Bdtyktl

I know that many people will say "it automatically kicks in regardless of software your settings" but that's not true. I'm not a noob.

I'm on an AMD A6-4400m with regular frequency of 2.7 GHz, up to 3.2Ghz with TurboCore. But it seems that turbocore only works when propietary drivers are installed (am I wrong?). As of Ubuntu 16.04, fglrx support has been dropped so I don't find a way to install them or enable TurboCore.

This is the output of sudo cpupower frequency-info:

boost state support:

Supported: yes

Active: no

Boost States: 2

Total States: 8

Pstate-Pb0: 3200MHz (boost state)

Pstate-Pb1: 2900MHz (boost state)

Pstate-P0:  2700MHz

Output of cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost:

1

Yes, I ran "sudo modprobe msr" before running that command. Whether on battery or plugged in TurboCore won't kick in, but with Ubuntu 14.04+fglrx it kicks in fine and in the boost state it will say that it's active. I can even notice that TurboCore is working because cpufreq-aperf will show the turbocore frequencies. Is there any solution for this with the open source amd drivers? Or tell me, there won't be a solution and I should downgrade to Ubuntu 14.04?

EDIT: What's even worse is that a clean Windows 8.1 installation is able to reach TurboCore frequencie, without amd's drivers. The radeon driver seems to be buggy.

Just found a way to make TurboCore working. Edited /etc/default/grub with nano and modified the line with GRUB_CMD_LINUX_[...], ending up with something like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash **radeon.bapm=1**"

Then

sudo update grub; sudo modprobe msr

and

sudo cpufreq-aperf

And see if your processor is indeed using TurboCore speeds. Plus you can see if your processor is using its UV frequencies with powersave as governor (for instance, my proc's lowest frequency is 1.4GHz, but it sometimes goes 1.2-1.0 GHz).

It's worth to mention too that to get the most out of your proc you'll need to set the default governor to Perfomance. Oh, and I forgot, once the processor heats up (>70°C), even if you force your processor to its max frequency (let's say, mine is 2.7GHz) it will start throttling down and it won't use TurboCore until the processor gets cooled down. This doesn't happen in windows, so the radeon driver is still buggy.

This method works in 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish.

# apt install linux-tools-generic



# nano /etc/default/grub

Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= "quiet splash radeon.bapm=1". CTRL+X, y, enter to save changes.

# update-grub



# reboot

Running an A8-5557M, and confirmed by using Ubuntu MATE's CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor panel applet.