When comparing Conky vs CoreFreq, the Slant community recommends Conky for most people. In the question“What are the best system monitors for UNIX-like systems?” Conky is ranked 3rd while CoreFreq is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Conky is:
Conky is editable to the point that there is almost no limit to the designs one can use to display the type of information one wants. Not only are there thousands of themes available on sites like deviantart and gnome-look, but a user can create any type of look they like with a little bit of know-how and imagination.
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Pros
Pro Infinitely themeable
Conky is editable to the point that there is almost no limit to the designs one can use to display the type of information one wants. Not only are there thousands of themes available on sites like deviantart and gnome-look, but a user can create any type of look they like with a little bit of know-how and imagination.
Pro Many different sensor stats
Conky has a bunch of sensor stats that the user can choose to display such as CPU usage, memory, uptime, etc. Depending on what the user wants to display, most likely there is a way to display the needed info when using Conky.
Pro Runs on top of X
Pro Overclocking
Ryzen P-States and Intel Core ratios.
Pro Like a BIOS under Linux
Can toggle SpeedStep, Clock modulation, Turbo boost, C-States demotion, C1E, and other settings.
Pro Accurate CPU monitoring
CoreFreq is based on its own kernel driver, which collects the performance counters.
Pro Core Temperature and Voltage
Package and Core temps, Hot sensor, Vcore, RAPL power & energy consummed
Pro Lots of details
Processor, Memory controller, Dimm, Chipset informations.
Pro Stress algorithms
Can trigger the Turbo of any CPU.
Pro IPC
Instructions issued.
Pro Tasks and Memory usage
Realtime tasks per CPU.
Cons
Con Setup can be difficult
Being text based, the config file for Conky can be intimidating for those unfamiliar. Though there are configuration managers out there such as Conky Manager which can make the setup a bit easier.
Con Is system monitor but can't manage processes
Conky is a great system monitor, but can't e.g. kill (individual) processes like htop can.
Con Requires X
Cannot easily be used on a headless server or remotely (most people and servers support remoting via SSH).
Con Not a System Monitor at all
This is a hardware monitor, not a system monitor.
Con Needs to be compiled
CoreFreq is released in source code, you have to run make to compile it.
Con Not all IMC are listed
Xeon Zen Opteron IMC is not available yet.
Con Not made for a virtual machine
Beside the Dom0 of Xen, CoreFreq can't query most of the necessary registers from a virtualized processor
