Via C7 Processor (CPU) - cpufreq and make.conf support

[Erik Trulsson]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 03:02:21PM -0600, Ross Penner wrote:
> On 10/24/07, Roland Smith <rsmith at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 02:25:11PM -0600, Ross Penner wrote:
> > > > What does 'sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels' report? It should list the
> > > > available CPU frequencies.
> > > >
> > > I get:
> > > dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 397/-1 198/-1
> > >
> > > Is this something I should be reporting to stable? It's not explicitly
> > > mentioned in the hardware notes so I'm not sure if my processor is
> > > actually supported in 6.2. Is it possible that I've been shipped the
> > > wrong processor? If so, how would I be able to tell short of ripping
> > > off the giant heatsink and looking?
> >
> > Have a look at the dmesg output with 'dmesg |head -n 24'. There should
> > be some info about the CPU in there. Post those lines here.
> 
> Lines from dmesg:
> 
>  Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
> CPU: VIA C7 Esther+RNG+AES+AES-CTR+SHA1+SHA256+RSA (399.40-MHz 686-class CPU)
>   Origin = "CentaurHauls"  Id = 0x6a9  Stepping = 9
>   Features=0xa7c9bbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,CMOV,PAT,CLFLUSH,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,TM,PBE>
>   Features2=0x181<SSE3,EST,TM2>
> 
> It clearly indicates that it's a 400MHz processor, but the timecounter
> makes me think it' the 1.2 GHz it's supposed to be.

The 'i8254' timecounter is completely independent of the CPU, and the 'Hz'
value associated with it has nothing to do with the clock frequency of the CPU.


> 
> > And have a look at the bios. It could have some settings to regulate the
> > CPU speed.
> 
> The BIOS didn't seem to have anything to adjust the CPU speed, but
> while booting I did notice that it declared itself as a via C7 400MHz
> processor.

It sounds like the CPU actually is running at 400MHz then.  
Either that or both the BIOS and FreeBSD misidentifes the CPU speed.

It could be that the BIOS do not set up the processor correctly.
Are you sure there are no BIOS settings related to the CPU speed?
Have you tried updating the BIOS?




-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se