Comment 42 for bug 429036

Elsie wrote "Bacchus said hardinfo CPU N-Queens is single threaded and his result is 0.88s, but what i get is all 4 cores max out 100% @ 21x with a result of 8.65s! any idea what's up?"

Try this,
1) Shutdown compy, wait, turn-on computer.
2) Open hardinfo
3) Generate report
4) Post your results.

2.6.32 Kernel
Blowfish 3.778
Cryptohash 309.672
Fibonacci 2.593 *
CPU N-Queens 0.887 *
FPU FFT 1.516 *
FPU Raytrace 5.811

2.6.31 Kernel (9.10 Default)
Blowfish 4.466
Cryptohash 252.071
Fibonacci 4.115
CPU N-Queens 1.540
FPU FFT 2.538
FPU Raytrace 21.473

As you can see the 2.6.32 has some MAJOR performance advantages when using a CPU with Turbo Boost. Especially the benchmarks denoted with a *. A side effect is that SMP programs do see a slight boost as well. I assume that as the program initially runs, the first thread will throttle to max boost,. The second thread that starts brings the 2 working cores to approx 80% max TB, and when all of my 8 cores kick in I'm running 57% 1600/2800 of Turbo.

Elsie, I recommend (if not on a production machine) following my steps in post #36. Skip step #1. When you are installing the new kernel, make sure (when prompted), you install the maintainers version so grub will update with both kernels. (You current kernel and the new one you are installing will be available for selection at boot.) If everything works well then you can re-install all your modules / headers, etc.
Hope this helps!