Microsoft engineer explains how Windows doesn't actually know how fast your CPU really is

Microsoft recently pushed some fairly major updates related to Windows hardware support.

First, the company announced new HLK and VHLK releases for May 2025. For those who may not be familiar, HLK or hardware lab kit updates help hardware vendors test their hardware for Windows in order to fine-tune driver software compatibility and performance aspects. You can read about the latest release in this dedicated article here.

Alongside that, Microsoft also announced the deprecation of Windows Device metadata and the Windows Metadata and Internet Services (WMIS).

Device metadata is the collection of additional, user-facing information that an OEM provides about a hardware device. The feature was introduced with Windows 7 and can include stuff like icons, logos, descriptive texts, among other things, that help the Windows UI display details about such devices in places like Task Manager or Device Manager, among other places.

The company will likely handle all this in a different way going forward as making changes to them is certainly important given that specifications reporting still need updates and improvements from time to time as in the case of RAM speed.

On the topic of hardware data and the spec details presented on Windows, Microsoft's Raymond Chen today in his The Old New Thing column, revealed the interesting reason as to why Windows often presents two separate clock speeds for a processor on the System "About" page within the Settings app which provides hardware-related information about your system (duh!!!).

Microsoft recently updated the About page with an FAQ section as it now tries to answer some basic questions about a PC spec that users may have.

About the dual CPU speed reporting, Chen explains that it is a result of relying on something quite "unreliable," CPUID function codes. Thus, Windows actually just guesses what the speeds of the processor are from the code as it tries to report a real-time value for the clock frequency spec.

This may explain why we get reports of misrepresented Task Manager specs for some of the hardware.

Chen adds that the second clock speed data Windows shows is included by the hardware vendor themselves as part of the processor information (via the processor brand string). This clock is what the base (and/or boost) speed the manufacturer intended to run the CPU at, and it's a static value that does not change.

Processor	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz	3.71GHz
	Processor brand string	Speed

This static clock spec information is also seen on Task Manager, MSINFO32 and DXDIAG. You can read Raymond Chen's new blog post here on Microsoft's website.

Source

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