Would someone with a FW16 please do the following Linux command, and post the output:
Say which CPU you have, then:
cpupower frequency-info
or
cpufreq-info
I am particularly interested in the lowest frequency it can clock to:
e.g. hardware limits: 550 MHz - 4.21 GHz ← 550 Mhz being the lowest for a different CPU I have here. Essentially, the smaller the number the better.
to get output like this:
analyzing CPU 4:
driver: amd-pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 4
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 4
maximum transition latency: 20.0 us
hardware limits: 550 MHz - 4.21 GHz
available cpufreq governors: ondemand conservative userspace powersave performance schedutil
current policy: frequency should be within 550 MHz and 2.80 GHz.
The governor "conservative" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 674 MHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
AMD PSTATE Highest Performance: 166. Maximum Frequency: 4.21 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Nominal Performance: 142. Nominal Frequency: 3.60 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Lowest Non-linear Performance: 68. Lowest Non-linear Frequency: 1.72 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Lowest Performance: 22. Lowest Frequency: 550 MHz.
or
analyzing CPU 11:
driver: amd-pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 11
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 11
maximum transition latency: 20.0 us.
hardware limits: 550 MHz - 4.21 GHz
available cpufreq governors: ondemand, conservative, userspace, powersave, performance, schedutil
current policy: frequency should be within 550 MHz and 2.80 GHz.
The governor "conservative" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency is 542 MHz.
Here’s the output of the command when I run it on my FW 16 with Ryzen 7.
analyzing CPU 6:
driver: amd-pstate-epp
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 6
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 6
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 6.08 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 1.38 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
AMD PSTATE Highest Performance: 232. Maximum Frequency: 6.08 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Nominal Performance: 145. Nominal Frequency: 3.80 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Lowest Non-linear Performance: 42. Lowest Non-linear Frequency: 1.10 GHz.
AMD PSTATE Lowest Performance: 16. Lowest Frequency: 400 MHz.
That’s interesting! Mine 7840HS has the similar output, the only difference is the MAX Frequency. I have lower in some reason…:
analyzing CPU 6:
driver: amd-pstate-epp
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 6
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 6
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.29 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 5.29 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 2.08 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: no
The difference in speeds might just be one CPU happens to be better than another.
This was proven to be the case with some CPUs in a youtube video here:
oh, wow, it seems that cpupower gives different information every time. I ran it several times and it gave different results.
analyzing CPU 2:
driver: amd-pstate-epp
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 2
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 2
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 6.08 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 1.82 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: no
another run:
analyzing CPU 15:
driver: amd-pstate-epp
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 15
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 15
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.92 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 5.92 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 1.97 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: no
That is also very interesting, if I were home I’d bet mine does the same thing. I imagine this is one of those times where it pays to understand how a thing works rather than trusting it blindly.
It’s not really “different information every time” but if you don’t tell cpupower which core you want, it will pick one at random.
With -c all you can see all cores, and from what I see, each core have its own limits:
# cpupower -c all frequency-info -l -m
analyzing CPU 0:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.29 GHz
analyzing CPU 1:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.29 GHz
analyzing CPU 2:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.14 GHz
analyzing CPU 3:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.14 GHz
analyzing CPU 4:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.45 GHz
analyzing CPU 5:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.45 GHz
analyzing CPU 6:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
analyzing CPU 7:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
analyzing CPU 8:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.61 GHz
analyzing CPU 9:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.61 GHz
analyzing CPU 10:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
analyzing CPU 11:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 6.08 GHz
analyzing CPU 12:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.76 GHz
analyzing CPU 13:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.76 GHz
analyzing CPU 14:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.92 GHz
analyzing CPU 15:
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 5.92 GHz
They don’t seem to change over time. They are in peers because it’s 1 core 2 threads, so the two threads on the same core have the same value, I guess.
Since the official limit is 5,1 GHz and that each core have at least 5,1 GHz as max value, I think it’s genius. If you can go higher, why not? The official spec is then a guaranteed minimum.
But I can’t make them go higher that 4,8 GHz on my computer (even on a single core where it is at 80-90 °C). On multi-core, I touch the 100 °C temp limit so it stop accelerating and oscillate between 4,0 and 4,4 GHz…).
I guess it depends on the task we’re doing, since a CPU have a lot of different instructions, and hardware accelerations, etc.
Modern CPUs and GPUs seems to be working this way. A very high turbo boost that is just a theoretical / tested limit, but in practice, it just try to do the highest it can depending on the cooling that can be achieved and the task going on.
(My desktop GPU is doing the same, the frequencies are maxed out, even higher than the official limit, until the “junction” temp (maximum all over the board) reach about 110 °C (generally sensors show it between 100 and 105 °C)).
