Question About Overclocking

[WizardStan]

MWeston talks about the lack of voltage scaling:

We haven't had voltage scaling in the kernel since the days of using an old TI kernel on the rev1 board. It's complicated but it has something to do with some things being broken in .28 that work in .27 and so the guys still use .27 for now so certain features still aren't there.

Basically, the core is at 1.2V which is what TI recommends for 500MHz. Anything above that is gravy.

Emulators run at up to 800MHz and I guess Quake2 only works up to 750MHz. (*)

(*) Subject to change at a moments notice on any further batches of processors!

Edit for search results - all I can find is Exophase at:

CODE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=47027&st=120

That was the quote I was looking for. You're right it doesn't say he specifically talked to Pickle, I think I just kind of assumed that and it fitted itself into my memory. The evidence suggests it, however probably best to await final judgment until it can be confirmed.

 

[Squidge]

I've managed to get a stable 925Mhz by using OPP5, but of course that's just one OMAP, and they are not all created equal. I've seen several other boards easily hit 900Mhz however using the same OPP value.

 

[ldesnogu]

I've managed to get a stable 925Mhz by using OPP5, but of course that's just one OMAP, and they are not all created equal. I've seen several other boards easily hit 900Mhz however using the same OPP value.

Other boards shouldn't even be quoted, everyone knows different board designs will bring different overclock abilities
Did you get your 925 MHz on latest Pandora board revision, with latest OMAP3 chip (ES 3.0 with 256 MB IIRC)?

 

[Exophase]

They actually can use the same units. If you take (overclocked MHz) / (base MHz) you end up with a unitless value like 1.23, as dividing a unit by itself gives 1. Similarly (overclocked battery life) / (base battery life) is unitless. In the end you have percentage values for processor speed and lifespan, which you can graph against each other.

Battery life, not lifespan. You're missing my point though, which is that you can't quantifiably say that a 50% drop in battery life is not worth a 25% improvement in performance. It's subjective.

Power consumption isn't exponential to clock speed, if so what value would there be in speccing amps/watts per MHz? This is still ignoring all the components that aren't being overclocked anyway...



Yes I did talk to Pickle and confirmed that he didn't bump the voltage, although since it's apparently broken in the latest kernel that should be obvious anyway. No, I haven't done it either. I can't say with certainty that you'd be able to hit 900+MHz if you did, but that really isn't the point. People are saying that boards are maxing out at 750-800MHz and this is misleading. Given that the new boards can get higher at the stock OPP mode than the old ones could I would find it pretty surprising if they didn't match at the higher OPP mode, though.

 

[borgqueenx]

this topic isnt helping me much can some say it for noobs, what overclocking does and if it helps to speed up my pandora? (ofcource if some emulator would be faster by overlclocking becouse i dont think people need more cpu power that fast)

 

[Monk]

this topic isnt helping me much can some say it for noobs, what overclocking does and if it helps to speed up my pandora? (ofcource if some emulator would be faster by overlclocking becouse i dont think people need more cpu power that fast)

How's this for guidance then.

Overclock when you need to, and only when you need to, not as a matter of course. It is not COMPLETELY safe for the Pandora, but the Pandora is powerful enough that in many, MANY circumstances you will not need to overclock it as performance will be perfectly satisfactory. If you do overlock it for specific uses (particular games or applications) there is a GOOD to EXCELLENT chance that the damage done will be so minimal that you will not discover it because you will have moved on to a newer device by the time it fails catastrophically.

 

[MonkeyChops]

Any chance of getting some overclock tests with the latest boards?

Is there a program that I need to test the overclocking ability of my pandora when it arrives or will it be shipped with one pre-installed?

QUOTE
Yes I did talk to Pickle and confirmed that he didn't bump the voltage, although since it's apparently broken in the latest kernel that should be obvious anyway.


Does this mean changing the voltage on the final boards will not be an option?

 

[borgqueenx]

this topic isnt helping me much can some say it for noobs, what overclocking does and if it helps to speed up my pandora? (ofcource if some emulator would be faster by overlclocking becouse i dont think people need more cpu power that fast)

How's this for guidance then.

Overclock when you need to, and only when you need to, not as a matter of course. It is not COMPLETELY safe for the Pandora, but the Pandora is powerful enough that in many, MANY circumstances you will not need to overclock it as performance will be perfectly satisfactory. If you do overlock it for specific uses (particular games or applications) there is a GOOD to EXCELLENT chance that the damage done will be so minimal that you will not discover it because you will have moved on to a newer device by the time it fails catastrophically.

thanks monk

i understand technical talk, but on the pandora forums its to much for me
but im a windows user and know more about software then hardware so im a noob here

 

[Yod4z]

Can we see some competition on running some software with the minimal CPU frequency, like 64k competition on demo scene?
What is the minimum CPU frequency to run a software with default X?

I know i'm not on the right topic but underclocking would be fun too

 

[Squidge]

Can we see some competition on running some software with the minimal CPU frequency, like 64k competition on demo scene?
What is the minimum CPU frequency to run a software with default X?
Pandora is a multitasking console, so therefore CPU frequency shouldn't be altered unless absolutely necessary. Instead, an application should try to use as little cpu utilisation as possible (Linux will sleep the CPU when it isn't in use, eg, waiting on a timer or i/o event).

 

[Calmatory]

Overclocking is a waste of battery on portable devices

Yes. Overclocking will drop the battery faster than make the power increase.

Depends a lot.

In situations where e.g. RAM is the bottleneck, increasing RAM speed by 25 % will increase the power consumption some 5-10 %. That would yield nearly 25 % speed increase with 5-10 % power consumption increase. In conclusion, better performance/watt ratio with overclocked system.


As Monk has stated, overclocking has it's risks. Just as drinking beer or smoking has it's risks aswell. The risk is just so minimal that most of the time people don't bother with it.

Personalyl I have NEVER killed a device due to overclocking(*). And I've been overclocking different computer parts for nearly 10 years. CPU's, RAM, GPU's, Chipsets. Cooled with air, water, phase change and dry ice. Then even the pocket calculators and mobile phones.

I believe that Pandora is fast enough for most of the stuff, but overclocking will get it further, besides, overclocking is great fun.

For me overclocking is a hobby. I will overclock whatever I can, even if it does not benefit me. I try to push the hardware to it's limits and like to compete in this field. Thus I would love to see some smaller community to be dedicated for the overclocking and competing with Pandora. I mean, the conditions are ideal; Hardware is the same, software is the same. It ALL comes down to the skills and luck. Whether your hardware will bind further than mine, or I can optimize the kernel and software better than you to yield better scores at the program X.


* when overclocking for the benefits of it, speed increase. I've killed few pieces of hardware with insanely high voltages and temperatures(120+ C) when really pushing to the limits.