I've got an older laptop that I use as a media center on my TV and I'm usually installing/reinstalling/uninstalling different OS' and Apps to get it to run as smoothly as possible.

One thing I noticed was very strange. My laptop is a HP Pavilion G62 which has a triple core AMD processor running at 1800mhz. When I launch XBMC from in Windows 7 and look at the processor speeds, it clearly says 1800mhz. However, when I launch it from Ubuntu either from the launcher or as a session, it says the processor is only 800mhz.

I wanted to investigate further so I loaded up DXDIAG in Windows to see what the speed was. Sure enough, it indicates that it's 1800mhz. However, when launching HardInfo in Ubuntu, it tells me that the speed of each core is as follows: 1500mhz, 1500mhz, and 800mhz.

Does this mean that both the advertised processor speed and the speed detected by Windows are lying or rounded off? Or is there a problem with Ubuntu detecting my processor speeds and my system isn't running as optimally as it should? I'd be inclined to say the latter... mainly because it appears that Windows runs far smoother than Ubuntu does.