Intel Turbo boost on ubuntu 14.04

Question

Well, I have a Toshiba laptop with an Intel i5 2430m and 4 gb ram installed. I have intalled the i-Nex so to know my cpu frequency at every time. But there is a problem: Even when I'm editing a video, the cpu runs at 2.4Gh with 80-100% cpu load! But the intel turbo boost technology does not get enabled, while when i was using windows, these things were happening automatically! So, how can i enable the Turbo feature? This feature is enabled in bios settings

Edit: I Think that this could help, but i'm not so sure: CPU Turbo boost: modify temperature limit under 14.04

Solution

I don't think you know what you are talking about, because you describe something that is very different from how this technology was initially supposed to work.

Turbo Boost, glitter for standard clock speed

Turbo boost will not automatically overclock your CPU if both of your cores are already constantly at 80-100% load. Some later variations (depending on the CPU model) will boost under full load for very short intervals to then cool down with negligible long term performance impact. All in all you won't achieve a constant overclocking boost, because as I said, this is not how this feature is designed.

Themal design and cooling

Also one should first provide a better cooling solution before trying to mess with the thermal thresholds that the system designers and engineers carefully defined during the product development. In general, you should never even think about modifying temperature limit for laptops (as the other question initially asked for).

Possible traps: the wrong monitoring tool

There was some confusion when Turbo Boost was introduced, because some tools that monitored the frequency and/or changed governors interfered with Turbo Boost and prevented it from properly working.

Some hardware monitoring applications or panel-applets that allow to display or modify processor clock speeds bring disorder into the fragile arrangement, hence one should stay away from these when in doubt [if turbo boost is working correctly].

Original citation in German:

Einige Hardware-Monitoring-Programme oder Panel-Applets zur Anzeige oder Konfiguration der Prozessor-Taktstufen bringen dies fragile Gefüge aber durcheinander, daher lässt man von diesen im Zweifel besser die Finger.

^{Heise: Turbo Boost unter Linux (probably better known for its English site The H)}

Conlusion

While you can try the link (which is not about Turbo Boost but P-States, which is more technical and about power management) posted in an answer on the other question, you have to realize Turbo Boost is not about constant overclocking under constant heavy load, but improving performance for short bursts, which won't reduce workloads like video editing significantly.

Also you have to realize that marketing (deliberately conf-)uses higher specs that are only achieved in certain boost conditions (or sometimes never, like on some ultrabooks), instead of the standard clock speeds. (This is not very new, the Pentium 4 processors have been known for clocking lower due to overheating, it just got more complicated and made its way to graphics cards, tablet and smartphone processors.)

Simply speaking, if you bought a product with a 2 core CPU at a clock speed of 2.4 GHz and thought you get a 4 core CPU with 3 GHz clock speed or something in between, then realize that you have been fooled or the one who sold you the product didn't know any better.

Comments

[vembutech]

Have a look at this thread Intel Turboboost.

[user258486]

hahaha! First, thank you very much for your answer! I really appreciate that :D ! But now, you have to understand something else: It is true that I didn't know these facts about turbo boost, but believe me, i do know what I bought and what I could do with this machine! In any way, please, not be so rude in your next answer! ;)