What Overclock Settings Are You Using On Your Pi 3?

obsidianspider

While working on migrating from my Pi 2 to Pi 3 I see that the overclock option doesn't work in raspi-config, presumably to keep people from baking their pi. sad trombone

Anyway, I see that you can overclock manually by editing the config.txt file, and I'm not afraid to do that bit, but I'm curious as to what, if any, overclock settings you're using in the real world.

BuZz

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Overclocking#raspberry-pi-3-overclocking

obsidianspider

@BuZz said in What Overclock Settings Are You Using On Your Pi 3?:

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Overclocking#raspberry-pi-3-overclocking

Thanks. It seems like 1.4 is a pretty safe and popular option.

suprjami

@obsidianspider It really depends on your individual Pi and the games you're playing. For example, MAME should be all CPU-bound so overclocking the GPU won't help there. However N64 is mostly GPU-bound so you get some big benefits increasing the GPU speed there.

I'd start with core and GPU at 500, then take the ARM up in 50MHz steps until it gets unreliable. You can increase voltage (and heat) to try make it more reliable, or just back off speed.

Learn about the overclocking settings and caveats here:

http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Overclocking

If you're running the different components at different speeds, you might find this useful:

https://github.com/superjamie/snippets/blob/master/pioc.py

taylorbat

I have been using a 1.35 ghz over clock on a Pi 3 with no problems.

gpu_mem=400
arm_freq=1350
over_voltage=5
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=400

I tried using a 1.4 ghz overclock, but it's hit or miss. Normally it ended up freezing in the middle of a game.

gpu_mem=400
arm_freq=1400
over_voltage=6
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=400

1.45 ghz overclock won't even boot on my Pi

gpu_mem=400
arm_freq=1450
over_voltage=6
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=400

drake999

For my purposes in RetroPie, I don't need more than the stock clock for the Pi3 CPU. All the emulators I run do not fully utilize even one of the ARM cores and therefore I don't have a need for more CPU cycles, and increasing the CPU speed would only contribute to a thermal buildup I don't need either. Where I did want a performance improvement though was pretty much everywhere else, so my overclock settings are as follows

arm_freq=1200
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=2
dtoverlay=sdhost,overclock_50=100
temp_limit=85
avoid_warnings=1

I've been running these overclock values for a while and they are quite stable on my Pi3, and the benefits in the N64 and PSP emulators are obvious. These settings increase the GPU and Memory performance to be on the same level as the supported Pi2 overclock, and also double the speed of the SD Card reader. I'm not fond of pushing systems to their limits usually and favor stability over speed. These settings have worked out quite nicely.

allenpie

I have been using a 1.35 ghz over clock on a Pi 3 with no problems.

gpu_mem=400
arm_freq=1350
over_voltage=5
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=400

GOD settings

1.4 crashes on some games or after hours of playing

1.35 is perfect for me and I notice a big increase in my n64 games it's need if u want to play the larger heavier games IMO

obsidianspider

@drake999 Nice. I didn't even know that you could overclock the SD card reader.

drake999

@obsidianspider Yeah I found out about this particular setting a while ago. I learned about it from the following tutorial.

http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/how-overclock-microsd-card-reader-on-raspberry-pi-3

It's not without risk. Some cards don't take well to the overclock and there are corruption risks, however if you get a card that can handle it, the performance benefits can be huge.

alrdtakn1

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong here. I added the dtoverlay line to my config file, after sudo reboot, my WiFi has become disabled. I tried with values of 100 and 80. If I remove the line my wife comes back as normal. Any suggestions or ideas? Thanks for all your assistance.

drake999

@alrdtakn1 This may very well be happening to me and I don't even realize it as I'm using Ethernet. If you haven't done so, download the latest image with the latest firmware and hopefully that solves the problem. I'm afraid that's the only advice I can offer other than disabling the SD card overclock at this time. It doesn't sound like you are doing anything wrong. This isn't the first story I've heard about finicky wifi with an overclock, it seems the included module is very sensitive to certain settings.