Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

Totally overclock! Overclocking may shorten the CPU life time but when a CPU is designed to last 10 years + then shortening it by half would hardly matter would it?

Anyone ever worked in a data-center? Seeing a 486 serving email is a laugh but in no way unusual.

"Nokia definitely did invest lots of work to tune the device" - Now we all know that this is hardly the case, I love my N900 and after 2 years I still have no idea how I will replace it but I'v never ever been able to say that Nokia invested lots of work on the n900, this community probably put more into it in the first week lol

Reading the Overclock thread (Dono why we need another) doesn't seem to show a lot of people with dead N900's... I am glad I took the plunge but then I find I only really use it when playing ps1 games, GBA and a few other apps so it may not be good for all people.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

Joerg, no, stay. I and I'm sure many others have learned so much from your technical contributions. (I would've been overclocking months back before my first N900 developed chronic problems with the telephony hardware, and would've been overclocking my current one from the moment I got it, were it not for your very technically knowledgeable posts on the subject appearing in a number of OCing threads.)

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

@joerg_rw

Thanks for all posts enriched with details. Love to read and learn new stuff. However, I have a simple question: how would you explain Droids working at 1.3GHz for hours, playing emulators, benchmarks, heavy web surfing, etc? Don't you think based on this manufacturers are too conservative? If the life shortens so much by upping the frequency from 500-600, even 800, people should be able to experience so many "symptoms" of CPU failure. For instance, if from 10k hours lifetime drops to 500h at 1GHz, it would be hard to not have clear signs of CPU damage. I, for one, think it is pure marketing b.s.

Apple lowers frequency for battery saving. However, based on manufacturers stance on higher clocks, iPhone 4s should be able to live for 10 human generations.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

I would love to see anywhere I have made comments like "OC is safe!!1!11 I'm doing it since months now!" This is cartoon reasoning based on emotion and exaggeration.

The fact is that user experience is very relevant. Ridiculing people and making up grammatical gaffes is not a good way to win an argument. It is probably true that OC reduces lifespan of a device, but if it reduces lifespan from ten years to five years is of no concern to most users.

I am absolutely delighted to read well-reasoned communications on any subject that interests me whether they agree with me or not. In fact, i find disagreement more interesting than agreement. But arguments that rely too much on "the people who disagree with me are idiots!!!!" are of little interest. And yes, those extra exclamation points are there to give you a taste of your own medicine.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

im probably get war on my mind what to do.. because of the good and risk.. may i overclock or do i?? hard to decide what to do

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

I'm running on 250-500 when locked, and 500-750 when unlocked, SRVDD1&2 enabled, undervolted.

It definitely makes the device more bearable. 600 just stutters too much for me. Oh, and OCing to 750 cut my daily time in 100% in half.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

Interesting thread! :)

I've had my N900 for almost two years now. Most of the time I've been running XLV with limits 250 900. This provides me with the performance that I expect from the device.

I'll be fairly satisfied if I get another year out of the device. I don't expect my N900 to live forever. I'll be sad when it goes - there's no other device like it - but then I'll get something new. Or if it gets long in the tooth maybe I'll get something new before it dies.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

I know my decision was based on ignorance.

...but I've made poor decisions before. Sometimes it works out badly, sometimes it's all fun.

I hadn't even heard of electromigration prior to reading this thread. On the other hand, it's not reasonable to expect everyone to come to the same conclusion as you, simply because some people do not have the desire, drive, time or intelligence to understand everything you write. It's not an indictment of you in any way, and many people have [rightly] expressed thanks for the insight and information you have shared here.

Hi Kriek, long time no see. Nice post!

I'm hoping my N900 will last beyond the point where I pick up an N9 (near future), because I would be very sad not to have it around. I'm thinking I can turn it into a timelapse camera with remote access... and at that point I might as well underclock it*.



* this is an assumption based on my limited understanding of OC issues

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

Sure there are some technical realities concerning overclocking. Unfortunately there's no single answer to the OP's question. It boils down to the users' comfort level and/or aversion to risk.

;)

OT: Hey Shallimus! I'm still here... been following N9 progress. I see you've been after one. Exciting times to be in on the Meego development tip :cool:.

Re: overclocking,,it is dangerous??
 

Even if your N900 die after another year or within next 2 weeks, there is no way of finding out if that was due to overclocking or not. No one will be able to tell really. A bad cpu sample can easily burn out over time even when running at stock speeds. Maybe even after overclocking the N900 to 1.1GHz constant, maybe your GPU might die for no apparent reason. Or maybe just a bad capacitor will blow which had nothing to do with it. Yes, there is a higher probability of failure when running it at higher speed than stock. How much? No one has a clue. There are just way too many variables to consider. =P

BTW, I've damaged 1 item in my life so far while overclocking I think. It was my old ATI Radeon video card. (can't even remember the model now) It was around 8 years ago and after overclocking (both GPU and memory) for a few months, it started to artifact and was persistent even on lower clocks for both GPU and RAM. Not sure if it was the bad RAM or the bad GPU and couldn't find out if overclocking had anything to do with it. It was under warranty so it got replaced. My replacement overclocked even better and never had any issues for nearly 2 years before I upgraded. =P