From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 7 23:59:23 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C003B37B412 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 23:59:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 255F143F93 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 23:59:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) id h386xMfb093702; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 01:59:22 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 01:59:22 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Tobias Roth Message-ID: <20030408065922.GB23131@dan.emsphone.com> References: <20030407071722.GC4573@speedy.unibe.ch> <200304071247.13863.mlists@northglobe.com> <20030408064923.GA21535@speedy.unibe.ch> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030408064923.GA21535@speedy.unibe.ch> X-OS: FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: find out current CPU frequency X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 06:59:24 -0000 In the last episode (Apr 08), Tobias Roth said: > > > I would like to find out what the current CPU frequency is on my > > > laptop. I strongly suspect that my laptop, as well as many other > > > models, pretty much permanently run on degraded performance, even > > > when under full load. > > > > > > At the moment, I use both 4.8 and 5.0 Release with apm, but I plan > > > to upgrade tocurrent soon. > > > dmesg | grep CPU > > Isn't that good enough? Or do you mean after boot? > > no. that is the maximum frequency the cpu runs at, which is fixed. > with intels speedstep there is a possibility that the cpu runs at a > lower frequency than that, depending on the current load. > > the idea behind it is this: > high load -> high freq -> high power consumption, more fan activity > low load -> lower freq -> lower power consumption, less fan activity > > linprocfs for instance always shows a current cpu freq of > 1.1something GHZ on my 1.8GHz P4. however I have no idea how > representative that is. Check the results of "sysctl hw.acpi.cpu". If your motherboard supports it, you should see something like: hw.acpi.cpu.max_speed: 16 hw.acpi.cpu.current_speed: 16 hw.acpi.cpu.performance_speed: 16 hw.acpi.cpu.economy_speed: 8 max_speed is 100%; anything less sets the CPU sped proportionately slower. I have never tried to set hw.acpi.cpu.current_speed=0 :) -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com