0

I have an intel i5 @ 1.70Ghz and in Windows 8 I regularly saw it spike to as high as 2.26Ghz and once to 3.1Ghz. Using 14.04 LTS, is my proc behaving the same? In scaling_available_frequencies I'm seeing:

1701000 1700000 1600000 1500000 1400000 1300000 1200000 1100000 1000000 900000 800000 782000

Is the proc stopping at 1.7Ghz? I know the speed changes were dependant on temperature as well as a few other factors..

Thanks a bunch!

Steven

I've been trying to 'edit' and insert the request information, but the built in editor won't let me format it in any manner that be even remotely readable. Any suggestions?

2
  • Please edit your question and add the output of cpupower frequency-info.
    – Wilf
    Sep 8, 2014 at 21:31
  • You can copy in the output, select it and press Ctrl-K to give it code formatting. Or use paste.ubuntu.com
    – muru
    Sep 9, 2014 at 23:40

1 Answer 1

0

To achieve 3.1 GHz Turbo Boost - you could only utilize one quarter of your CPU.

This does not nearly compensate performance-wise for a well written program that would utilize all cores. While it's a nice feature, it's usually not a performance boost on top of the stock performance of all cores being completely utilized.


You are mixing things up:

SpeedStep is a trademark for a series of dynamic frequency scaling technologies (codenamed Geyserville and including SpeedStep, SpeedStep II, and SpeedStep III) built into some Intel microprocessors that allow the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed (to different P-states) by software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_speedstep

Intel Turbo Boost is a technology implemented by Intel in certain versions of their Nehalem- [...] Haswell-based CPUs, including Core i5 and Core i7, that enables the processor to run above its base operating frequency via dynamic control of the CPU's clock rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost

All the info in /proc/ and /sys/device/system/cpu/ is always limited to regular frequencies by design; see https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/boost.txt

comment by Class Stacker on question Is Turbo Boost Working?

Some CPUs support a functionality to raise the operating frequency of some cores in a multi-core package if certain conditions apply, mostly if the whole chip is not fully utilized and below it's intended thermal budget. The decision about boost disable/enable is made either at hardware (e.g. x86) or software (e.g ARM).

https://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/boost.txt

Simply put, your i5 CPU decides for itself if it applies boost or not and Linux by default doesn't care much about providing accurate and detailed information for this.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .