how to find my CPU speed?

qwertyjjj · 08-10-2009, 05:26 PM

Is there a tool that can tell me the processor speed from the command line?
My hosting company gave me a server with less RAM than I expected and while they are upgrading that, I want to check everything else out as well.

forubu · 08-10-2009, 05:40 PM

Try lshw -C cpu.

custangro · 08-10-2009, 05:47 PM

you can use "free" for memory

Code:

user@host$ free -mo

And you can do this for CPU...

Code:

root@host# cat /proc/cpuinfo

-C

GlennsPref · 08-10-2009, 05:50 PM

Hi.

Get the stats from the kernel...

Try uname -a

Another you may like, May need to be installed first...

dmidecode

Cheers, Glenn

i92guboj · 08-10-2009, 05:55 PM

As far as I know /proc/cpuinfo will only tell you the model name of your cpu, which usually will include a speed number. However, that speed number might not be the real speed of your cpu. To put a simple example, an amd k8 sempron +3000 runs at 1800 or so if my memory serves correctly. The same might happen with other cpus. The clock speed is not really indicative of anything unless you are comparing two cpu's of the same exact family.

There's a command called "lscpu" that will output the *current* speed of the cpu. However this also has its drawback: most cpu's nowadays support frequency scaling of some type. This means that most of the time the number there will not be the top speed of your cpu, because it will decelerate to save energy and to spare you some heat when the machine is idle. So, to get a realistic measure on a modern machine you usually have to measure the frequency of your cpu while it's working (ie. compiling a kernel, playing quaky or something like that).

salasi · 08-10-2009, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by i92guboj

As far as I know /proc/cpuinfo will only tell you the model name of your cpu, which usually will include a speed number. However, that speed number might not be the real speed of your cpu.

...and, if you really suspect the hosting company of being underhand, which may or may not be the inference that you expect people to draw from this post, they may be underclocking the cpu, although that ought to be unlikely...

i92guboj · 08-10-2009, 06:14 PM

Yep, that's not too likely

It's not what I was trying the people to infer. Just explaining why there might be different values depending on the tool you use.

qwertyjjj · 08-10-2009, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi

...and, if you really suspect the hosting company of being underhand, which may or may not be the inference that you expect people to draw from this post, they may be underclocking the cpu, although that ought to be unlikely...

I don't see any real benefit in a hosting company underclocking a CPU. What would be the point?
No, I believe they just installed the wrong thing. They gave me a faster computer than I wanted (fine with me

) but half the RAM, and half the disk space!

i92guboj · 08-10-2009, 06:19 PM

That really hurts. An slightly faster cpu is irrelevant for linux, unless they gave you a 4 cores cpu instead of a k8

However, the ram can be put to a good use, and linux works much better when there's a lot of ram available.

GlennsPref · 08-10-2009, 06:33 PM

Hi, I think Intel cpu's are measured by mips (million instructions per second).

Whereas AMD cpu's are measured in mops (million operations per second).

If the server supplier is locking you out of the bios, I'd begin to worry.

I've tried most of the commands here and none really give a definitive answer.

dmidecode appears to...

Code:

Version: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+      
        Voltage: 1.5 V                                               
        External Clock: 206 MHz                                      
        Max Speed: 2800 MHz                                          
        Current Speed: 2902 MHz                                      
        Status: Populated, Enabled                                   
        Upgrade: Other

I used to build pc's for medical comms, like pagerbase, nursecall, etc.

We used to lock out everything we possibly could, no cdrom, no floppy, and password protected bios.

so the bored security guard or night watchman could not play games with the system.

Cheers, Glenn

salasi · 08-11-2009, 02:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwertyjjj

I don't see any real benefit in a hosting company underclocking a CPU. What would be the point?

If they were having problems with cooling (probably if they had crammed more and more computing power into an existing facility) or power consumption, it is exactly what a disreputable organisation would do. But I do emphasise the disreputable part; you wouldn't get there just by being a bit disorganised.

konsolebox · 08-11-2009, 03:07 AM

There are some info in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/cpufreq/* if you have sysfs and cpufreq enabled in the kernel. Just use cat to see the values or 'echo $(<file)'

Randymanme · 08-11-2009, 03:59 AM

Someone asked me for my cpu speed a while back and I neither knew nor knew how to find out. As you can see, I'm rather dumb. Looking at the below output, which numbers are my cpu speed?

~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 2593.760
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
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 up pebs bts cid xtpr
bogomips : 5187.52
clflush size : 64
power management:

GlennsPref · 08-11-2009, 08:02 PM

~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 2593.760
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes