Sempron 3600+ CPU clocking to 1000MHZ?

[ghramsey]

I installed Mint 15 Xfce 32-bit on this computer and I'm having a large performance issue.
It's slower than I think it should be and unless I'm wrong the CPU is clocked at 1000Mhz vs the 2000Mhz it should be running at
.
At first I thought it was the video driver. I swapped from the nouveau to Nvidia since the Mint logo spash screen was drawing verrry slooowly. About 30 seconds to fully draw it. Using the nvidia driver didn't do very much, but make the screen a little sharper. I need the speed though not the sharpe screen it seems.

Here is the output from typing inxi -Fx in a terminal. I bolded the portion where it says it's clocked at 10000Mhz. The board is from a compaq system I found in my neighbors' trash and popped in a sempron I had laying around It has no setings in neither the bios nor jumpers to set the speed, so the issue must lie with Mint. So how do I set the system clock to it's proper speed?

Also, how do I interpret the Memory amount on the last line? "Memory 357.9/1381.7MB" Is that the amout used and available.
If it's read how I read it I'm runnig out of RAM which might also cause me performance problems too.
I only have 1.5GB of RAM. I can't seem to find a second 1G DDR2 667Mhz stick that's not super expensive anymore.

System: Host: linux-BT472AA-ABA-CQ5625F Kernel: 3.8.0-25-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.7.3)
Desktop: Xfce 4.10.2 (Gtk 2.24.16) Distro: Linux Mint 15 Olivia
Machine: System: Compaq-Presario product: BT472AA-ABA CQ5625F
Mobo: PEGATRON model: NARRA5 version: 5.00 Bios: Phoenix version: 5.59 date: 05/20/2010
CPU: Single core AMD Sempron 3600+ (-UP-) cache: 256 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3) bmips: 2009.11 clocked at 1000.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] bus-ID: 00:0d.0
X.Org: 1.13.3 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x1024@75.0hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce 6150SE nForce 430/integrated/SSE2/3DNOW! GLX Version: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 304.88 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card: NVIDIA MCP61 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:05.0 Sound: ALSA ver: k3.8.0-25-generic
Network: Card-1: NVIDIA MCP61 Ethernet driver: forcedeth port: fc00 bus-ID: 00:07.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: 70:71:bc:70:0a:0e
Card-2: Ralink RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter usb-ID: 148f:3070
IF: N/A state: N/A mac: N/A
Drives: HDD Total Size: 80.0GB (5.0% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD800JD size: 80.0GB
Partition: ID: / size: 70G used: 3.8G (6%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 4.29GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
RAID: No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 0.0:
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 148 Uptime: 15 min Memory: 357.9/1381.7MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.7.3 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4
linux@linux-BT472AA-ABA-CQ5625F ~ $

[uzername]

Are you sure that's not just the powersaving feature? What does cpufreq-info show, if anything?

[ghramsey]

Are you sure that's not just the powersaving feature? What does cpufreq-info show, if anything?

No. I'm not sure.
I'm still learning to use Linux so tell me how to do that please.

Also, I'm not convinced it's not the CPU frequency causing the slow issues. I have gone to a live CD of Mint 14 32-bit Nadia with Xfce for testing. It is fast as anything compared to Mint 15 and it too has the CPU frequency listed as 1000Mhz so that's not the source of the slowdown. Under Mint 15 I'm also having freezes and graphics corruptions. The screen just suddently becomes diagonal lines like an old CRT with horz hold issues.

When I got this board it was missing the northbridge heatsink which I replaced w/ an all copper replacement. I didn't put on the fan since the heatsink was originally passive and this one is all copper I didn't know if I needed it. I installed the fan to see if the corruption was from the chip getting hot. No dice. And since I'm running Mint 14 live cd. It's been stable now for the last 29 minutes without an issue it must be something in Mint 15 at fault.

I'm going to make a thread with regards to these Mint 15 problems.

[MtnDewManiac]

Here is the output from typing inxi -Fx in a terminal.

clocked at 1000.00 MHz

IIRC, that's current-state, not capability. It "sounds" like your issues are either graphics-driver (got correct one installed and configured properly?) or hardware related.

Regards,
MDM

[ghramsey]

Here is the output from typing inxi -Fx in a terminal.

clocked at 1000.00 MHz

IIRC, that's current-state, not capability. It "sounds" like your issues are either graphics-driver (got correct one installed and configured properly?) or hardware related.

Regards,
MDM

I've concluded it is some hardware conflict with Mint 15. Along with this clocked at 1000mhz issue, Mint 15 has severe instability on this hardware including lock ups and graphics corruption. See my thread titled "Mint 15 hangs" please. I described the problem there but have had few responders.
BTW, I did change the graphics driver to the Nvidia, but it was worse slow and I am not experienced enough w/Linux to fix what it broke so I wiped it and put in Mint 15 again with much the same problems. I then tried Mint 14.

I put in Mint 14 32-bit with XFce and it works without these issues. It too shows clocked at 1000mhz initially,but isn't so slow as Mint 15 under the same settings.
So whatever changed between the two Mint 14 Xfce and Mint Xfce makes the difference. And when I use the frequency adjust tool it shows clocked at 2000mhz and is noticeably faster. I've also tried Puppy Linux with the newest version and it is rock stable. I'm wondering if I have a bad RAM stick.
Puppy is very light weight on memory usage so it might not be telling the tale.