Running Your Gp2x At Higher Clock Speeds...

[Duddyroar]

I've seen a couple of sites reporting that running your GP2X at any clock speed over 250mHz has the potential to damage the console, yet other places have said that it does no damage and the worst that will happen is that the console will crash and you'll have to reboot.

Does anyone know the truth? I run a lot of my emulators at 250 at the very least...

 

[craigix]

It does no harm, where did you read this?

 

[Squidge]

You can overclock as fast as you can, the worst that will happen is your machine crashes and you'll need to reboot (power cycle).

Now, if you modified the voltage to the processor (to run it out of specification) to obtain higher overclocks, that could cause damage over time. That would require a soldering iron on your 2X however.

Compare it with PC where processor speed and voltage are controlled via software (usually in the bios), and you'll then realise why some people think that overclocking causes damage.

 

[yodaofborg]

I run my gp2x LOTS at 280Mhz, when I'm playing things like Quake, Duke 3d, or any the few PSX titles that work well. I've had it over a year now, and the only thing thats even slightly "over used" is the left shoulder button

 

[Dan2552]

This is nice to know, I was expecting it to be like PC processors.

 

[Duddyroar]

It does no harm, where did you read this?

http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Mame

Under 'Gp2X clock'.

 

[fusion_power]

Well, it really shorten the lifespan of the Batteries.
Thats the Reason why I try to use standard Clock rate as often as possible, underclocking is even better. And because we have good programs and Emulators, many of them run at 200MHz, even GPSP. When I overclock (only Quake at this time) I usualy use an Power adapter.

 

[kfuse]

yea It will shorten the lifespan of batteries.

currently I have to overclock to 250mhz for turbografx...I could get 266 on f-100 can't get it on the f-200...

SNES also have to overclock for a few games. TMNT, contra...

 

[yodaofborg]

I do have to admit, that it DOES damage batteries. But not the GP2X itself.

 

[StealthBagel]

This is nice to know, I was expecting it to be like PC processors.

I've never seen anyone prove overclocking reduces processor lifespan. I have never seen a CPU die of 'old age' under any circumstances, only static discharge, overvolting, overheating or a power surge (e.g. lightning) has killed them.... I've got CPUs over 20 years old that still work and I overclock a lot of them... some as much as 200-300% the normal clock speed.

Same thing for flash.... who has ever seen a USB flash stick or SD card 'burn out' from overuse? Sure as hell not me and I've got lots of them.

 

[Dan2552]

Same thing for flash.... who has ever seen a USB flash stick or SD card 'burn out' from overuse? Sure as hell not me and I've got lots of them.

You mean the write limit? How often do you use your flash as a swap?

 

[Squidge]

I do have to admit, that it DOES damage batteries. But not the GP2X itself.

Depends on power consumption. Normally it doesn't damage them as such, it simply draw much current from them because the processor is running faster, so you have to charge them more often, so the lifetime is reduced (because of the maximum number of charges batteries take).

However, if you overclock an emulator to dizzy heights at the same time as using the TV out, then you may take the batteries out of specification and as such they may buckle internally. I'd be very suprised if anyone did that however as if your using a TV, then the 2x is hardly portable, so will be connected via a suitable power adaptor...

who has ever seen a USB flash stick or SD card 'burn out' from overuse? Sure as hell not me and I've got lots of them.

USB flash sticks and SD cards don't "burn out". When a particular area of the flash becomes faulty due to overuse, they map that particular section as "do not use" and carry on. It's transparent to windows due to a logical->physical translation table. The most you usually see is a reduction in available capacity, and that depends on whether or not the card/stick had any "spare" blocks. Also, sometimes bad blocks appear where data is stored, so whatever was there becomes unreadable and a format is required to bring the card back to life.

 

[StealthBagel]

USB flash sticks and SD cards don't "burn out". When a particular area of the flash becomes faulty due to overuse, they map that particular section as "do not use" and carry on. It's transparent to windows due to a logical->physical translation table. The most you usually see is a reduction in available capacity, and that depends on whether or not the card/stick had any "spare" blocks. Also, sometimes bad blocks appear where data is stored, so whatever was there becomes unreadable and a format is required to bring the card back to life.

Definitely never been an issue even with very heavily used devices... I'm not saying it can't happen but I've never had something reduce in capacity so much it was useless. Hell, the lowest I've ever seen a 1gb flash stick get to is 973mb, and that's about how much you have after formatting anyway. The one stick I had files become unreadable on was a physically faulty stick from the factory, as it happened from day one....

 

[tim0391]

i cant see it doing any damage if you know what its limits are

 

[StealthBagel]

The CPU just plain won't die period from overclocking, unless you are going in and altering the core voltage to the MMSP2.... and AFAIK no one has bothered to do this. It would make the battery life substantially worse too....