Zotac CA621 /AMD RYZEN 3 3200U TURBO BOOST

[yanakis]

Hi everyone.
I just got installed 2.6.0 on Zotac Zbox Nano CA621 and working quite well, stable overall.

This cpu has a boost clock of 3.5 Ghz but pfsense sees as 1400-2600 Mhz. PowerD active, amdtemp running and showing correct temps.

Any advice would be great!
Many thanks!

[stephenw10]

There's a good chance it's working anyway but just not showing.
If it isn't though powerd would need a driver to be able to enable it.

Try running: sysctl -a | grep freq and look for available frequency levels.

Steve

[yanakis]

@stephenw10 Thanks! here is the output:

dev.cpufreq.0.%parent: cpu0
dev.cpufreq.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.cpufreq.0.%location:
dev.cpufreq.0.%driver: cpufreq
dev.cpufreq.0.%desc:
dev.cpufreq.%parent:
dev.hwpstate.0.freq_settings: 2600/3168 1700/1615 1400/1277
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 2600/3168 1700/1615 1400/1277
dev.cpu.0.freq: 2600

Sysinfo Dashboard:
CPU Type AMD Ryzen 3 3200U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
Current: 1700 MHz, Max: 2600 MHz
4 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 hardware threads
AES-NI CPU Crypto: Yes (active)
QAT Crypto: No

[stephenw10]

Hmm, after looking into this I'm not sure there is a driver for this. It just works and isn't shown.
For example: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=249889

[yanakis]

@stephenw10 using stress-ng and going for 100% cpu usage, the current cpu freq (sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq) was 2600 :(.

So no turbo boost at all.

[stephenw10]

Well, it shows that in the returned frequency but if you read through that bug report that is probably never going to show the turbo frequency because it's not a p-state.

Intel CPUs show similarly though they usually use a +1 to indicate turbo is active. For example:

[2.6.0-RELEASE][root@xtm800.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl dev.cpu.0
dev.cpu.0.temperature: 36.0C
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.throttle_log: 0
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.tjmax: 105.0C
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.resolution: 1
dev.cpu.0.coretemp.delta: 69
dev.cpu.0.cx_method: C1/mwait/hwc C2/mwait/hwc
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage_counters: 68133 0
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% last 265us
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/59
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 3201/77000 3200/77000 3100/73079 3000/69986 2900/66950 2700/61045 2600/58188 2500/55374 2400/52614 2300/49215 2200/46570 2100/43989 1900/38963 1800/36528 1700/34144 1600/31811
dev.cpu.0.freq: 3201
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0 _CID=none
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU

3201 indicates turbo is active but that can be variable depending on how many cores are used. That particular CPU can go to 3.6GHz on 1 or 2 cores.

Steve

[yanakis]

@stephenw10 said in Zotac CA621 /AMD RYZEN 3 3200U TURBO BOOST:

sysctl dev.cpu.0

So we don't know for sure which is a bit frustrating when using AMD, I guess Intel gets the goodies always. Could be a bios thing or is just freebsd?

Anyway, many thanks for you time, appreciated!

Regards,

[stephenw10]

It's probably just lack of driver support in FreeBSD. It will likely come at some point.

Steve

[LouisRoller32]

This post is deleted!

[yanakis]

@stephenw10 most probably. I booted a windows 11 instance and benchmarked the cpu, It went easily over 3 Ghz mark. On idle went below 1.4Ghz. So there it is.

I saw on some thread I lost, there are some amd specific modules, I need to look into it.