X230 with Quad-Core (Intel Core i7-3612QE) is slow

[moerkey]

Hello,

I bought an X230 motherboard with quad-core (Intel Core i7-3612QE) from Asia and had Coreboot installed via the provider https://shop.vikings.net/product-category/coreboot-flashing-services/. Unfortunately, the system has now become much slower. The provider asked me to contact the developers of Coreboot. Is it possible that the Coreboot is not set for an Intel Core i7-3612QE on an X230?

I have created some benchmarks. Here are the results with Phoronix.

Quad-Core CPU-Governor OnDemand: https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2311304-NE-KERNELDEM53 Quad-Core CPU-Governor Performance: https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2311303-NE-KERNELPER02 Dual-Core CPU-Governor Performance: https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2312226-NE-KERNELPER58

Here are also the tests via CLI under Linux with sysbench.

The tests ending with 1.txt were performed on the quad-core with conventional BIOS. The tests ending with 2.txt were carried out on the quad-core with Coreboot & CPU-Governor OnDemand. The tests ending with 3.txt were performed on the quad-core with Coreboot & CPU-Governor Performance. The tests ending with 4.txt were carried out on the dual-core with conventional BIOS & CPU Governor Performance.

cpu1.txt cpu2.txt cpu3.txt cpu4.txt io1.txt io2.txt io3.txt io4.txt ram1.txt ram2.txt ram3.txt ram4.txt

The RAM remained roughly the same speed on all systems. The SSD remained the same speed on the quad-core with Coreboot, although the dual-core is a tick faster. This can be neglected.

The CPU has become drastically slower on the quad-core with Coreboot. The dual-core is a tick faster overall. However, this is due to the test and the CPU speed of 3.6 GHz compared to the quad-core.

The tests with sysbench can be carried out with the following commands.

sysbench --test=cpu run sysbench --test=memory run sysbench --test=fileio --file-test-mode=seqwr run

Thank you in advance.

Cheers

[merge]

well that's a question for coreboot upstream, i.e. https://ticket.coreboot.org/projects/coreboot but it's very well possible that the x230 board code assumes that the vendor-sold platforms, https://thinkwiki.de/X230 are being used.

[porterdcarnegie]

I did a few timed Linux 6.12 compilations on my Thinkpad x230, i7 3615QE. At first on a minimal linux distribution (KISS Linux) which resulted in 843 seconds with Coreboot and 847 seconds with original firmware (2.77). Notably, with Coreboot on Debian(testing), booted from a live USB, the kernel compiled in 505 seconds.

On KISS Linux the reported cache size and cpu speed are as follows: /sys/devices/...cpu0.../index3/size reports 6144K /proc/cpuinfo reports 3092 MHz during load

I power the laptop from a power supply with a digital readout. It suggests 2-4W higher power consumption on Debian. Fan speed is higher, too.

Setting intel pstate governor to performance did not speed up compile time.

[moerkey]

JFYI: I sold the device, so I am personally not interested in that topic anymore.