CPU won't boost

TLDR: CPU won’t boost past pState-p2 (1200Mhz)

Full version:
A few weeks ago I was complaining about poor performance on a new system.
I may have found the culprit. My CPU won’t boost past the base frequency.

output of inxi | grep CPU

CPU: 8-Core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics (-MT MCP-) speed/min/max: 1198/1200/4462 MHz

output of watch grep \"cpu MHz\" /proc/cpuinfo

cpu MHz         : 1197.739
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.737
cpu MHz         : 1197.735
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.739
cpu MHz         : 1197.737
cpu MHz         : 1197.739
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.737
cpu MHz         : 1197.736
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.740
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.738
cpu MHz         : 1197.738 

This is the cpu speed when I am compiling librewolf.

And the following are the frequencies when system is at idle

Every 2.0s: grep "cpu MHz" /proc/cpuinfo 

cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 
cpu MHz         : 1197.775 
cpu MHz         : 1200.000 

I found a similar topic. But the person had an Intel chip, and I have an AMD chip.

Temporary solution to that was a throttlestop program that locked the frequency of cpu, regardless if it was under load or not. But the permanent solution had something to do with TLP. But the person did not mention exactly what was changed/tweaked.

Thank you for the help!

output of sudo cpupower frequency-info

analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency:  Cannot determine or is not supported.
  hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 4.46 GHz
  available frequency steps:  3.20 GHz, 1.30 GHz, 1.20 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative ondemand userspace powersave performance schedutil
  current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 4.46 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 1.20 GHz (asserted by call to hardware)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes
    Boost States: 0
    Total States: 3
    Pstate-P0:  3200MHz
    Pstate-P1:  1300MHz
    Pstate-P2:  1200MHz

System info

System:    Kernel: 5.14.10-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.22.5 tk: Qt 5.15.2
           wm: kwin_x11 vt: 1 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: ROG Strix G713QM_G713QM v: 1.0 serial: <filter>
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: G713QM v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: G713QM.311 date: 06/27/2021
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 55.6 Wh (61.0%) condition: 91.1/90.0 Wh (101.2%) volts: 15.8 min: 15.9 model: AS3GWAF3KC GA50358
           type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Unknown
           Device-1: hidpp_battery_2 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse MX Master 2S serial: <filter>
           charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging
Memory:    RAM: total: 15.06 GiB used: 10.17 GiB (67.5%)
           RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required.
CPU:       Info: 8-Core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3 rev: 0 cache:
           L2: 4 MiB bogomips: 102241
           Speed: 1198 MHz min/max: 1200/4462 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1198 2: 1198 3: 1198 4: 1198 5: 1198
           6: 1198 7: 1198 8: 1198 9: 1198 10: 1198 11: 1198 12: 1198 13: 1198 14: 1198 15: 1198 16: 1198
           Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm adx aes aperfmperf apic arat avic avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bpext cat_l3 cdp_l3 clflush
           clflushopt clwb clzero cmov cmp_legacy constant_tsc cpb cpuid cqm cqm_llc cqm_mbm_local cqm_mbm_total cqm_occup_llc
           cr8_legacy cx16 cx8 de decodeassists erms extapic extd_apicid f16c flushbyasid fma fpu fsgsbase fsrm fxsr fxsr_opt
           ht hw_pstate ibpb ibrs ibs invpcid irperf lahf_lm lbrv lm mba mca mce misalignsse mmx mmxext monitor movbe msr mtrr
           mwaitx nonstop_tsc nopl npt nrip_save nx ospke osvw overflow_recov pae pat pausefilter pclmulqdq pdpe1gb
           perfctr_core perfctr_llc perfctr_nb pfthreshold pge pku pni popcnt pse pse36 rapl rdpid rdpru rdrand rdseed rdt_a
           rdtscp rep_good sep sha_ni skinit smap smca smep ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 stibp succor svm svm_lock
           syscall tce topoext tsc tsc_scale umip v_spec_ctrl v_vmsave_vmload vaes vgif vmcb_clean vme vmmcall vpclmulqdq
           wbnoinvd wdt xgetbv1 xsave xsavec xsaveerptr xsaveopt xsaves
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GA106M [GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile / Max-Q] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: nvidia v: 470.63.01
           bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:2520 class-ID: 0300
           Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Cezanne vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 05:00.0
           chip-ID: 1002:1638 class-ID: 0300
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
           resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz s-dpi: 96
           OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.63.01 direct render: Yes
Audio:     Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 05:00.1
           chip-ID: 1002:1637 class-ID: 0403
           Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor vendor: ASUSTeK driver: N/A
           bus-ID: 05:00.5 chip-ID: 1022:15e2 class-ID: 0480
           Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 17h HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
           bus-ID: 05:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3 class-ID: 0403
           Device-4: JMTek LLC. USB PnP Audio Device type: USB driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus-ID: 3-1.2.2:7
           chip-ID: 0c76:1620 class-ID: 0300
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.14.10-1-MANJARO running: yes
           Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
           Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
           Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.38 running: yes
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000
           bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
           IF: enp2s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global broadcast: <filter>
           IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link
           Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2723 class-ID: 0280
           IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
           IF-ID-1: virbr0 state: down mac: <filter>
           IP v4: <filter> scope: global broadcast: <filter>
           WAN IP: <filter>
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 3-4:5 chip-ID: 8087:0029 class-ID: e001
           Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: down bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes
           address: see --recommends
Logical:   Message: No logical block device data found.
RAID:      Message: No RAID data found.
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 5.89 TiB used: 1.23 TiB (20.9%)
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFM512GD3JX013N size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 type: SSD
           serial: <filter> rev: 41000C20 temp: 37.9 C scheme: GPT
           ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD My Passport 2627 size: 3.64 TiB type: N/A
           serial: <filter> rev: 4008 scheme: GPT
           ID-3: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WDS480G2G0A-00JH30 size: 447.14 GiB type: SSD
           serial: <filter> scheme: GPT
           ID-4: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WDS480G2G0A-00JH30 size: 447.13 GiB type: SSD
           serial: <filter> scheme: GPT
           ID-5: /dev/sdd type: USB vendor: Lenovo model: USB Hard Drive size: 931.51 GiB type: N/A serial: <filter> rev: 3U
           scheme: GPT
           Message: No optical or floppy data found.
Partition: ID-1: / size: 422.37 GiB used: 72.6 GiB (17.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdc2 label: N/A
           uuid: 581c79c3-b5ca-4ee2-9d67-c226c64d502f
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 288 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sdc1 label: NO_LABEL uuid: 75B0-09E2
           ID-3: /media/aurora/fastmedia size: 447.14 GiB used: 350.61 GiB (78.4%) fs: ntfs dev: /dev/sdb1 label: fastDATA_1
           uuid: 42D6C57FD6C57427
           ID-4: /media/aurora/media size: 3.64 TiB used: 837.41 GiB (22.5%) fs: ntfs dev: /dev/sda1 label: Data4TB
           uuid: 3CBAA0BDBAA07554
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 16.64 GiB used: 1.58 GiB (9.5%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sdc3 label: N/A
           uuid: ae036e38-c2e4-4d71-ac66-4cfc9e1b4d52
Unmounted: ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1p1 size: 260 MiB fs: vfat label: SYSTEM uuid: C839-BD33
           ID-2: /dev/nvme0n1p2 size: 16 MiB fs: <superuser required> label: N/A uuid: N/A
           ID-3: /dev/nvme0n1p3 size: 456.24 GiB fs: ntfs label: OS uuid: 48103B67103B5B60
           ID-4: /dev/nvme0n1p4 size: 750 MiB fs: ntfs label: RECOVERY uuid: FCE20CA0E20C616E
           ID-5: /dev/nvme0n1p5 size: 19.5 GiB fs: ntfs label: RESTORE uuid: C8D2C855D2C84A00
           ID-6: /dev/nvme0n1p6 size: 200 MiB fs: vfat label: MYASUS uuid: F0C8-80F8
           ID-7: /dev/sdd1 size: 931.51 GiB fs: ext4 label: N/A uuid: f8be4f07-2be3-446f-be1d-0ba2be4b50f8
USB:       Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 1-3:2 info: ASUSTek N-KEY Device type: Keyboard driver: asus,usbhid interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s
           power: 100mA chip-ID: 0b05:1866 class-ID: 0301
           Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 2-1:2 info: Western Digital My Passport 2627 type: Mass Storage driver: usb-storage interfaces: 1
           rev: 3.1 speed: 5 Gb/s power: 896mA chip-ID: 1058:2627 class-ID: 0806 serial: <filter>
           Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
           Hub-4: 3-1:2 info: Genesys Logic Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.1 speed: 480 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 05e3:0610
           class-ID: 0900
           Hub-5: 3-1.2:4 info: Terminus Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 1a40:0101 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 3-1.2.1:11 info: Logitech Unifying Receiver type: Keyboard,Mouse,HID driver: logitech-djreceiver,usbhid
           interfaces: 3 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 98mA chip-ID: 046d:c52b class-ID: 0300
           Device-2: 3-1.2.2:7 info: JMTek LLC. USB PnP Audio Device type: Audio,HID driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
           interfaces: 4 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 0c76:1620 class-ID: 0300
           Device-3: 3-1.2.4:9 info: SINO WEALTH Gaming KB type: Keyboard,HID driver: hid-generic,usbhid interfaces: 2
           rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 500mA chip-ID: 258a:002a class-ID: 0300
           Hub-6: 3-2:3 info: VIA Labs VL813 Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.1 speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 2109:2813 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 3-2.3:6 info: Microsoft Xbox360 Controller type: <vendor specific> driver: xpad interfaces: 4 rev: 2.0
           speed: 12 Mb/s power: 500mA chip-ID: 045e:028e class-ID: ff00 serial: <filter>
           Device-2: 3-4:5 info: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: Bluetooth driver: btusb interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s
           power: 100mA chip-ID: 8087:0029 class-ID: e001
           Hub-7: 4-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900
           Hub-8: 4-1:3 info: Genesys Logic Hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 speed: 5 Gb/s chip-ID: 05e3:0612 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 4-1.1:4 info: Lenovo Portable HDD type: Mass Storage driver: usb-storage interfaces: 1 rev: 3.0
           speed: 5 Gb/s power: 8mA chip-ID: 17ef:455a class-ID: 0806 serial: <filter>
           Device-2: 4-1.3:5 info: ASMedia ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge
           ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
           type: Mass Storage driver: uas interfaces: 1 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s chip-ID: 174c:55aa class-ID: 0806
           serial: <filter>
           Device-3: 4-1.4:6 info: ASMedia ASM1051E SATA 6Gb/s bridge ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge
           ASM1153E SATA 6Gb/s bridge
           type: Mass Storage driver: uas interfaces: 1 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s chip-ID: 174c:55aa class-ID: 0806
           serial: <filter>
           Hub-9: 4-2:2 info: VIA Labs VL813 Hub ports: 4 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s chip-ID: 2109:0813 class-ID: 0900
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0 C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0
           GPU: device: nvidia screen: :0.0 temp: 46 C device: amdgpu temp: 48.0 C
Info:      Processes: 439 Uptime: 2h 32m wakeups: 20 Init: systemd v: 249 Compilers: gcc: 11.1.0 alt: 10 clang: 12.0.1
           Packages: 1756 pacman: 1750 flatpak: 6 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.07

The governor “powersave” means that it will not clock up to safe battery… this is set by default on laptops with TLP enabled when running in battery mode.

Set the governor to “ondemand” and it will normal:

sudo cpupower frequency-set -g ondemand

You can set this permanently by editing the variables in /etc/tlp.conf.

1 Like

Thanks!
I edited /etc/tlp.conf and set CPU_SCALING_GOVERNOR_ON_AC to ondemand, but left CPU_SCALING_GOVERNOR_ON_BAT to powersave

Compiled librewolf and now the frequency was reaching 4000MHz.

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