What could be slowing my notebook down?

For some reason, all the notebooks that have the same CPU as my notebook, just a lower speed have a lower s/TS than mine (seconds per time step) on BOINC for ClimatePrediction.net.

It's got a mobile AMD Athlon XP 1900+, with an L2 Cache of 128KB (2X the size of my Duron) and doesn't perform well at all.

Most of the mobile Athlons get an s/TS of 4-5, while mine is up the top at 7.8.

The things running on it are these:

USB Internet Connection
Internet Connection Sharing

Running Windows XP Home, SP1. I was thinking of unplugging the USB and this computer to it, then leave it connected to the internet VIA ethernet cable and see what the results come out as.

Any other things that could be effecting the speed? Such as certain services?

[Chris W]

USB relies on the CPU for processing data, so you will probably fine that having an ethernet connection for the internet will improve pc performance.

[Richard M]

There could also be some CPU throttling software or hardware installed to reduce power requirements.

No CPU throttling software installed. Not sure about hardware though.

[ZrByte]

Originally Posted by Scott

No CPU throttling software installed. Not sure about hardware though.

Just out of interest, did you install the AMD K7 processor hotfix from the drivers section on windows update? when I intalled this it made my Laptop run at 1.1GHZ when on mains (Its supposed to be a 2500+ XP-M with a 1.8Ghz core I think) and 500Mhz on battery power. It was extremeley good on battery life but made the machine slow as hell to use, also made my mouse jump roughly every 60 seconds when I had my wireless network card installed.
Might be worth uninstalling this if you have it on?

Wasn't USB doing it, and that hotfix wasn't doing it either. I'm asking the CPDN team aswell, see if they know what it could be.