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Alright, so I did some digging into my spiffy new HP zv5320us laptop, and found that the AXP-M chip in it runs at a maximum of 1600MHz, when the stock speed is supposed to be 2.2GHz (correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what Newegg's site said it should be). I can't change it in the BIOS, and setting the power options to Desktop/no management doesn't change it.

Don't get me wrong, this computer's fan hardly ever goes on and it the keyboard remains cool to the touch even after hours of operation. It's silent as she goes. It's possible HP put a monster processor in there, underclocked and under-volted to all hell to make sure it runs smooth and quite.

This thing is still fast and snappy, but it irks me that I might be getting 600MHz fewer than I should with the XP-M 3000+.

One more problem: does anybody know how to get the WPA to work on a 54g Broadcom WiFi adapter? My school requires, stupidly, that all WiFi cards support WPA to access the network. The 54g-brand card that's in this laptop supports it, but apparently this laptop didn't come with the software installed or something. HP's site tells me to go to Broadcom's and Broadcom's tells me to go to HP's. I have the computer department here investigating it, but who knows how long that could take, and meanwhile I don't have WiFi access.

I might be spending the afternoon on the phone with HP tomorrow to see what the hell's going on with the processor speed and the WiFi card. Does anybody else have this problem? The guy that works at the help desk here has a compaq similar to mine, with 54g, that's giving him the same problem. So it could just be a problem between that particular WiFi solution and our school's WiFi system, but if anybody has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it!

Other than that, this is a sweet laptop. Beautiful screen, great keyboard, fast everything. It's peachy.

I think mobile Bartons run at default FSB of 133 (266DDR) instead of 166(333) for desktop versions...so I don't think you got stiffed.

i disagree , that chip should be running at 2.2 ghz when you bought it , reguardless of what FSB is.
that chip is 266 mhz fsb

According to NewEgg, the default FSB for it is 266, but the clock speed was advertised as 2.2 GHz.

I'm a bit peeved about it, but it's not really a major complaint, all told. Having a cold, silent laptop is important, too, and it's snappy anyway. The battery also lasts quite a long time considering the size of the screen. I don't plan to use it for gaming, either. I hate to think I paid for something a lot faster than I'm getting, but at the same time I'm benefitting from the under-clockedness of it.

The WiFi thing still stinks, though.

I would check your settings. It might be changing clockspeed based on load to save battery life.

Plug it into the wall and see if it speeds up. Some laptops will only reach full speed once plugged in.

Yeah, I plugged it in and turned all the power management stuff to make it think it was a desktop, no dice. I looked in the BIOS to see if there were any settings I could change, too, and there aren't any options for changing the FSB, multiplier, anything.

Looks like I"m left with an underclocked laptop.

What i can say is Broadcom doesnt have ANY drivers what so ever. all your drivers WILL be found on the HP website. I have an emachines lappy - (the one you should have gotten) with the same wireless chip. Emaichine was lacking with an updated driver so i pulled mine off your HP site.

Why not take it back?

Concerning your WLAN problem,your access point might have been set up to filter out all NOT registered MAC's.

This means that in the router you have to put in your MAC adress in order to get online.

what does CPU-z say about the fsb and stuff....that could help determine it if is multiplier-wrong or FSB wrong

and about your wireless...have you tried it and it won't connect....are you using the windows wireless controller (SP2 has it great, if you ask me)...or the software that came from HP/broadcom

my school has Cisco VPN software that can be used in the place of the regular connection, so you could look into that as well

So I got the WiFi working (the driver was indeed on HP's website, I just wasn't looking in the right place), and I ran CPU-z (thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't used that program before), and found out that this is an Athlon 64 3000+ mobile with the multiplier set at 8 instead of 9. So it's actually only underclocked by about 200 MHz instead of 600. I'm not sure why they would do that exactly, but that's the way it is.

It's still very fast and runs cool 'n quiet, though, so I'm going to keep the laptop. With the kind of stuff I do on it, I won't miss the other 200MHz anyway. Thanks for all the suggestions and help, though!

I'm pretty sure that there are several reasons for them clocking the processor slightly lower. This may be due to thermal limits as you cant exactly fit a humongous copper cooling system into a laptop. Also, there's always the rare manafacturing glitch that may cause something like this. But even if it's running 200mhz slower, it's still a lot of power packed into a small package.