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    Is there a command to view current cpu clock speed?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by stephenw10

      [2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@xtm800.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq
      dev.cpu.0.freq: 3201
      

      Note that is indicating 3.2GHz with Turbo. The extra 1 shows turbo is enabled.

      The dashboard will also show it at anything less than maximum speed:
      Selection_680.png

      Steve

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      • P
        pfsensenoobie
        last edited by

        Thanks guys!!

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          Also you must enable powerd in Sys > Adv > Misc to see variable clock speed.

          Steve

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          • P
            pfsensenoobie @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10 yea i have it on max performance

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            • B
              bigjohns97 @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 said in Is there a command to view current cpu clock speed?:

              [2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@xtm800.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq
              dev.cpu.0.freq: 3201
              

              Note that is indicating 3.2GHz with Turbo. The extra 1 shows turbo is enabled.

              The dashboard will also show it at anything less than maximum speed:
              Selection_680.png

              Steve

              @stephenw10 sorry to bump such an old thread but I was wondering if you knew if this meant that the CPU was actually scaling past the 3200 MHz in this example and we just didn't have the visibility to it from withing pfSense (FreeBSD).

              Just trying to understand how this works.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by stephenw10

                Yeah, the extra 1 there means turbo is active but we can't see the actual speed since the CPU itself varies that with temperature and on a per core basis. That particular CPU has turbo capability shown as 2/3/4/4. So all 4 cores at 3.4GHz, 3 cores at 3.5GHz or 2 cores at 3.6GHz.
                As far as I know there's no way to see that in FreeBSD/pfSense though.

                Steve

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                • B
                  bigjohns97 @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 said in Is there a command to view current cpu clock speed?:

                  Yeah, the extra 1 there means turbo is active but we can't see the actual speed since the CPU itself varies that with temperature and on a per core basis. That particular CPU has turbo capability shown as 2/3/4/4. So all 4 cores at 3.4GHz, 3 cores at 3.5GHz or 2 cores at 3.6GHz.
                  As far as I know there's no way to see that in FreeBSD/pfSense though.

                  Steve

                  Thanks for the confirmation, I noticed that FreeBSD 13 has Intel SpeedShift enabled which is quicker to respond than SpeedStep.

                  I noticed that 2.6 was still on 12.3 I wonder if and when pfSense moves to v13 we would get more visibility into this?

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Maybe. If it's in FreeBSD 13 then there's a very good chance.

                    Can you test 13? Or 14 even?

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                    • B
                      bigjohns97 @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 said in Is there a command to view current cpu clock speed?:

                      Maybe. If it's in FreeBSD 13 then there's a very good chance.

                      Can you test 13? Or 14 even?

                      Not without there being a hypervisor in the mix which brings in other variables.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Yes, not much point testing virtually for that.

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                        • B
                          bigjohns97 @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10

                          Took a serious L with the 2.6 upgrade and ended up installing from scratch.

                          Figured I would give OPNsense a try since I was starting from scratch and I can confirm the implementation of Speedshift and clock speed movement without powerd being enabled. (In fact powerd slows things down).

                          root@OPNsense:~ # sysctl -a dev.cpu | grep 'freq_levels\|freq'
                          dev.cpu.7.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.7.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.6.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.6.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.5.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.5.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.4.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.4.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.3.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.3.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.2.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.2.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.1.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.1.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.0.freq: 799
                          root@OPNsense:~ # sysctl -a dev.cpu | grep 'freq_levels\|freq'
                          dev.cpu.7.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.7.freq: 799
                          dev.cpu.6.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.6.freq: 4597
                          dev.cpu.5.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.5.freq: 4597
                          dev.cpu.4.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.4.freq: 4298
                          dev.cpu.3.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.3.freq: 4298
                          dev.cpu.2.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.2.freq: 4057
                          dev.cpu.1.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.1.freq: 3999
                          dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 3600/-1
                          dev.cpu.0.freq: 3928
                          
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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            How did it show those things enabled? The second output is after enabling it? In the BIOS?

                            powerd relies on some driver to actually control the cpu speed, est(4) for Intel CPUs. And that relies on either hard coded values or, far more commonly, values passed to it by ACPI. It's not unusual for those to be wrong or missing unfortunately.

                            Steve

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                            • B
                              bigjohns97 @stephenw10
                              last edited by

                              @stephenw10 said in Is there a command to view current cpu clock speed?:

                              How did it show those things enabled? The second output is after enabling it? In the BIOS?

                              powerd relies on some driver to actually control the cpu speed, est(4) for Intel CPUs. And that relies on either hard coded values or, far more commonly, values passed to it by ACPI. It's not unusual for those to be wrong or missing unfortunately.

                              Steve

                              No both outputs are taken right after one another it shows the proc jumping all around to different clock speeds as the processor sees fit.

                              My guess is the usage of hwpstate_intel is what allows the different visibility into the two different operating systems.

                              https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hwpstate_intel&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+13-current&arch=default&format=html

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