Turbo Boost CPU


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I have an Intel Xeon x3450 cpu which has a base clock of 2.66Ghz and using Turbo Boost 1.0 it goes up to 3.2 Ghz. In unRAID is there a way to view my clock speed to verify that turbo boost is working? Also, when I run a windows 10 vm I notice that my cpu is always at the same clock speed, for me its always at 2.66Ghz even when the machine is at idle? Is there a way to allow the cpu to lower the clock speed when the maximum is not needed? I read another thread from last month regarding turbo boost 3.0 and LimeTech said something about it will be useable with Linux Kernel 4.9 once available. Will this also work with Turbo Boost 1.0 and how will this pass through to VM's etc? Any help on this topic would be great. Thank you!

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Please check your power states on the host unRAID machine terminal:

 

# grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo
cpu MHz		: 2104.455
cpu MHz		: 2206.347
cpu MHz		: 1817.041
cpu MHz		: 2195.141
cpu MHz		: 2178.747
cpu MHz		: 1993.640
cpu MHz		: 2269.018
cpu MHz		: 2384.814

 

And to check which governors are active on your cores:

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy*/scaling_driver
intel_pstate

 

And then check:

 

This is the important one:

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo
0

 

These are the defaults on my system:

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/turbo_pct
22

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/max_perf_pct
100

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/min_perf_pct
41

 

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/num_pstates
24

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So I'm not the most proficient with this kinda stuff but this is what I found. To test this I have a 4 core vm running handbrake to try and max out the cpu because I don't know of a way to get the cpu to really max out without using a vm.

# grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo
cpu MHz		: 2000.000
cpu MHz		: 2668.000
cpu MHz		: 2668.000
cpu MHz		: 2668.000
cpu MHz		: 2668.000
cpu MHz		: 2668.000
cpu MHz		: 1200.000
cpu MHz		: 1200.000

I then tried to check the governors and this is what I found and I'm not sure what to make of this?:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy*/scaling_driver
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq

Then I tried the 4 lines you showed me from your system and it says "No such file or directory" so I'm not sure what to make of that either? Can you explain to me or suggest what else to try? I really am would like to figure this turbo boost thing out because the extra boost would help with emby video transcodes and the higher clock speed would help with the games i play on my vm's. Thank you for your help so far!

 

Also I wanted to provide a little more info to see if this helps:

-If I run a vm with all cores (8) and maxi it out with handbrake the hottest my system gets is usually around 160 F so thermal throttling shouldn't be an issue.

-Also I have the same motherboard and cpu in a dedicated windows machine so if there is anything that you can think of that I would need to test on that machine that would help figure this issue out please let me know.

                (On a separate note- My dedicated windows 10 machine does allow the cpu to boost and all my bios settings are exactly the same for both machines. However, my dedicated machine which has the same power supply and large heatsink to prevent thermal throttling, only ever boosts to around 2.93 ish Ghz and I have never seen the 3.2 its supposed to get according the arkhttp://ark.intel.com/products/42929/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X3450-8M-Cache-2_66-GHz. So I'm not sure what is going on with that machine either.)

-My power supply is a corsair cx430 and my system draws about 200Watts so I don't think that's an issue either.

pic_1.jpg.34bfcc3bf769e4e4976330b46d678fad.jpg

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This is a picture of my dedicated windows 10 machine I mentioned and I wanted to show you my issue even with this machine where the cpu does turbo up to 2.75 when maxed out but does not get near the 3.2 it is supposed to get up to? Is there a common issue between this machine and unraid or does this help diagnose my issue?

pic_3.jpg.a74260eed6dd4a265bf58982f2fcdb96.jpg

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This is a picture of my dedicated windows 10 machine I mentioned and I wanted to show you my issue even with this machine where the cpu does turbo up to 2.75 when maxed out but does not get near the 3.2 it is supposed to get up to?

 

Max turbo speed depends on the number of cores in use, CPU will never turbo to max speed width all cores in use.

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Max turbo speed depends on the number of cores in use, CPU will never turbo to max speed width all cores in use.

I'm not sure where you are getting this information from? I can testify that my several other computer do indeed turbo within +/- 0.1Ghz of what they say they will. Are you saying that if I changed the amount of cores available in my bios I would see a higher turbo?

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I'm not sure where you are getting this information from? I can testify that my several other computer do indeed turbo within +/- 0.1Ghz of what they say they will. Are you saying that if I changed the amount of cores available in my bios I would see a higher turbo?

 

No, I'm saying that if all cores are @ 100% turbo won't boost to max freq, that usually only happens with a single core @ 100%, i.e., using a single threaded app, that's how it's designed, see below for more info.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost

 

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Oh I understand now. I was a little confused there. So do you know how I can get turbo boost to work with unraid? Its obviously working on my dedicated w10 machine but I have used the "watch grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo" to whatch my unraid cpu live and it never turbo's. Is there something you know of that I can do to allow turbo boost to work with unraid?

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Unlike bare metal, VMs usually only report the base frequency, they don't report the turbo frequency the same way as the idle one is also not reported, you can check with:

 

watch -n 1 grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo

 

 

See the example below, the VM reports a constant 3.0Ghz frequency even though actual speed goes from 900Mhz at idle to 3500Ghz at maximum boost.

 

Idle CPU, 1 core @ 100%, you can see one core at the max boost frequency for this CPU (3500Ghz), max boost with all cores @ 100%.

 

 

 

idle.png.c0d90207416aadf09e0c9bc3698da297.png

1_core.png.b396bd841b23c2fd13d3d775a446b489.png

all_cores.png.d847922604f90670a949fe5220089c3e.png

  • Like 1
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Thank you for showing me an example. Here is what I found with my system.

Picture 1 - VM at idle

Picture 2 - One core at base clock freq. not using turbo boost.

Picture 3 - All 4 VM cores at 100% only at base freq.

So my question to you is, I can see that your cpu base clock is 3.0 and it is boosting to 3.5. My cpu is only ever going to the base clock freq. and never hitting the anything above or near the 3.2 turbo boost freq. it is capable of. Do you know how I can fix this so that I can get the turbo boost to work on unraid like yours does?

Idle.jpg.22b06c3a636d1874eec783dd5c32c171.jpg

One_Core.jpg.99bdd44c31c2767ccc5976a79e4d584d.jpg

All_100.jpg.d5e22b91300c0b61b5da6a4c20db37b0.jpg

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To verify the Turbo is working, do the following:

 

For each Core on the CPU, open a SSH over putty (1 SSH-Session per Core) and put in:

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null

 

Then check on unRAID Dashboard, if the CPUs are running at highest speed (3200 MHz)

Done  ;)

 

If the Turbo is not working, go to BIOS and activate it.

On my Board, the Turbo was deactivated, so after activation, it gave me 10% more speed  ;)

  • Like 1
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I am having the same problem. I have the same CPU as OP on a Super Micro X8SIL MB and when I watch the CPU frequency in SSH it varies from 1200 Hz to 2668 Hz but never turbos to 3200Hz. Turbo boost is enabled in the bios just like OP's photos show.

 

Is UnRaid unable to take advantage of turbo boost speeds on all hardware?

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Is UnRaid unable to take advantage of turbo boost speeds on all hardware?

 

Did you read my post?  ???

Doesn't look like it... lol

 

Sent from my C6903 using Tapatalk

I love the unRAID community and I don't intend to be rude, but if you are only going to get on a thread to mock somebody and you don't intend to provide help, you are not being a friend. I know brn2337 and yes we are having the same issue and we did acknowledge Zonedriver's post but if you look back to page 1 I have already tried monitoring the cpu frequencies and they do not go above the base clock speed.

Just to go over this again. It seems to be an issue with unRAID as I do have a second dedicated windows machine with exactly the same hardware as my unRAID server (and same bios settings) and I can confirm that machine to be using turbo boost. Do you have any more testing suggestions or advice?

  • Thanks 1
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Also does anyone know how to make the dashboard show the cpu frequencies in 6.2.4? I've seen screenshots on 6.1 systems with the cpu frequencies instead of percentages and I would rather see that than a utilization percentage (on a side note, I wonder if the percent utilization would even go past 100% if turbo boost was working?).

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crazycam425, if you look at the thread as an outsider, it would appear that you have provided extensive troubleshooting information and results of investigations, and brn2337 has just posted once, and that immediately after Zonedivers post and not before that.  Sorry if anyone was offended.  But it did make me chuckle. 

 

As a sidenote, archedraft and myself also have (or at least had) identical hardware and were working on some virtualisation stuff, and we realised that the way our systems allocated resources were completely different.  Took a while to get to the bottom of and caused a great deal of head scratching and we never did find an explanation.

 

It's because of things like this that so called thread hijacking are discouraged unless you're 100% certain that it's the same issue and even then it's prudent to at least provide evidence that it's reproducible on your hardware.

 

The forum is littered with threads of people with the same issue.  (For clarity, I don't mean this issue described in this thread) One thread I was involved with actually ended up as being three completely different issues in the end...

 

 

 

Sent from my C6903 using Tapatalk

 

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Thanks for the response CHBMB, I guess my last post didn't quite come off right I'm not offended at all. I just wanted to get across that I admittedly am not as knowledgable as, for example, you in this area and I really just want any help and I am grateful for it. In the grand scheme of things the turbo speeds are definitely not "necessary" to me but I would love to figure this out and in particular, I use my unraid machine for transcoding handbrake tasks which could benefit from turbo speeds and that it why I am researching this.

You said you had similar hardware in the past? Where you having the same issue with turbo boost not working?

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No, it was archedraft and I who had similar hardware and it was USB port allocation that we struggled with.

 

For the record I'm not very knowledgeable at all, and certainly not about things like this.

 

Good Luck with it though

 

Sent from my C6903 using Tapatalk

 

 

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Also does anyone know how to make the dashboard show the cpu frequencies in 6.2.4? I've seen screenshots on 6.1 systems with the cpu frequencies instead of percentages and I would rather see that than a utilization percentage (on a side note, I wonder if the percent utilization would even go past 100% if turbo boost was working?).

 

I don't think you can make the dashboard show CPU frequencies in 6.2.x. It was changed at some point because the utilization percentage is believed to be more meaningful.

 

FWIW, I'm following this thread out of curiosity. One of my servers has an AMD A6-6400K whose nominal frequency is 3.9 GHz. It ramps up and down between 1.8 and 3.9 GHz as expected but when running similar tests to yours and johnnie.black's I can't make it go faster than 3.9 GHz, despite it's "turbo boost" frequency being 4.1 GHz. It doesn't really bother me and I have nothing more to add - it's just another data point and a message that you are not alone. My only Intel-based server is an HP Microserver Gen8 with stock Celeron G1610T, which doesn't incorporate turbo boost - in fact, it hardly changes clock speed at all (range is 2.128 GHz to 2.3 GHz).

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