linux Intel turbo boost on linux

[ADMDestroyer]

Hi ! I got an old laptop with an i5 540M and 4gb of DDR3 ram that i wanna turn into a minecraft spigot server. I am running xubuntu 20.04. I noticed that the cpu is running at a really low clock speed, without boosting at all (from 2.5 ghz to 3.7). Is there any way i can control that ?

 

(i tried everything that i found online already)

[Archer42]

Max turbo is 3.07, not 3.7 for this CPU. Also all-core turbo is 2.8 IIRC. So practically you should not expect more than 2.8 even if you are not heat-limited.

 

[Master Disaster]

Yeah, turbo boosting is controlled on a hardware level more than a software one. The OS needs the ability to report its current needs to the chipset which is done though microcode and for the most part Linux has all of that stuff baked right into the kernel. On some of the newer CPUs you might need to install a proprietary driver but for anything older than a few years it just works seamlessly.

 

It might be worth while searching your App Draw for "Additional Drivers", this should allow you to check if there's any proprietary drivers available for your system though in the case of a 500/900 series Intel CPU I wouldn't expect there to be anything.