it's possible i'm just not measuring the speed correctly, but i don't know of any other real-time monitoring tools.

the system is a compaq armada e500 laptop. the bios lists a pentium 3 850mhz (family 6, model 8, stepping 6) under system information. intel speedstep is enabled without any option to disable.

the system is dual-booted with win98se and xp sp2 (dos 7.1 accessible from windows boot menu). i'm using cpu-z vintage edition to monitor the multiplier and speed.

under xp the intel speedstep is very evident as the readings can fluctuate; however, when i use a utility named cpugrab.exe to consume 95% of the cpu cycles, cpu-z registers the p3 is pegged to 850mhz (8.5 x 100fsb).

under win98 the exact same cpu-z vintage edition always registers the cpu at 700mhz (7 x 100fsb) no matter what. i can also run the exact same cpugrab.exe, but it makes no difference.

additionally, set multiplier (setmul.exe) under pure dos specifically reports 7 x 100fsb (700mhz), but i don't know how authoritative this is. changing the multiplier on the p3 is not supported, but the tool can still successfully enable/disable the cpu cache.

so what gives? i only have colloquial evidence, but the system does seem a bit slower under win98se than it should be.