Overclocking discussion

Riverstorm

@alturis said in Overclocking discussion:

causing and ever-so-subtle bend in the board.

There's a certain amount of flex to solder and circuit boards but at some point I think the stress causes micro fractures in the solder and creates issues.

In the past I've baked 2 graphics cards back to life and just recently a completely dead LG TV circuit board. 350 degrees for 10 minutes is basically like a solder reflow and corrects those micro-fractures. Cheaper than buying a solder reflow oven but probably not the best for the 'ol oven so to make the wife happy we run it through a cleaning cycle after which takes roughly 3 hours.

@riverstorm https://www.amazon.com/SNES-inspired-Raspberry-Case-functioning/dp/B079T7RDLX
Comes with a custom heatsink and thermal paste.

Oh that's a nice heatsink not sure the BIQU case can beat that one. The aluminum casing might help it along vs. plastic but you can't beat the aesthetics.

I have heard of people getting the 3b+ up past 1500mhz. The problem is that people claim all sorts of numbers with no proof of stability. For example my pi3 will boot at 1475mhz but is only stable at about 1350mhz.

Yeah even liquid cooling can only take you so far before you fry the silicone.

Alturis

@riverstorm said in Overclocking discussion:

In the past I've baked 2 graphics cards back to life and just recently a completely

Well at 35 bucks for an entirely new Pi3B+ I am not overly concerned. ;)

dirthurts

@Alturis I have mine at 1500 MHz right now, but i can push it a bit further. I'm, however, keeping my over volt locked at 2 to avoid producing too much heat and consuming more power. Like others, I have no proof, but I'm not sure why anyone would make it up really.
It seems quite feasible that a good chip could get close to 1.6 GHz with a little luck and proper cooling.

I'm currently using the Flirc gen 2 and can't make it throttle under any conditions, so it's providing plenty of cooling.

Riverstorm

@alturis said in Overclocking discussion:

Well at 35 bucks for an entirely new Pi3B+ I am not overly concerned. ;)

Sorry to clarify I meant actual PC video cards like a GTX 980 Ti that gets you into that upper midrange around $400 or so for the video card only. I figure a quick bake is worth a few minutes. The TV was completely dead and it was a known issue with LG TV's so I ripped it apart pulled the board and sure enough that was the issue. Also a standoff was missing so I went to the local hardware store and bough a threaded nylon standoff, cut it down to size and it set the board rock solid. The TV works well again. Surprisingly (or not) poor manufacturing techniques are more and more common. My main stay has always been PC computers that I build from scratch. It's nice as it allows you to choose the exact parts you want.

I'm currently using the Flirc gen 2 and can't make it throttle under any conditions, so it's providing plenty of cooling.

@dirthurts So you have your overvoltage set to 2 and your able to get your arm_freq to 1500? What are your other settings? Have you modified the Flirc 2 case at all? I have a Flirc 2 here next to me and under load I was in the 70s Celcius with and ambient of about 75F/24C and my arm was only at 1260. It did not cool well at all. You must be in that 5% on top of the bell curve of production variance. I have 4 Pi 3's and all of them are average. Three from Element 14 and one from Adafruit.

quicksilver

@riverstorm I think he is referring to a pi 3b+

quicksilver

I posted this in the other thread but wanted to post it here as well for posterity (nobody will see it over there):

I have found that quake 3 is a good resource for testing overclocks. I run all the automated tests that are recommended first like memtester and stress and if I get a passing grade then I test with quake 3 . Often times clock speeds that pass the automated tests fail miserably when put to a real world test like quake 3. Quake 3 works the GPU/CPU and RAM pretty hard. I found it to be more stressful than the individual tests and in most cases if your overclock is unstable the game will crash within a few minutes. However to verify my overclocks stability I will usually let the game run in first person spectator mode for 4-5 hrs at least. I have had quake 3 freeze after 1-2 hours if the overclock is unstable. So thorough testing is definitely needed when overclocking. I doubt most people test thoroughly enough and are running around with unstable overclocks.

the freeware version of quake 3 should work fine. I believe it's listed as quake3 under optional packages. Easiest way to test is to load a skirmish, load a bunch of bots (8 seems a good number). Set kill count and time limit to 0. Once you get into the game press ~ key to open the console. Type /team spectator

Then press enter. Press ~ again to close the console. You are now spectating. Press the fire button and it will place you in a first person view of one of the bots. Now the game will run until you stop it or it crashes. Make sure you have good cooling because it will (as you noted) get your pi very warm. I am using a kintaro 9k case that has an awesome heatsink. For me the temp will climb to 69C and hover there indefinitely. Before i had that case I had a small heatsink and my pi would overheat within about 15 mins of quake 3.

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

iverstorm I think he is referring to a pi 3b+

Ah, ok. So the 3b+ does fit in the Flirc 2? I was wondering if the IHS (making a bit higher) would fit under the heatsink column in the case.

Thanks for the post with the Q3 instructions. Having multiple bots seemed key. With 1 I had no issues so I bumped it up to the recommended 8 and there's so much graphical activity on the screen I see why it's taxing all components. It's been years since I played Q3 I swear it was slower back then, must be getting old.

quicksilver

@riverstorm I think I heard that a pi 3b+ will fit in a flirc 2 case, although I have no personal experience with it.

quicksilver

Just watched a video ETA Prime put out, looks like he got his Pi 3b+ to run Conker's Bad Fur Day . Looks like a very playable framerate too. His overclock settings are a bit wonky though.

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

Just watched a video ETA Prime put out, looks like he got his Pi 3b+ to run Conker's Bad Fur Day .

I am not quite as up on consoles games. I do have the classics mainly. One of the challenges for me on the N64 is trying to get the d-pad (hat) working. I tried using lr-mupen64plus. Everything seems to work fine except making changes for saving/loading. For incrementing/deincrementing my save slot I can press hotkey+right (or left) which is defined in all/retroarch.cfg and that works fine. To save/load I have hotkey+up (or down) defined in all/retroarch.cfg but that doesn't work. What works is defined in the mupen64plus.cfg.

It has in that config file "J0B8/B4" which works fine but I wanted to change it to "J0B8H0V4". Looking at the docs on mupen64plus. It's Joystick 0 button 8+button 4. So that longer string with the H is Joystick 0 button 8+hat 0 direction down (V is value and 4 is down). It's pretty straight forward but the emulator doesn't seem to recognize the H variable defined on the mupen64 docs page.

On topic before doing any testing I have the Cana Kit power supply it's black (US plug) but on their site I see they have a white one (universal plug) that says official are they the same? I can't really find the answer/difference between the two but they both show as certified working with all Pi versions.

quicksilver

@riverstorm What controller are you using?

I have the canakit black plug too. I would assume its the same as the white one, if the specs are the same.

Riverstorm

It looks to be the same specs https://www.canakit.com/official-raspberry-pi-power-supply.html

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

What controller are you using?

Missed that they are XBOX 360s with wireless dongle. I have wired also.

quicksilver

@riverstorm In reference to your issue with the dpad and N64, I'm not sure that lr-mupen64 looks at the mupen64 config file your referred to. I'm fairly certain that config only influences settings for stand-alone mupen64.

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

@riverstorm In reference to your issue with the dpad and N64, I'm not sure that lr-mupen64 looks at the mupen64 config file your referred to. I'm fairly certain that config only influences settings for stand-alone mupen64.

That's the strange thing but I am not real familiar with the N64 emulator as there's a lot going on it seems. Here's what is in my /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

# Saves state.
input_save_state = "up"
# Loads state.
input_load_state = "down"

# State slots. With slot set to 0, save state name is *.state (or whatever defined on commandline).
# When slot is != 0, path will be $path%d, where %d is slot number.
input_state_slot_increase = "right"
input_state_slot_decrease = "left"

Here's what's in my /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg

# Joystick event string for saving the emulator state
Joy Mapping Save State = "J0B8/B4"
# Joystick event string for loading the emulator state
Joy Mapping Load State = "J0B8/B5"
# Joystick event string for advancing the save state slot
Joy Mapping Increment Slot = ""

I can increment my save slot with select+dpad right or left as shown in retroarch.cfg but I can not save with select+dpad up or down.

What I can do is save with select+button 4 and 5 (the shoulder buttons). If I remove the J0B8/B4 and J0B8/B5 I can't save.

It's like retroarch is working for incrementing save slot 0, 1, 2, etc. but using the mupen64plus.cfg for save games.

I hope that makes sense.

quicksilver

@riverstorm Which emulator specifically are your trying get this to work in? Lr-mupen64 or stand alone mupen64? Because each of those configs are for completely separate emulators. Are you testing using the same game and emulator each time?

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

Are you testing using the same game and emulator each time?

I know that's the weird part and I thought maybe I am missing something obvious because there's a lot in N64 I just don't know. I am using lr-mupen64plus. I set it as the default when booting a game and pressing any key for the Quick selection menu. I was hoping to use the unified input from Retroarch. The game is Castlevania 64 and it yields consistent results every time.

quicksilver

@riverstorm Ok so the correct settings for lr-mupen64 should be found in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

settings in /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg only applies to the standalone mupen64.

When I get home I will mess with this a bit and see if I can get it working. So if I understand correctly you want to make hotkey+up or down on the dpad save and load state?

Riverstorm

@quicksilver said in Overclocking discussion:

So if I understand correctly you want to make hotkey+up or down on the dpad save and load state?

Yes that's exactly it. Here's the docs on the Mupen64Plus Core Parameters settings which explains it well just in case you don't have it. It explains it well. Like you said though it shouldn't be needed and only a quick modify to all/retroarch.cfg should work. The settings I have a pasted above directly from my retroarch.cfg and mupen64plus.cfg.

A quick note I did test stable with a stock image and only Q3 loaded using a Cana Kit power supply and a SanDisk SD Card. You recommend next overvolting to 6 and then what's a good starting arm_freq? It does 1200 at stock. I use a small program with 'watch' in a putty window to measure temps.

quicksilver

@riverstorm said in Overclocking discussion:

Yes that's exactly it. Here's the docs on the Mupen64Plus Core Parameters settings which explains it well just in case you don't have it. It explains it well. Like you said though it shouldn't be needed and only a quick modify to all/retroarch.cfg should work. The settings I have a pasted above directly from my retroarch.cfg and mupen64plus.cfg.

When you change the settings in the all/retroarch.cfg, do your changes work in other libretro emulators (like for snes, sega genesis etc.)? Is it only lr-mupen64 that the changes dont work?

A quick note I did test stable with a stock image and only Q3 loaded using a Cana Kit power supply and a SanDisk SD Card. You recommend next overvolting to 6 and then what's a good starting arm_freq? It does 1200 at stock. I use a small program with 'watch' in a putty window to measure temps.

I would try 1300mhz first. It seems most pi3s are stable at that speed. If it crashes after a few hours then you know yours cant hit 1300. Dont change anything else though otherwise you will never figure out what setting is causing the crashing. Which emulators are you trying to improve?