SD Failure or v3d_freq Settings?

[hooperre]

I've been trying to push my Pi 4 without going to overvoltage=6 in anticipation of my new handheld. My current overclock is cpu_freq=1800, v3d_freq=760, and overvoltage=4. When I did overvoltage=6 and v3d_freq=850 (cpu_freq=1800) I would get freezing after seconds. Seems to be better lowering the v3d_freq incrementally, but I'm wondering if it's more of a situation where my SD card going bad as I've had it since 2016 (maybe a little earlier) and update often.

Does this sound like my OC settings or my SD going bad (or maybe that's a symptom of both)?

[mitu]

Remove the v3d_freq settings, leaving it as default, and see if it happens again.

[hooperre]

@mitu Ya it did. I always struggle with the best way to test overclocks. Never used to worry with the 3B(+) because it was pretty limited compared to the 4 in how far you can push it.

[Riverstorm]

@hooperre - It's possible the SD card is fine and it's just image corruption. Whenever I do overclock testing I use a backup image that I discard once I've found stable settings for a particular Pi.

Every time RetroPie crashes you run the risk of corruption. Then you'll start to see strange behavior, even if you remove all the overclock settings.

One way I know that works to detect corruption is run PiShrink. The latest version will let you know. Shrinking images and corruption just don't work well together. It will try and repair it and may even shrink it but once corruption is detected I would discard the whole image and start from scratch.

I usually setup my entire image with no overclock settings, then back up the image and start overclock testing with the backup image.

Certain settings may be stable and corruption is the issue. People with more knowledge might have other suggestions and ways to detect corruption in an image.

[hooperre]

@Riverstorm Good stuff and recommendation. Thanks!

[Riverstorm]

@hooperre - The overclock you're using doesn't look to bad honestly. I think I would start with a fresh image and retest though numbers to be sure. Also in a handheld you might want to be cautious of overheating with those numbers.

Here's a few links to help with stress testing. The second post in the thread walks you through using Quake 3 as a stress test. I use it regularly. Many times I max the bots and just let it run all night. This one will generate some heat but nothing to serious with almost any half-way decent cooling solution.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17032/stresstest-a-fanless-overclocked-pi-3-b-no/2

Here's another good one that will stress test and check your cooling. If you don't have a proper cooling solution it will overheat in a few minutes with the CPUBurn portion so stay close when you first run it. :)

https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/stress-testing-your-raspberry-pi.html

The Pi 4's coming from the UK I've had no issues pushing the arm_freq to 2100MHz and the v3d_freq to 850MHz.

The interesting thing is when idling I would experience crashing but under heavy load it purred. After I removed overclocking of the hs264_freq, isp_freq and hevc_freq I haven't had a crash idling or under load. When testing now I let it idle at different screens, games running the attract mode loops, bash prompt, etc.

Avoid setting the gpu_freq on the Pi 4. It will create issues.

I do like to bump up the sdram_freq a bit too.

I messed with an overvoltage of 4 but I could get it to crash so I typically just jump straight to 6 as the extra generated heat is minimal.

There's some commands to overclock the SD card that might help also. I dabbled with them a bit but not extensively your mileage may vary.

It's still a working theory but with the Pi 3's out of the UK I seem to get a bit higher overclock than the ones coming out of China. The China boards are well within spec but I wonder if quality control, components, assembly or something different between two factories gives the UK boards a small edge of single digit percentage points in speed.

[hooperre]

@Riverstorm Just because I’m curious, how do I know if my Pi was made in China or UK? Is it on the board somewhere?

[Riverstorm]

It should be printed on the PCB along the edge.

If not look here. It requires a few extra steps in the way of running a few commands but you can get details as to what factory it was made in even. Like Embest, China or Sony, UK.

https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2012/09/checking-your-raspberry-pi-board-version/