Overclocking the Pi3b+ GPU (Results)
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@quicksilver No, you misunderstood me. My Pi also goes up to 1.39V. However, since default voltage is 1.375V, the only over_voltage setting that does anything is over_voltage=1 (which will give 1.39V). The Pi is not allowed to go over 1.4V, so setting over_voltage to 2 or higher will still result in the same 1.39V as over_voltage=1.
Thanks for sharing your experience. That over heating condition sounds...weird. I have modified a few of my overclock settings and will see if that helps (lowered core_freq from 600 to 550, lowered video related clocks from 400 to 367 and increased SDRAM voltages by 0.025V).
arm_freq=1475
core_freq=550
v3d_freq=367
h264_freq=367
isp_freq=367
sdram_freq=550
over_voltage=1
over_voltage_sdram_c=3
over_voltage_sdram_i=3
over_voltage_sdram_p=2
temp_soft_limit=70 -
@Brunnis are you sure about the over voltage values? I just did a test and this is what I got on my pi3b+:
No over voltage= 1.344V
Over_voltage 1= 1.369V
Over_voltage 2= 1.388V
Over_voltage 3= 1.394V (not 1.397v like I said earlier)So for me over_voltage 3 is max setting. Are you sure yours is different?
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@quicksilver Yep, absolutely sure. Default voltage for mine is 1.375V. They probably bin the chips with different default voltages during production, just like AMD and Intel do.
So, you're lucky and have received a chip that's two bins lower on the voltage scale than mine!
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@Brunnis the official raspberry pi documentation is very vague about this. I see it uses adaptive voltage scaling (is this used based on CPU load?) but their default voltage table doesn't seem very accurate:
"This table describes the overvoltage settings for the various Pi models. The firmware uses Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) to determine the optimum voltage to set. Note that for each integer rise in over_voltage, the voltage will be 25mV higher."
Version Default Overvoltage Setting
Pi 1 1.2V 0
Pi 2 1.2-1.3125V 0
Pi 3 1.2-1.3125V 0
Pi Zero 1.35V 6 -
@quicksilver Yup, the documentation doesn't really go into details on that. Would be interesting if others reported their default voltages.
By the way, I let my Pi stand on the EmulationStation main menu over night, using the revised overclocking settings posted above. No issues this time. I'll let it run continuously and let you know if the issue is 100% fixed. If so, I don't think I'll investigate which exact setting it was that provided stability. Already spent too much time tinkering with this overclock...
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Ugh... Just locked up again. Video is outputting fine, but USB is down (at the very least). Nothing in /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog this time. I'll remove overclock settings one by one to see what fixes it. Actually, I should probably start by removing all overclock settings to see if it's even stable at stock...
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@Brunnis Im am curious about this as well so please report back if you find anything out. Im wondering if the ES freeze issues I have had could be the same or related to yours. Odd that we can hammer the pi with quake 3+sysbench+memtester and run for hours but sitting idle in ES would lock things up?
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@quicksilver Yeah, it is quite odd, really. That's why I'll probably let it sit at stock settings over the weekend and see if it can survive that. Then I'll start adding back the overclock. I'll let you know how it goes.
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@Brunnis @quicksilver In case you are not aware, check the EmulationStation Power Saver feature. It was implemented in this PR: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/172
In summary, if disabled, ES keeps animating objects even if they don't move, loading the CPU/GPU. If power saver is activated, these animations are suspended at different degrees depending on the power saver option selected.
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@hhromic I checked and the PS feature is disabled on my pi. However the freeze has occurred each time for me just sitting idle on the systems select carousel so there shouldn't be anything to animate.
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@quicksilver A small update: I've been running my Pi at the EmulationStation main menu since Friday. Findings so far:
No overclock: Stable (3 days)
core_freq=600 + over_voltage=1: Stable (2 days)
sdram_freq=550: Freeze within 4 hours (unusually quick this time)Now testing with SDRAM @ 500 MHz. It should be mentioned that 500 MHz was the default SDRAM frequency when the Pi 3B+ launched. It was later lowered to 450 MHz (same as the 3B) via a software update, along with introducing the temp_soft_limit and setting it to 60C (to make the CPU throttle down from 1.4GHz to 1.2GHz if it exceeds 60C). These measures were put in place because people were reporting strange stability issues, with 3B+ Pis becoming unresponsive or rebooting. The Pi Foundation determined that this could be due to a temperature dependence and/or SDRAM being pushed too far. Those changes are of course not very nice for the user, since they largely remove the performance improvement the 3B+ was supposed to bring. Keeping the SoC below 60C requires decent cooling, even without loading all four cores or the GPU.
So, it's of course entirely possible that I'm running into such an issue. This is one of the reasons I generally don't overclock anymore (it used to be one of my main hobbies). It can be very hard to get a system fully stable, even if you are quite serious at testing the overclock.
We'll see where this ends up. If 500 MHz is stable on the SDRAM, I'll keep increasing it to see where instability occurs. I'll also try with some extra voltage.
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@Brunnis said in Overclocking the Pi3b+ GPU (Results):
It should be mentioned that 500 MHz was the default SDRAM frequency when the Pi 3B+ launched. It was later lowered to 450 MHz (same as the 3B) via a software update, along with introducing the temp_soft_limit and setting it to 60C (to make the CPU throttle down from 1.4GHz to 1.2GHz if it exceeds 60C). These measures were put in place because people were reporting strange stability issues, with 3B+ Pis becoming unresponsive or rebooting. The Pi Foundation determined that this could be due to a temperature dependence and/or SDRAM being pushed too far. Those changes are of course not very nice for the user, since they largely remove the performance improvement the 3B+ was supposed to bring. Keeping the SoC below 60C requires decent cooling, even without loading all four cores or the GPU.
That is very dissappointing indeed :(. I can confirm that indeed my RPI 3B+ tends to hit the default soft-limit quite often without a heatsink and without overclocking inside a NesPi Case. I should monitor more carefully how often and for how long it does this and re-install a basic heatsink despite the "enhanced thermal management" of the chipset. Thanks for bringing this up.
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@Brunnis I read through the whole thread on the official raspberry pi forums that discussed the issues with the sdram freq. They only lowered the pi3b+ sdram freq to 450mhz temporarily. Current firmware should have it back at 500mhz. Judging by that thread it looks like the issue was resolved sometime late summer of this past year.
@hhromic being confined in a case with no fan or poor ventilation is sure to hinder even the improved thermals of the pi3b+. At some point the little heatspreader isnt going to be able to do much if that heat has nowhere to go. My kintaro snes case has a beefy heatsink plus the ability to turn a small case fan on/off automatically based on CPU temp. What I did was increase the temp soft limit to 70C and set that fan to turn on at 60C. That way my pi would stay nice and cool and never get thermal throttled.
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@quicksilver said in Overclocking the Pi3b+ GPU (Results):
I read through the whole thread on the official raspberry pi forums that discussed the issues with the sdram freq. They only lowered the pi3b+ sdram freq to 450mhz temporarily. Current firmware should have it back at 500mhz. Judging by that thread it looks like the issue was resolved sometime late summer of this past year.
Thanks for the info. I read through large parts of that thread, but must have missed that. Did they say what they did to fix it? Or maybe they determined that the temp_soft_limit=60 was enough?
EDIT: It's this thread, right? I read it from page 15 to the end (June 13 2018 and onwards), but didn't see any mention of reverting back to 500 MHz as default value...
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=208821
@quicksilver said in Overclocking the Pi3b+ GPU (Results):
being confined in a case with no fan or poor ventilation is sure to hinder even the improved thermals of the pi3b+. At some point the little heatspreader isnt going to be able to do much if that heat has nowhere to go. My kintaro snes case has a beefy heatsink plus the ability to turn a small case fan on/off automatically based on CPU temp. What I did was increase the temp soft limit to 70C and set that fan to turn on at 60C. That way my pi would stay nice and cool and never get thermal throttled.
I should mention that in my own tests, without overclocking and with 20C room temp, my Pi 3B+ exceeds 60C with just two CPU threads loaded while installed in a Flirc case. Using an even beefier "armor case" (heatsink sandwich that covers the whole pi, including bottom side), loading up two threads leads to 57C. Three threads leads to 62C.
I'd say the Pi 3B+ is slightly harder to cool than many people seem to think. Even with a good heatsink, most people will see throttling even at moderate CPU loads. Unless you install a really large heatsink, a fan will be needed to prevent throttling (like you've done).
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@Brunnis looks like I may have been mistaken. At one point in that thread they started discussing a different issue with Ethernet that was resolved. It looks like the sdram issue "fix" was to lower the default to 450mhz and leave it there (as you said). It should be noted though that it was a very small percentage of boards that couldnt handle 500mhz according to that thread so most people shouldn't have any issues at 500mhz. Also interesting that their official documentation still lists 500mhz as default sdram frequency for the 3b+.
My best 3b+ can pass memtester test at 630mhz but in practical usage it will freeze up after a period of time so I have dropped it down to 550mhz. I have noticed a slight improvement on some N64 games with the sdram freq set higher but it's maybe a one fps increase at best so it's not worth pushing too far and risking instability.
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@quicksilver I get some weird results from my stability tests. I’ve been testing with SDRAM at 500 MHz for several days (everything else at default). During this time, I’ve had EmulationStation crash two times (message shows up that says ES has crashed) and one instance of being thrown out from ES to the terminal with a stack trace printed. What’s weird is that I’ve previously tested extensively with Quake 3, sysbench and memtester and couldn’t find any instabilities even at 550 MHz. And now this.
I’ll re-test at default 450 MHz for a week. If that’s stable, my Pi’s memory simply can’t handle 500 MHz, at least not without jacking up the voltage.
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@Brunnis if you'd want to share those stack traces I'd be happy to see if there's anything that can be learned from them.
Not that I don't trust ES to be stable, but since those reports aren't unheard of (only hard to actually systematically reproduce), maybe trying out Kodi could be a better/alternative test to confirm that the issue is not really ES.
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@Brunnis I have had emulation station crash twice as well (same message). Nothing since I've turned my sdram from 600mhz to 550mhz (coincidence?) Ill continue to monitor as well. If it happens again I'll turn off all overclocks to verify if it's an overclock issue or ES issue.
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@pjft I'll see if I can get this for you when I've run the current test. Then again, it might not be necessary, since the Pi indeed seems to be stable with default 450 MHz SDRAM. I've run it for four days straight and no issue so far. This is longer than I've managed with 500 or 550 MHz previously, so I'm hopeful. On Sunday, if the board is still stable, I plan to jack SDRAM voltage up to 1.325V and run a new test at 500 MHz. If that's stable, I'll continue to increase the frequency and see where I'll end up.
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I ran a week-long test at default settings and experienced no crashes. So, I think we can rule out software issues. My Pi 3B+ is simply not stable at 500 MHz SDRAM without extra voltage. I decided to push the sdram_over_voltage_p setting to 4, which means 1.3V. That's +0.075V over default and it's the maximum allowed value according to the memory module's datasheet (although a maximum of 1.4V is actually supported by the Pi). I've now started a new test at 550 MHz and it's been running for 24h without crashing.
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