i5 clock speeds

hippieben · 2014-03-07 05:00:14

I have intel_pstate disabled and am using the ondemand governor and my processor doesn't seem to run any slower than 1.6GHz. I also have a laptop that has an i7 (again with intel_pstate disabled and ondemand) and it will run as low as 800MHz. I believe that my laptop has a 2.2GHz chip and I know that my desktop (the i5) has a 3.1GHz chip. Is there a set number of steps that the chip is able to run at, therefore causing the lowest step on the faster chip to be faster than the lowest step on the slower chip? I would like to be able to get my desktop to idle at a slower clock speed. Is there anyway I can do this? According to the wiki, I can set the minimum clock speed in /etc/default/cpupower, but will I run into stability issue if I plug 800MHz into min_freq? Thanks.

progandy · 2014-03-07 05:12:47

The output of "cpupower frequency-info " should show the possible frequencies. Use the lowest value as min_freq

hippieben · 2014-03-07 05:35:55

progandy wrote:

The output of "cpupower frequency-info " should show the possible frequencies. Use the lowest value as min_freq

Damn looks like 1.6 is the lowest. that's a bummer.

WonderWoofy · 2014-03-07 06:00:24

The lowest frequency doesn't really matter as much as as how much your processor is able to enter sleep states. So when it is idling, it isn't at the lowest frequency level at all and is hardly using any power.

In reality, unless you are having problems with it, you should really use the intel_pstate driver. The ondemand governor worked well for many years, but was designed for processors over a decade ago. Things have changed and the pstate driver was designed and tailored to work with today's Intel processors. I don't see why you wouldn't take advantage of that if it works correctly for you.

hippieben · 2014-03-07 06:03:22

WonderWoofy wrote:

The lowest frequency doesn't really matter as much as as how much your processor is able to enter sleep states. So when it is idling, it isn't at the lowest frequency level at all and is hardly using any power.
In reality, unless you are having problems with it, you should really use the intel_pstate driver. The ondemand governor worked well for many years, but was designed for processors over a decade ago. Things have changed and the pstate driver was designed and tailored to work with today's Intel processors. I don't see why you wouldn't take advantage of that if it works correctly for you.

I disabled it as part of some debugging some time ago, and things are actually snappier without it so it got left off. It is a noticeable difference on the laptop, and extends my battery slightly

Arup · 2014-03-07 15:34:52

Why disable pstate, far better performance with pstate enabled.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-03-07 05:00:14

i5 clock speeds

#2 2014-03-07 05:12:47

Re: i5 clock speeds

#3 2014-03-07 05:35:55

Re: i5 clock speeds

#4 2014-03-07 06:00:24

Re: i5 clock speeds

#5 2014-03-07 06:03:22

Re: i5 clock speeds

#6 2014-03-07 15:34:52

Re: i5 clock speeds

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