Why my Dell Precision M6600 becomes so slow ...

My office laptop has quad core processor, and used to run in a speedy performance.  Recently, however, I found that the machine becomes pretty darn slow.  After de-fragmented a few times, and the speed were improved at all.  So I started look into the issue.

I remembered that years ago I tried checking Windows Experience, and the value was around 5.9, with processor having 7.0 score.  So it surprised me to find out that when I tried the assessment a while ago, I got the total score 3.7, which process having 3.7 score!  I was totally puzzled.

I did the similar checking on my Core 2 Duo based MacMini 2009, and I found that the score was 5.2, with 5.9 being the processor score (Primary hard disk was 5.2, which is the reason why the total score being 5.2.

So something obvious slowing the processor performance down!  Eventually I found out this post.  I followed the instruction, turned off Intel SpeedStep on the BIOS.  And with that, I got the Windows Experience go back to 5.9, with Processor Score as 7.4, and Primary hard disk score as 5.9 (the lowest, and thus became the final score).  Problem solved.

I will get the real world performance when I use the system tomorrow, but just roughly using the system, and I  already sense that the system ran faster.  WTF with that damn SpeedStep thing.