Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling

jul059

Is there a case for the raspberry pi 4 out there that will allow an overclock to 2 GHz while running emulators (Flycast, yabause, etc.) without thermal throttling? Ideally also passively cooled. I don't think such a case exists for a full 100% load on 4 cores, but the slightly reduced cpu usage of most emulators makes me hope it might be possible with something like the Flirc case.

Anyone has experience with this?

Darksavior

@jul059 If you install the latest pi4 permanent firmware, it will delay the throttling down at ~2Ghz on a flirc case. By how much, I don't know. I haven't done extensive gaming tests with emulators that require a lot of processing power. You might have to lower the overclock too.
Yabause's a slow emulator, wait for a proper release of yabasanshiro.

quicksilver

@jul059 I use the argon one case. It is passively cooled but also has a fan that only turns on when you reach a certain temp (that threshold is set by the user, mine is set to 65c). I am overclocked to 2050mhz on my pi 4 and the fan rarely ever turns on.

Ecks

I have my Pi overclocked to 1.75GHz and the GPU at 600MHz and when using Redream all of my Dreamcast games except for one runs butter smooth the only Dreamcast game that ends up playing at like 3 times the speed no matter which DC emulator i use is Psychic Force 2012 but pretty much every other game i have thrown at the Pi 4 with that clock hasn't given me issues and as for cooling i am using the low profile Ice Tower cooler and i have it using the 3.3v pin instead of the 5v pin which when playing games i am always at 37c max (unless it is not a demanding type of game like NES, GB or GBA then i would be at 31c).

Clyde

@Ecks said in Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling:

I have my Pi overclocked to 1.75GHz and the GPU at 600MHz and when using Redream all of my Dreamcast games except for one runs butter smooth

Is there a noticeable difference to stock speeds? I'm still looking for a good reason to overclock my Pi, since my first experiments with Playstation 1 games revealed that a normal clocked Pi 4 already does max them out. ;)

muldjord

I have mine in a FLIRC case at 2 GHz on CPU and 750 MHz on GPU. Rock solid. Never goes above 70 degrees celsius, at least for the 30-60 minute game sessions I usually have.

@Clyde I mainly do it for N64 which seems to demand more than most of the other systems. I like to have swapchain images at 1. With the overclock I can do that, even with Conker's Bad Fur Day although I do have to run it at 320x240. But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the lower latency.

Clyde

Thanks, I also tested 2 Ghz / 700 Mhz in my passively cooled Argon Neo case, either playing by myself for 10-20 minutes or letting the demo mode run for a longer time without any throttling or thermal warnings.

edit: typo

edit 2: 700 Mhz, not 750.

jul059

@muldjord said in Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling:

I have mine in a FLIRC case at 2 GHz on CPU and 750 MHz on GPU. Rock solid. Never goes above 70 degrees celsius, at least for the 30-60 minute game sessions I usually have.

@Clyde I mainly do it for N64 which seems to demand more than most of the other systems. I like to have swapchain images at 1. With the overclock I can do that, even with Conker's Bad Fur Day although I do have to run it at 320x240. But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the lower latency.

Excellent, is that with demanding emulators?

Ecks

@Clyde It really depends on what you mainly play on system wise cause the majority of games i play are Dreamcast, PSP, PS1 and arcade games so it never really throttles when playing games and it is completely cool.

Only thing i am waiting for is to get paid so i can build my own acrylic Pi tower which i hope will come out well and also going to try and make it look like an actual PC tower with USB ports in the front and in the back (USB 3.0 front USB 2.0 back).

Edit: i threw this together quick but this is a rough idea what i have in mind for making my own Pi case

muldjord

@jul059 Actually I'm not sure about lr-flycast and lr-pscx-rearmed. I kind of assumed lr-mupen64plus-next was the most demanding as those games was most often stuttering. But as others pointed out, it's currently not making use of multiple threads beyond what retroarch does itself (I haven't verified this myself, but I believe it to be true).

But I've had 15 minute compile jobs running at which point it only reached 70 degrees, which ain't much. So for me it's perfect.

quicksilver

@muldjord said in Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling:

I kind of assumed lr-mupen64plus-next was the most demanding as those games was most often stuttering. But as others pointed out, it's currently not making use of multiple threads beyond what retroarch does itself (I haven't verified this myself, but I believe it to be true).

Something I have found from my testing is that it's the CPU that generates most of the heat. GPU bound emulators like mupen64plus don't seem to get the pi that hot.

Clyde

One little correction to my post above: I tested the GPU at 700 Mhz, not 750, because my Pi 4 had display artifacts with the latter.

nightbirdmedia

@quicksilver I was curious as to why the arm_frequency has a default of 800mhz before you change it for overclocking?

I've read that 600mhz is the idle speed and 700mhz is the default (according to sudo nano /boot/config.txt), but why is the pi 4 set to only reach 800mhz? Shouldn't the default be 1500mhz?

quicksilver

@nightbirdmedia said in Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling:

@quicksilver I was curious as to why the arm_frequency has a default of 800mhz before you change it for overclocking?

I've read that 600mhz is the idle speed and 700mhz is the default (according to sudo nano /boot/config.txt), but why is the pi 4 set to only reach 800mhz? Shouldn't the default be 1500mhz?

It doesn't. Default arm frequency on the pi 4 is 1500 MHz. You'll notice that arm_freq=800 has a # in front which means that line is ignored. It's simply a carryover from the original pi model and they have never bothered to update it.

nightbirdmedia

@quicksilver ah makes sense. My biggest concern in overclocking is my power consumption. I'm using the official power cord but it is connected to a power strip. So I will probably have to connect it directly into an outlet. I still get the rainbow screen when I boot my pi so it's not getting enough power.

quicksilver

@nightbirdmedia said in Overclocked Raspberry pi 4 without throttling:

I still get the rainbow screen when I boot my pi so it's not getting enough power.

Rainbow on the whole screen on boot? This is normal and is just telling you the GPU has booted up successfully. If you are getting low voltage you would see a lightning bolt symbol in the upper left corner of your screen. If your power strip is good quality I dont suspect youll have any voltage issues.

muldjord

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