Measuring the Performance of Your Raspberry Pi with vcgencmd

A step-by-step guide to checking the clock speed of your Raspberry Pi using the vcgencmd command in Linux. …


Updated August 29, 2023

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A step-by-step guide to checking the clock speed of your Raspberry Pi using the vcgencmd command in Linux.

Raspberry Pi devices have multiple clock speeds that are important for their performance and functionality. Knowing the clock speed can help you optimize your system and troubleshoot any issues. In this article, we will show you how to check the clock speed of your Raspberry Pi using the vcgencmd command in Linux.

  1. Open a terminal window on your Raspberry Pi.

  2. Type vcgencmd followed by measure_clock arm and press Enter:

vcgencmd measure_clock arm

This will display the current ARM clock speed of your device in Hertz (Hz). For example, if your Raspberry Pi has a 1.2GHz ARM processor, you might see something like this:

frequency(48)=120000000000

This means that the ARM clock speed is currently running at 1.2 GHz (1,200,000,0000 Hz).

  1. To check the core clock speed of your Raspberry Pi, type vcgencmd followed by measure_clock core and press Enter:
vcgencmd measure_clock core

This will display the current core clock speed in Hertz (Hz) for each of the four cores on your device. For example:

frequency(0)=4000000000
frequency(1)=3840000000
frequency(2)=4000000000
frequency(3)=3760000000

This output shows that the four cores on my Raspberry Pi are running at 400 MHz, 384 MHz, 400 MHz, and 376 MHz respectively.

  1. To check the voltage of your Raspberry Pi, type vcgencmd followed by measure_volts core and press Enter:
vcgencmd measure_volts core

This will display the current voltage for each of the four cores on your device. For example:

volt=1.20V

This means that the core voltage is currently running at 1.2 volts.

Remember, these commands are only available in Linux-based operating systems like Raspbian or Ubuntu Mate. If you’re using Windows IoT Core or another operating system, you may need to use alternative methods to check your clock speed and performance.