CPU Frequency Control on Arrandale Chips
 

How well can CPU frequency be controlled on Intel's mobile Arrandale chips? I'm looking at a 2.66GHz i5-560M with HM57 chipset. I will be running real-time software, so need a fixed CPU frequency.

I would like to have two power management states, one dynamic and then another where all cores are held at 2.66GHz no matter what the system load. I need to be able to disable turbo boost and disable speed stepping. How is this done in Linux. Does it work well? Should I just go with an i3 since it does not have turbo boost?

You can compile your kernel without Turbo Boost-support. If you want a fixed frequency just load the performance-governor into your kernel, otherwise use the ondemand- or conservative-governor.

hmmm... I don't have enough free time for kernel hacking. What about CPUfreq? Does it work well with the relatively new Intel chips? I will note that I also wish to disable speed step.

It is not really kernel hacking to change just one option. But you can also disable the Turbo mode in your BIOS. The mentioned governors are kernel modules, you can easily change them with the CPUFreq-frontend of your choice.