Scaling Governor in moded Xeon x5460 (Dell Vostro 230)

[malomehi]

Hi,

I have a Dell Vostro 230 with a 775 socket motherboard and I modded a Xeon x5460 to use it with this motherboard. I also added the corresponding microcodes to the BIOS which is an AMI BIOS.
The cpu is correctly posted and works perfectly but I have a problem with the scaling governor.

The scaling is perfectly done in Windows 7. I can monitor the multiplier using CPU-Z and it changes regularly keeping the temperature around 40 degress if no operations are done, even lower.
But when I use debian, the multiplier seems to be always at the maximum value and the temperature is around 10 or 15 degrees higher than windows.

I installed cpufrequtils but apparently none of the drivers is compatible with this cpu. I tried manually to load the drivers I think might work with this CPU using modprobe: acpi-cpufreq and p4-clockmod. but I always get the same output:
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'acpi_cpufreq': No such device
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'p4_clockmod': No such device

Also there is no directory called 'cpufreq' in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0 (same for cpu1, cpu2 and cpu3)
I have not seen cpu errors in dmesg log either.

Does anyone have any clue of what is going on? There are no compatible drivers for this cpu? It sounds to me a bit odd as the scaling works fine in Windows.
Is this issue related to the BIOS, the CPU?

Thanks.

[malomehi]

Hi,

I have a Vostro 230 too and I modded the BIOS to add the microcodes for Xeon x5460.
Everything worked fine and I have Windows 7 and Debian now installed and running.

My problem is that I cannot use cpufreq because no valid driver can be loaded. After reading a lot on the internet I suspect this is happening because EIST (Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology) is not loaded by the BIOS.

Is there any way to mod the BIOS to enable this feature at boot?

Thanks.

[DeathBringer]

Boot Windows and make TXT report of CPU-Z.

[malomehi]

Boot Windows and make TXT report of CPU-Z.

Hi,

See attached the CPU-Z report.

Some extra information:
 

Code:

sudo dmesg | grep -i microcode

[    0.802982] microcode: sig=0x10676, pf=0x40, revision=0x60f
[    0.803091] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.

(Note that "microcode updated early to revision..." message is missing in the dmesg log even having updated the "intel-microcode" debian package using apt-get. Maybe this is not a related issue but I think it is worth to point it out.)

Code:

sudo cat /var/log/kern.log | grep cpufreq

Jan  7 14:23:18 debian kernel: [  776.745800] p4_clockmod: Warning: EST-capable CPU detected. The acpi-cpufreq module offers voltage scaling in addition to frequency scaling. You should use that instead of p4-clockmod, if possible.

Code:

sudo modprobe acpi-cpufreq

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'acpi_cpufreq': No such device

Code:

sudo modprobe p4-clockmod

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'p4_clockmod': No such device

Code:

sudo modprobe speedstep-lib

(This is the only cpufreq driver I can load with modprobe but cpufreq still does not work with this driver)

Code:

sudo cpufreq-info

cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
 no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
analyzing CPU 1:
 no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
analyzing CPU 2:
 no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
analyzing CPU 3:
 no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.

Code:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor    : 0
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 23
model name    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5460  @ 3.16GHz
stepping    : 6
microcode    : 0x60f
cpu MHz        : 3159.049
cache size    : 6144 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 4
core id        : 0
cpu cores    : 4
apicid        : 0
initial apicid    : 0
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 10
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm
bugs        :
bogomips    : 6318.09
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor    : 1
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 23
model name    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5460  @ 3.16GHz
stepping    : 6
microcode    : 0x60f
cpu MHz        : 3159.049
cache size    : 6144 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 4
core id        : 1
cpu cores    : 4
apicid        : 1
initial apicid    : 1
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 10
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm
bugs        :
bogomips    : 6318.09
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor    : 2
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 23
model name    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5460  @ 3.16GHz
stepping    : 6
microcode    : 0x60f
cpu MHz        : 3159.049
cache size    : 6144 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 4
core id        : 2
cpu cores    : 4
apicid        : 2
initial apicid    : 2
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 10
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm
bugs        :
bogomips    : 6318.09
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor    : 3
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 23
model name    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5460  @ 3.16GHz
stepping    : 6
microcode    : 0x60f
cpu MHz        : 3159.049
cache size    : 6144 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 4
core id        : 3
cpu cores    : 4
apicid        : 3
initial apicid    : 3
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 10
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm
bugs        :
bogomips    : 6318.09
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Any help would be great. The Xeon CPU works great in Debian but as there is no valid cpufreq driver then I think it does not use any CPU governor. It seems that the CPU works at maximum performance all the time being the average temperature 55 degrees. (Temperature in Windows is about 20 degrees lower, as the governor seems to works fine in Windows. At least I can see how the CPU multiplier changes in CPU-Z when I run it in Windows).

[DeathBringer]

Give me Linux's result of
sudo modprobe msr
sudo rdmsr 0x1A0

[malomehi]

Give me Linux's result of
sudo modprobe msr
sudo rdmsr 0x1A0

Code:

sudo rdmsr 0x1A0

4062962489

[DeathBringer]

The same as in Windows.
Enhanced SpeedStep is disabled in IA32_MISC_ENABLE MSR now and this state is locked.
I'll try to find the reason.

[malomehi]

The same as in Windows.
Enhanced SpeedStep is disabled in IA32_MISC_ENABLE MSR now and this state is locked.
I'll try to find the reason.

I tried to find an option in the BIOS to enable/disable Enhanced SpeedStep but unfortunately I could not find any.
The closest option I found in the BIOS is Low Power Mode but enabling/disabling this option makes no difference at all.

Would it help if I attach my modded BIOS file?

[DeathBringer]

Would it help if I attach my modded BIOS file?

No, I have my own.
I need the result of
sudo rdmsr 0x2C

[malomehi]

Code:

sudo rdmsr 0x2C

rdmsr: CPU 0 cannot read MSR 0x0000002c

(same result for CPU 1, 2 and 3)