MacBook Battery issues

[Kagura]

Hi, I recently installed Win XP on my MacBook, everything works fine with one major problem!

When I run Windows off the battery, it doesn't run smoothly, (similar to when you're trying to work when CPU usage is at 100% - which it gets no where near).This also means that games and XviD/h.264 videos become slow and laggy without hitting 100% CPU usage. (These were not CPU/GPU intensive games) :(

But when it's charging, or running off AC power (instead of the battery), it runs perfectly fine! None of the problems described above.

I've reinstalled the Apple drivers at least 10 times, and have all the latest Windows updates installed. I tried playing around with the Power Options in Control Panel. But that was useless.

I have the 1.83GHz MacBook with 1GB RAM and 100GB HDD.

Please can someone help.

[OptimismPrime]

Your wonderful new 1.83 Ghz Core Duo uses "Enhanced SpeedStep" Technology to dynamicaly underclock the CPU if its full performance isn't needed (i.e. even a 2.16 MacBook sometimes idles at 1.5 Ghz while pluged in.)

To further save power - the default setting for a Core Duo in Battery Mode is to underclock to 1.0 !!! Ghz, wich means you effectivly lose 46% !!! CPU speed.

In the good old days of my long dead Pentium3 Notebook, intel had a seperate app to manage speedstep from within Windows, so i could run "max power" even when not pluged in, although shortening battery life. It was indicated by a little flag item in the system tray (look at this section http://www.bay-wolf.com/speedstep.htm#9 of the bay wolf speedstep faq).

This App seems to still exist today and is still used by Core Duos as suggested by this intel support article http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022092.htm
but i couldn't find any downloads in intels download center, you may have to digg through there yourself.

[Kagura]

I don't think it's a matter of throttling my CPU. I installed the SpeedSwitchXP and set it to max performance, but still get the same results. And if it "dynamicaly underclock the CPU if its full performance isn't needed", then shouldn't the CPU frequency increase when needed?

I'm begining to think this is an audio/video driver issue. However, from all the reviews and benchmarks praising Windows via boot camp, I'm completely confused.

(Unless they were all using AC power instead of the battery during the review/benchmarking, which I highly doubt.....)