Any way to check the clock speed of my processor?

Question

Is there any way to check at which clock speed my processor is running?

I have already tried cat /proc/cpuinfo but the clock speed I'm running isn't showing. I know Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) requires 700 MHz and VGA, but will an AMD Mobile Sempron work?

Answer 1

From the command line type lscpu. The information will be at CPU MHz:

Answer 2

There are a couple of ways:

1. lscpu or more precise lscpu | grep "MHz".
   This will give you the general MHz for the CPU.

   

2. cat /proc/cpuinfo or more precise cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "MHz".
   This will give you the individual MHz for each CPU Core. So if you have an Core 2 Duo, AMD Bulldozer, Core i7, etc.. it will show the MHz for each core.

   

3. lshw -c cpu or more precise verion: lshw -c cpu | grep capacity
   Will give you the general MHz. Same as lscpu.

   

4. sudo dmidecode -t processor or more precise: sudo dmidecode -t processor | grep "Speed" Will not only give you a MHz in use but also the Maximum you can push / overclock your CPU to.

   

Out of all of this, lshw and dmidecode provide the best information out of your CPU.

You can also target the current MHz detected by the kernel by querying the log files:

cat /var/log/dmesg | grep "MHz processor" - For the current detected MHz speed

cat /var/log/kern.log | grep "MHz processor" - For the current and past detected MHz speeds. Will not work in some cases, that is why I posted the dmesg one first.

And that's all I can remember from the top of my head. I am fairly certain there are other ways, just don't remember right now. Of course, talking about terminal ways.

Answer 3

For the current CPU speed one can dynamically watch this change in real time using:

sudo watch -n 1  cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq

To see the maximum CPU speed, use:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 

Answer 4

indicator-cpufreq-selector is a nice little indicator tool which shows your current cpu frequency. You can even select the desired cpu frequency.

Answer 5

Is an AMD Mobile Sempron fast enough? Yes, it is.

Even the slowest member of that family is fast enough. If you entered: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep name

it should display the exact model of your CPU. This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Sempron_microprocessors#Mobile_Sempron

will give you detailed specifications.