Arm Cortex A8 600Mhz+

[paddy]

deleted

 

[Prometheus]

I'm afraid I can't answer any of the rest of your post, but I would like to share my point of view on your last question, if that's ok.

As a side note ,what would you guys like to see the pandora overclock to in a safe way without too much overheating and battery drain ,no crazy answers as we all would like to see 3000+mhz but mabe 700mhz ?

Myself, I actually don't care about overclocking (I suppose I don't fall under your "we all"? ). I would much rather see apps that are well-optimised so that this isn't necessary.

 

[SNESFAN]

I would like to see a stable 800-900 mhz every once in a while when running things that push it (higher end games and emu's)

I will mainly run the pandora at 5-600 or whatever it takes for the majority of my needs (snes emulation, music etc) I don't really plan on impressing people with it too much, it's my toy not theirs

 

[paddy]

Agreed i would also like to see a standard clock speed but lol to be honest i want that to be the highest possible so if it means overclocking to 700mhz, if this is even possible then i would always be at 700mhz given that this is a safe speed to be at ,we all really don't know as we don't have Pandora's to test but the devs and OPT do know ,think about the psp running at 333mhz why use the standard 222mhz after you unlock it ,everything well most things have been writen to run at 333mhz and my psp is always at 333mhz as it was stated long ago it was safe but would drain the battery ,i want to know what safe limits the pandora has ,if its 650mhz or even 700mhz as i think most people will run it like that almost indefinitely.

Something like ...
minimal 133mhz/222mhz
battery save 450mhz
default 550mhz/600mhz
overclock 650mhz/700mhz

with the highest setting being the unstable being locked out like 720mhz/800mhz
or whatever the numbers are.

 

[juniorm33]

It is confusing, but 500Mhz is the default (regardless of what the main site says)
Guaranteed to do 600.5Mhz. (This is your slight overclock)
Anything above and beyond is pot luck, and we probably wont get any numbers out of OPT for now. So probably just best to wait for a few people to get theirs and see what their able to achieve.

Your questions are valid so hope you don't think I'm dismissing them, but this is one of those topics that I believe wont be answered prior to delivery. They probably don't want to nail their flags to the mast and get called on it, not by you but someone will.

I'm hoping that most will at least get 700-800Mhz. But there's things like changing the voltage etc which you'll be able to do, but may void your warranty. So again, it's about waiting and seeing what people achieve.

 

[SNESFAN]

psp proc was rated at 333mhz though? It was under-clocked when it first came out by default.

 

[paddy]

With at least 15 Pandora dev units going about and have been for over a year ,i really don't know why they would not push it to see what it can do ,well infact i bet they have but are saying nothing becase theres nothing to say mabe ?

 

[juniorm33]

With at least 15 Pandora dev units going about and have been for over a year ,i really don't know why they would not push it to see what it can do ,well infact i bet they have but are saying nothing becase theres nothing to say mabe ?

Not a matter of nothing to say, it's a matter of not seemingly guaranteeing something, even if they explicitly say it's not a guarantee!
Just think they've been caught a few times on things like that. I wouldn't read any more into it.
I'll just be very surprised if OPT say's anything that's all.

 

[laurencevde]

AFAIK, there are 5 different voltage-levels, OPP1-5, and for each voltage-level, TI has specified a clock-speed at which the chip is guaranteed to be stable. OPP5 is not meant to be used permanently, and does (slightly) lower the chip's life-expectancy if used for prolonged periods of time. At OPP5, 600Mhz is the max-guaranteed-stable speed, and at OPP4 (which can be used permanently), it's 500Mhz.

Of course, the chip is supposed to clock back automatically (to practically nothing) while idling.

So I guess by default the OS will throttle up to OPP4/500Mhz, unless a running application requests 600Mhz, at wich it'll throttle up to OPP5/600Mhz.

It'll also be interesting to find out the max stable clock-speed for each voltage-level on the individual chips. Lower voltages do result in less power-consumption.

 

[juniorm33]

So I guess by default the OS will throttle up to OPP4/500Mhz, unless a running application requests 600Mhz, at wich it'll throttle up to OPP5/600Mhz.

I know an app can request a speed (part of configuration), I don't know about it changing the voltage profile though. Don't ever remember hearing this.
Even this facility is optional though. If it's set to run at 500Mhz and needs a little bit more to run smoothly say 502Mhz it wont just clock itself up.

 

[craigix]

With at least 15 Pandora dev units going about and have been for over a year ,i really don't know why they would not push it to see what it can do ,well infact i bet they have but are saying nothing becase theres nothing to say mabe ?

We have said several times that they seem happy at 900mhz.

 

[WizardStan]

question 3.if the chip is 600+mhz as advertised then 600mhz should be standard and light overclocking possible so with that in mind 650mhz/680mhz mabe even 700mhz should be possible yes ?

Assume it is not possible to overclock. Tell yourself, repeatedly if necessary, that 600Mhz is the fastest it will ever get. Any programs you write need to work within that bound, and even lower if possible.
If it turns out that you are able to overclock, then it is a bonus.

With at least 15 Pandora dev units going about and have been for over a year ,i really don't know why they would not push it to see what it can do ,well infact i bet they have but are saying nothing becase theres nothing to say mabe ?

The first few videos that came out they were overclocking, sometimes as high as 900Mhz. Around the time of the whole "does overclocking void the warranty" kerfluffle, they started posting more videos running at 500Mhz. The reason for this is probably (my guess) because they don't want to encourage people to think that overclocking is a guarantee. Assume there is no chance to clock above the 600Mhz, you will be happier that way than if you go into it with any expectations of overclock.
The other reason they stopped showing overclock videos is because they don't need to. With the exception of the recent N64 emulation, everything has run perfectly at 500Mhz. Why overclock when you don't need to?

 

[juniorm33]

We have said several times that they seem happy at 900mhz.

What OPP is that at Craig?

 

[Pickle]

With at least 15 Pandora dev units going about and have been for over a year ,i really don't know why they would not push it to see what it can do ,well infact i bet they have but are saying nothing becase theres nothing to say mabe ?

Im really sure where you coming from with this comment. There are have been clocking discussions galore. We have (myself included) have stated and showed what development boards are capable of. Based on those results i expect most pandora's will be able to go > 800 Mhz. Anything around 900 and greater will start to become unstable.

Most likely the default clock will be 500 or 600 Mhz. Current default is at 500 Mhz, I believe the 600 is being advertised since all of the boards have shown such a high overhead. Although I believe an official statement should be made at some point to clearly state what the default clock is. Clearly state what clocks the pandora warranty covers.

As with any device you will be responsible to abide by these conditions, otherwise you void your warranty. There has to be a line some where, OP cant afford to replace tons of boards if everyone bricked them by pushing them too hard.

But this should be considered within context of the device. Experience has shown that ARM processors will not overheat or fry, but rather will crash when an unstable state is reached.
Some life span will be lost the harder you drive the chip, but I think the chip life will still exceed the use life. For example ive overclocked my gp2x since ive had it, it still works, but i dont use it anymore hardly. Its also important to consider that your not going to be running the omap at 800 mhz 24/7.

So my point is that we all know what the omap can do, OP has to have a line in the sand for financial protection, but in the end ARM can handle high clocks pretty well. I expect anything smaller than 800 will never be an issue. I think some have been thinking about the clock/overclock too much.

 

[droneb]

another one liner by CX

XD, but then again, how much is OPT going to agree to not to void warranty.

 

[craigix]

If you overvolt it you void the warranty, the default OS does not allow overvolting.

I think Ed has been overseeing an overclock app which might ship with the OS.

 

[elinscheid]

I would never modify the hardware to get a higher speed. As long as the OS comes with an overclocking tool then I will only use that. I mean, I've waited a long time for the Pandora, the last thing I want to do is brick it. It's my baby.

 

[Mithrildor]

I would never modify the hardware to get a higher speed. As long as the OS comes with an overclocking tool then I will only use that. I mean, I've waited a long time for the Pandora, the last thing I want to do is brick it. It's my baby.

Its unbrickable. You can fry the mobo though

 

[Pickle]

If you overvolt it you void the warranty, the default OS does not allow overvolting.

I think Ed has been overseeing an overclock app which might ship with the OS.

There is an overclocking app (gui interface), which uses a kernel interface, which is also can be changed directly through command line.
The overvolting or OPP settings are not adjustable and there is no interface provided by the kernel.

Im taking your statement that overclocking is allowed and the warranty will still apply.

 

[fusion_power]

I thought that the OMAP is smart enough to have clever clocking. Especialy underclocking. Nobody wants to clock every of its million apps per hand today. :lol: So I suggest to put at least in some apps a (auto)clocking Option. This way, we could save battery Power I guess if we set an maximum clocking of course. It never was fun to ckock the programs onto the GP2X per hand even with Gmenu. So I hope this manual setting is history, except for people who like to do this per hand.