Overclocking discussion
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@quicksilver - I definitely agree and ask myself sometime why the hell am I sitting here doing this but as a hobby I enjoy it quite a bit. I know guys that spend crazy amounts of money and time hunting (guns, ammo, clothing, food, lodging, etc.), same as fishing, camping, RVs, etc. Sorry for the examples I grew doing mostly outdoor types of things but the point is because we can! ;) No actually probably no practical reason except enjoyment. Instead of pushing speed in cars we like to do it without wheels! ;)
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@riverstorm I meant why bother with such crazy cooling methods. I understand why someone would do extreme overclocking, heck I am all for that. But once your cooling needs are met what is the point of further cooling?
My comment was more about the crazy stuff people do on youtube etc, not about the tests that you have been running (I have found those to be most interesting). There seems to be this misconception that a lot of people have that if you cool your pi enough you can overclock it further. And that is only partly true. The pi can only be overvolted up to a value of 6 (8 if you force turbo), so there is a limit to the max overclock you can achieve on your pi regardless of how much cooling you have.
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@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:
There seems to be this misconception that a lot of people have that if you cool your pi enough you can overclock it further.
Yeah I agree the returns on cooling diminish to the point of pointless. Even running 60 to 70C is well below 90C where it would throttle and I am good with that. I can't imagine running at 50C is going to extend the life of the Pi by that much or if it does I prefer the simple case to an elaborate water cooling loop. I wouldn't be against trying it but I have so much Pi paraphernalia laying around and really need to just clean house.
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@riverstorm said in Overclocking discussion:
I can't imagine running at 50C is going to extend the life of the Pi by that much
Especially if you overvolt so much, then. Not sure whats worse, high voltage or high temperatures near the limit?
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@thelostsoul said in Overclocking discussion:
Especially if you overvolt so much, then. Not sure whats worse, high voltage or high temperatures near the limit?
Yeah it seems high temps are a killer and a by product of overvolting but once force turbo is in play all bets are off and you frying the board with voltage vs. temps is a possibility.
Probably why they flip the bit and void the warranty. The thing I find interesting about that is I have never heard of such a thing when it comes to CPU's and even then when a CPU is fried you can't boot it. I've blown a CPU or two over the years and Intel has never sent me a sorry buddy no can do letter. I always wondered how they pull that information or if it's smoke and mirrors. Especially if you did something like send it through a degausser. Pop and it's all done.
I am ok overvolting right up to 6 and leaving it there. I think I would be more concerned sitting around 90C vs. overvolt 6 but with force tubro bumped to 8. I don't know which I would find more concerning.
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@thelostsoul Both can technically shorten the life of your pi. But the raspberry pi engineers designed the pi with limits in place to protect it. That is why by default you cannot over volt past a value of 6 and the pi is designed to throttle itself once it hits a certain temp. Even if the overall lifespan of my pi is shortened a little bit by overclocking I dont really care since it is a $35 computer that I will most likely replace due to obsolescence not equipment failure.
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@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:
I dont really care since it is a $35 computer that I will most likely replace due to obsolescence not equipment failure.
I agree.
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At what temperature should I be concerned about crashing?
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@lachniet said in Overclocking discussion:
At what temperature should I be concerned about crashing?
I don't think it will crash per se but it will throttle significantly at 90C to prevent overheating.
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@lachniet if your pi is crashing and you've overclocked, then your current overclock settings are unstable. Your pi will throttle (down clock) itself if it gets too hot to protect itself. Throttling is counterproductive if you are overclocking and should be avoided, so be sure you have a good headsink and possibley a fan as well. A misconception a lot of people have is that heat is the reason overclocks are unstable, this is only partially true. There is a limit to how much overclock your pi will handle even if you keep it nice and cool.
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@quicksilver I don't think the pi itself is crashing, since I continue seeing a picture. It may be that lr-mupen64plus is freezing...
Tested on 007, with a pretty high overclock
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@lachniet yes, usually it's the emulator that will freeze or crash when the overclock is too aggressive. In most cases you should be able to ssh in and reboot safely.
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@lachniet said in Overclocking discussion:
I don't think the pi itself is crashing, since I continue seeing a picture. It may be that lr-mupen64plus is freezing...
It could still be overclocking. When I was Q3 overclock testing I had an incidence where the game was running but I lost my Putty session and I couldn't reestablish access even though I could see it playing. I had to pull the plug. Any overclock can make your Pi do funny things. Have you tried without overclocking, even if slow, to verify if it still freezes?
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I have only had it crash once with no overclocking, playing Mario Party 3 on lr-mupen64plus. However, that crash happened after about 30 minutes of playing. The crash on 007 happened within a few minutes.
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@lachniet instability can show up hours into use if your overclock settings aren't quite stable. I should also note that mupen64-glide is currently having issues on the pi and crashes after 10-20 minutes on stock setups so you may want to avoid testing using that emulator until it gets sorted out.
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@quicksilver Are the same problems occurring on the libretro port?
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@lachniet I don't believe so. I haven't used lr-mupen64 that much because it has lower compatibility and performance in general (there are a few games that run better with lr-mupen but not many).
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I have a question. Is the overclocked Pi 3B without + the "same" if the Pi 3B+ is clocked the same, performance wise?
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@thelostsoul yes, effectively. you miss out on the wifi, bluetooth and networking improvements, though.
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