Issues with CPU frequency after upgrade 23.01

stephenw10

It still works for CPUs that have Speed Step but not Speed Shift. It seems more sensitive to usage in the high adaptive mode then it was in FreeBSD 12.

Dobby_

@csardoss said in Issues with CPU frequency after upgrade 23.01:

I did not turn this off. From what I can understand, that function is no longer supported with BSD14

On the other hand it might be also based on the CPU that is in usage.

bingo600

Thanx Guyzz.
I had an i3-7100 that was mostly on 2398MHz (of 2400)
It wasn't actually running hot, the Hystou/Protecli chassis must be a nice cooler.
But no reason to waste power .....

I ended up with these notes in my 23.01 install log

On 23.01 it seems like they changed the way to control the CPU speed (Speed Shift).
This overrides the old SpeedStep , if the CPU is Speed Shift capable , and practically rendering the old pfSense PowerD unusable on those CPU's

In order to control Speed Shift on the newer CPU's supporting it do the below:

Check in the boot messages if the cpu supports Speed Shift.

My Hystou Box dmesg output: 

It's an i3 7100 - with just 2 cores & HT , but it seems like the HT's are seen as cores.
hwpstate_intel0: <Intel Speed Shift> on cpu0
hwpstate_intel1: <Intel Speed Shift> on cpu1
hwpstate_intel2: <Intel Speed Shift> on cpu2
hwpstate_intel3: <Intel Speed Shift> on cpu3



So I have to add Speed Shift control for that CPU.

Go to - System --> Advanced --> System Tunables

Add an entry per core you found via dmesg.

NB. : I ended on a value of 75 instead the below 80 , and i disabled PowerD


dev.hwpstate_intel.0.epp
80
CPU 0 Speed Shift Level

dev.hwpstate_intel.1.epp
80
CPU 1 Speed Shift Level

dev.hwpstate_intel.2.epp
80
CPU 2 Speed Shift Level

dev.hwpstate_intel.3.epp
80
CPU 3 Speed Shift Level

Now it is idling at 597MHz , stepping up to 1798 / 2098 / 2397 when xferring a 5GB file via VPN to the summerhouse (200Mbit)

/Bingo

stephenw10

Hmm, interesting. That CPU is not shown as having speed shift but it looks like it's on gen 6 CPUs and above....

Vollans

@stephenw10 Curiously, my N5105-based device which also shows having Speed Shift really didn’t like it. Even if I set it at 95 it would only shift between 1900 and 2080, and didn’t drop back to the usual 700s at all. It’s still working fine with the “normal” PowerD utility, though, so it’s not a major issue. shrug

stephenw10

Where were you checking that? From the sysctl output?

Seeing some quirkiness with the way the dashboard reports it here. Seems to only update a few times then stop.

Vollans

@stephenw10 Hmm. Might check again, as I was looking at the web dashboard which always showed in a timely fashion on previous versions. Thanks!

stephenw10

Mmm, there are definite differences. Speed Shift can set each CPU differently and the dashboard only shows CPU0. That was fine when they were all locked at the same clock speed. Might need to update that.

Vollans

@stephenw10 Ok, can confirm seeing shifting on the command line for the N5105. That needs settings around 90-100 to get anything close to the adaptive, though, otherwise it’s sitting in the high 1000s most of the time and never adapts. If you set it around 75-80 it goes into turbo mode most of the time of 2.5GHz or so, which is overkill for these little fanless boxes.

bingo600

@stephenw10 said in Issues with CPU frequency after upgrade 23.01:

Where were you checking that? From the sysctl output?

Seeing some quirkiness with the way the dashboard reports it here. Seems to only update a few times then stop.

How do you check that sysctl output (i hope it's a cli command).
I was grumbling a bit, over my settings.
The dashboard shows nice shifts , and idling around 597MHz.

But my CPU Temperature doesn't really change (reflect the lower speed) ...
With out any modifications it was showing around 43C , and Dashboard showed cores spend a lot of time on 2+ GHz.

Now at 597MHz i'm at a CPU temp of 41C w. peeks upwards 53C when it "boosts clock".

I'm quite happy w. a temp of 41..43C on a passively cooled box in the livingroom.
Was just wondering why a CPU shift of 1.4GHz downwards weren't showing more difference in temp.

Actually even more thinking if it was not really running 2398MHz when PowerD was active, and the GUI showed that speed.

My Qotom i5 (22.05) was idling at around 1100..1600MHz , and had a about the same temp.

/Bingo

stephenw10

You might have higher level C states available already. In previous testing those tend to swamp any savings made by P states except at moderate CPU usage. Check 'sysctl dev.cpu.0'

You can disable Speed Shift and go back to using Powerd:
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hwpstate_intel#LOADER_TUNABLES

One interesting thing is that the speedshift driver can attach and enable on CPUs even when SpeedStep is disabled in the BIOS. So on systems where that can't be enabled it makes quite a difference. Like on this i3-6100t:

Screenshot from 2023-02-21 23-06-36.png

Steve

bingo600

@stephenw10
How do you do that nice Temp Graph ??
Is that "external" via snmp or so ???

I can pull some (last hour) cpu info from the Zabbix FreeBSD plugin, but not temp

/Bingo

stephenw10

Nope it's the Thermal Sensors graph from Status > Monitoring.

bingo600

Dooh ...

That's a super nice feature - The monitoring stuff .... Was disabled on my Box.

Found it

Thnx

stephenw10

Yeah, that was added relatively recently. It can be very useful in diagnosing hardware issues.

bingo600

I have just upgraded my Hystou from 23.01 to 23.05.
It was a succesfull upgrade (as usual)
Well ... besides the zabbix client package. But i have learnt that this one always have issues. So delete & reinstall after bootup.

What i noticed though, was that the Hystou was again running quite hot ....
Behaving 100% like on 23.01 (first post).

So i added the "tunables entries once more", and disabled powerD

And it seems to helped again.

Was i too impatient ??
I would ave expected 23.05 to have implemented the fix ....

/Bingo

stephenw10

There is no additional tuning for SpeedShift in 23.05.

It will be enabled by support if your CPU supports it and the default values run the CPU faster/hotter than SpeedStep did on a system expected to run at low load.

Adding tunables to set the targets like that (or even higher numbers) will return the performance to SpeedStep like level. Except that SpeedShift is better in several ways still.

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/14047

Steve

bingo600

@stephenw10

So "In plain english" , 23.05 has the 23.01 issue fixed.
And i should delete my "tunables", and give it a try ??
Correct ?

Should i enable PowerD , that i use to have enabled to activate the 23.05 speed/power adapt ?

Btw: The PR you listed above, has 23.09 as target

/Bingo

stephenw10

No, 23.05 behaves the same as 23.01 with regard to SpeedShift.

Enabling SpeedStep (powerd) does nothing unless you disable SpeedShift. You can do that by setting hint.hwpstate_intel.0.disabled="1".

Since SpeedShift is better that SpeedStep in every way except the default values (IMO). I recommend just setting the values as you have in both 23.01 and 23.05.

Steve

bingo600

He..he

I just deleted my SpeedShift entries , as i thought the fix were in 23.05.
I'm reentering and setting to 75, as when it ran on 23.01
And keep PowerD disabled.

Thnx

/Bingo