app is a little bit of freeware that also tells you the clockspeed the Core chip is running at. In my case (MPB 17") it seems to idle at 1650MHz with occasional very brief dips down to 1500 regardless of what the settings are, then spikes up to the full 2.16GHz when it's under heavy load. It never seems to get down to the 1.0GHz minimum it's capable of--I assume this will be added either in a later 10.4 update, in 10.5, or perhaps by a firmware update. It would be nice to crank the chip all the way down when running off battery (or just to reduce heat production).

No idea how other Core Duo macs behave; may be different in different cases. Being that they're so new, we're still not even really at OS parity yet (there are no .4.x updates since I got it yet), and I haven't seen a firmware adjustment yet, so things haven't "evened out" quite yet.