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Support #657

Updated by Daniel Curtis over 9 years ago

Being able to scale up or down the CPU speed for my laptop is great for when I need to conserve battery life or get better performance out of my laptop when I need it. This is a short guide on using cpupower to control CPU scaling on Arch Linux. 

 h2. Prepare the system 

 * Make sure the system is up to date: 
 <pre> 
 sudo pacman -Syu 
 </pre> 

 h2. Install cpupower 

 * Install cpupower: 
 <pre> 
 sudo pacman -S cpupower 
 </pre> 

 * Start and enable the cpupower service at boot: 
 <pre> 
 sudo systemctl enable cpupower.service 
 sudo systemctl start cpupower.service 
 </pre> 

 * Show the current CPU information: 
 <pre> 
 cpupower frequency-info 
 </pre> 
 #* _Example output_: 
 <pre> 
 analyzing CPU 0: 
   driver: powernow-k8 
   CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 
   CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 1 
   maximum transition latency: 107 us. 
   hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.00 GHz 
   available frequency steps: 2.00 GHz, 1.80 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 800 MHz 
   available cpufreq governors: userspace, ondemand, performance 
   current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 2.00 GHz. 
                   The governor "userspace" may decide which speed to use 
                   within this range. 
   current CPU frequency is 800 MHz. 
   boost state support: 
     Supported: no 
     Active: no 
 </pre> 

 * Change the CPU governor: 
 <pre> 
 sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance ondemand 
 </pre> 

 * Speed up the CPU: 
 <pre> 
 sudo cpupower frequency-set -f 2.00 GHz 
 </pre> 

 h2. Resources 

 * https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling

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