Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility

Thanksgiving always signals the start of another rash of computer shows and fairs around where I live. They occur throughout the year but come Christmas they tend to pop up all over the place. This type of free-for-all computer shows provides not only a great opportunity to see what's new in computers, but also a nice way to pick up new items for a darn good price. The majority of the people you'll meet there selling merchandise are hardworking, honest, business people. However just like anywhere else in society there are always a few bad apples, those peple who'll be less than totally honest about the purchases you might make.

A perfect example of this is with CPU's. Any computer show worth its salt will have several vendors offering up Intel Pentium chips in a variety of flavors. What's to keep one of these dudes from selling you a 400mhz chip labeled as a 500mhz one? The markings on the chip can be changed relatively easily and even if you run some performance tests on the system, that doesn't prove all that much.

Other than dissecting the chip and analyzing every little circuit under a microscope, the best way to find out the true speed and type of CPU you have is to use a utility from Intel called the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility or CPUID for short. It's not really all that complex. You start the program and up pops a small screen that displays all relevant info about your chip. CPUID kicks out such info as the generation of Pentium the chip is, the product's brand designation (product name), its multimedia instructions, the Intel manufacturing designation, and the processor's cache size. If you've got a Pentium III chip it can even tell you if its been overclocked or not.