Throttlewatch picks up special Intel CPU throttling

The firm said people will find it useful to pick up TM1 level throttling. That doesn't show itself as a decline in the speed of a microprocessor and so normally doesn't get picked up by your average tachometer, said Powerleap.

TM1, the firm said, reduces the temperature of CPUs by adding idle cycles to instruction pipelines, but keeps the clock running at full speed ahead. Really, what it does is to completely and unconditionally halt a CPU for half the time, and lets it run at full throttle for the other 50 per cent of the time. The intervals are short. Powerleap claims it can reduce benchmark results when the CPU temperature rises above what the heatsink/fan can handle.

The Pentium M, according to reliable information supplied to the INQ, uses the more subtle TM2 method. The CPU runs 100 per cent of the time, only slower than usual. You can get more information and download the utility from here. µ

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