Does the APU4 still benefit from the teklager tweak

Mr_JinX

Hi,
I have an apu4 and have upgraded to 1gb from my ISP, is there any benefit to making the teklager tweaks for the APU boards, I'm running 23.05.1

https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/

stephenw10

It shouldn't be required since 2.5 as it says there. You won't see 1Gbps on the APU1 though, which is what Netate sold way back when.

Steve

Mr_JinX

@stephenw10

Hi Steve, i'm not seeing 1gb on the apu4 either, I'm sure the APU4 is more powerful than the Netgate 4100

stephenw10

It isn't: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5050vs4290/AMD-GX-412TC-SOC-vs-Intel-Atom-C3338 And the 4100 actually has a C3338R which is faster.

But I would still expect the APU4 to pass 1G if it was in 2.5. Make sure you have the current coreboot version on it.

Mr_JinX

@stephenw10 Do you think this guide on enabling the core boost will make a difference?

https://github.com/pcengines/apu2-documentation/blob/master/docs/apu_CPU_boost.md

i have checked my cli and it looks like the CPU is possibly capped to 1ghz, instead of the 1.4 boost,

I'm expecting "dev.cpu.0.freq_levels" to read 1400

[23.05.1-RELEASE][admin@]/root: sysctl dev.c
dev.cpu.0.cx_method: C1/hlt C2/io
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage_counters: 56434 0
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% last 12874us
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/0 C2/2/400
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1000/994 800/819 600/618
dev.cpu.0.freq: 1000
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=ACPI0007 _UID=0 CID=none
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=_SB.P000
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU

stephenw10

It may not read that if the 1.4GHz is a boost speed. On Intel CPUs the turbo speed would be shown only as 1001MHz for example. The additional 1 indicates turbo is active.

I'm not sure how the APU 'boost' might be shown. It may not. It's probably detailed in the APU2 thread though:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/95148/pc-engines-apu2-experiences