Introduction
I’m sure most of you out there have heard of the nightmares that CPU manufacturers and system integrators face in regards to counterfeit CPU’s. By counterfeit I’m talking of CPU’s that are remarked to reflect a different speed or CPU model that the part wasn’t intended to be. Why would someone bother to do this? There is a simple reason. The company that remarks these CPU’s can collect more money for their remarked parts by selling them as higher speed parts. Most computer nuts are all in favor of multiplier-clocking CPUs. However, they would be extremely upset if they went and purchased a CPU with the idea of over-clocking it a bit when in fact the part is really a 300MHz CPU marked as being a 450MHz. Unfortunately, remarked CPU’s will probably always be a part of the computer industry. Although Intel can’t control the remarking of CPU’s, they have provided a clever CPU Frequency ID Utility that can provide the user with a report of what their CPU actually is.
My CPU has an ID?
Just as with most of us in the world, the CPU does indeed have an ID. Besides having product identifiers labeled on the outside of the CPU (which we can’t always trust do to remarking) the CPU also has precise instructions embedded into the processor that identifies the CPU. In the past these special instructions were only used by software to determine what type of CPU it was running on so the appropriate code would be executed for special instructions (e.g. MMX, SSE, 3DNow!). The CPUID feature of the utility identifies Intel processors by reading this precise instruction embedded in the processor. The utility translates this instruction, and uses it to display information about your processor. The ID built into the processor provides the information on the stepping and model of the processor. The processor frequency is determined by the CPU Frequency ID Utility, which runs a special algorithm (speed test) to determine at what internal speed the processor is running. Because of this, the utility is only able to determine the frequency and front side bus (FSB) of Pentium III processors.
What does this utility look like?
I ran the utility on a few processors to see how it worked. I chose an Intel Pentium III EB (Coppermine), Celeron and an AMD Athlon processor to show off its ability to determine the speed of the CPU. The utility is extremely easy to use. Basically, you just run the program accept the agreement, and it provides you with the details of the CPU. No input required. The utility provides two tabs of information. A frequency tab, which provides the reported frequency if a Pentium III family processor is installed and a CPUID Data tab that provides the processors classification and family.
With an Intel Pentium III EB 733MHz processor installed the utility reported back both the correct core speed (733MHz) and FSB (133MHz). You notice that in the utility notification area it announces the CPU and not being a production processor. This is actually true, because the parts we have in our lab are not clock-locked like the production CPU’s. If a production Pentium III part was installed in the system and the FSB was cranked up (or over-clocked) this screen would let the user know that the part is running out of spec.
The CPUID Data tab provides all the other details of the installed CPU. Including the processor name, stepping, cache sizes etc. The program is able to determine if the processor supports MMX or SIMD extensions. The utility can also resolve the frequency and processor classification of multiple CPU’s if installed and running under Windows NT.
Only Pentium III supported
As you can see here the Frequency Test will not support any other CPU’s besides the Pentium III family.
Again the CPUID Data tab shows all the details of the processors classifications.
For Intel CPU’s only!
Out of curiosity I wanted to see how the utility would react to a non-Intel based processor. Even though Intel states in the utility’s documents that it doesn’t support non-Intel processor I thought it would make for an interesting test. So I installed the program on an AMD Athlon based system.
Strike out! The utility wouldn’t go beyond this screen.
Conclusion
Although this utility isn’t very exciting it does provide the user with an easy method to determine if the processor is truly what it is marked to be. If you are planning to go out to your local store to purchase a new shinny Intel CPU, download and run this program at the store to make sure you are getting the product you expect or at least run the utility once you get home to make sure your processor isn’t carrying a fake ID. Now if only Intel would provide a nifty little over-clocking utility to allow us to adjust the core multipliers and core voltage! 🙂