How do I get turbo boost working?

Question

I have a HP Pavilion dv6-2190us Notebook, its got 8GB DDR3 and an i7 processor with 1.60GHz (Turbo Boost up to 2.80GHz)

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or missing step or what but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the turbo boost working.

It's a real pain because 8x 1.6GHz really sucks, I'm starting to wish I had an i5 with less cores but more clock speed per core...

Is there anything I can do either enable speed step/turbo boost or maybe just keep it overclocked all the time?

Oh, I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit.

THANKS!

Edit I followed the procure here but my results don't change at all when I execute the loop.

cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cpu MHz     : 1600.000

Solution 1

Try installing turbostat (from the linux-tools package) and run sudo modprobe msr ; sudo turbostat and see what that says for the processor speed.

The frequency shown in /proc/cpuinfo is always capped to the "normal" CPU speed when in fact turbo boost is working fine.

Solution 2

Despite not getting any further using any of the solutions, according to i7z turbo boost is, in fact, working.

Not sure what did it, but hey I'm not complaining!

PS - CPU Frequency monitor applet is still stuck at 1.6GHz.

Solution 3

Is there anything I can do either enable speed step/turbo boost or maybe just keep it overclocked all the time?

I have got a similar problem with my laptop, I never use ondemand option so I disable it by installing rcconf (sudo apt-get install rcconf). Just open it as root, look for ondemand voice and disable it (space key for select/deselect)!

Comments

[elmicha]

Can you please look in /proc/cpuinfo like I wrote in askubuntu.com/questions/37618/is-turbo-boost-working/…, then edit the results into your question?

[Alex Weber]

@elmicha question upadated

[Admin]

Try running 'stress -c 8' that will make all your CPU cores run at maximum, while its running check the output of /proc/cpuinfo

[n3rd]

I tested the i7z script and it tells me Turbo Boost is enabled. However, using grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo does not show anything beyond the standard clock frequency of 2.3 as opposed to 2.9 GHz.

[kiri]

Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.

[Run CMD]

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

[Run CMD]

@n3rd All the info in /proc/ and /sys/device/system/cpu/ is always limited to regular frequencies by design; see kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/boost.txt Also, the CPU Freq Mons rely on this information, so they will not show boosts.

[Run CMD]

This is a bad advice. First, the OP misinterpreted what he saw. Now you intend to help him addressing a problem that he does not have, not explaining what your assumed solution actually achieves or how it is supposed to fix anything.

[David Gardner]

@ClassStacker Thanks! Updated to say "always" instead of "often".

[David Gardner]

Also the link is an Ubuntu One link which requires login and so doesn't work...

[Sebastien Lorber]

@DavidGardner by chance can you explan better how to interpret turbostat output please? In my case Bzy_MHz can go close to 3ghz and then go back to 1ghz after a while, even if all cpus are 100% loaded (see also askubuntu.com/questions/800797/how-to-enable-turbo-boost/…)

[David Gardner]

@SebastienLorber Turbo can be limited by power usage, temperature and other factors, but is quite "closed" in that it won't tell you why :) I'll add some comments on the question you linked to, but at 85 degrees C it could be temperature limiting, depending on the BIOS Turbo settings...

[Sebastien Lorber]

That's quite annoying that it's so hard to understand what is happening. I forced fans to run full-speed, tries different governors and drivers, and it seems some time my computer is limiting the frequency to around 800mhz (with load), even if the cpus are not hot