Consensus On Overclocking
 

What is the consensus on overclocking the N900?

I'm not an avid overclocker. I'm not looking to make this thing fly. I'm thinking approximately 10% - 20%. What do you guys think? Do any of you configure your N900 to use overclocking full time?

If you do, how are you doing it (app/custom firmware?) and how much are you overclocking? Are you using variable settings? What effect on the battery have you observed?

I don't need a guide. I just want to hear opinion.

Thanks,

Abe

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Overclocking with kernel-power49 and qcpufreq.
Loading ULV profile and clocking at 805 Mhz works very well for me.

On heavy usage the battery drains fast even at 600 Mhz, i get 3 - 6 hours heavier usage, feel no difference. But i think a 25% overclocked cpu should do the job faster when cpu processing power is needed, and thus eats a little more battery a shorter time. :)

Some handy programs are cpumem-applet (shows CPU and memory usage in small status-area icon) and conky or htop for deeper look whats going on, if a process eats to much cpu over long time.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

If you don't want to heavy overclock (only up to 805 MHz) and want a good battery-lifetime you schould install Kernel-Power 49 and Karams Battery-Patch. This will enable some good power-saving options and overclock your phone to 805Mhz. And you don't have to configure anything by yourself.
If you want some more: with KP49 it is possible to overclock N900 to 900MHz with power-saving vdd1 and vdd2 enabled. For overclocking up to 1150MHz vdd1-powersaving has to be disabled.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Well, try kernel-power 49 (from extras-devel), it is rock stable on most of the devices using dsp profile (250-805 with SmartReflex on). And should give you above 50% more battery life compared to stock kernel (depends on the usage pattern, your mileage may vary)

I am using my n900 overclocked to 900 since March 2010, no problems so far. Since KP 49 has been out I am using dsp profile with limits 125-805, rock stable.

And don't use helper programs for overclocking, all of them are CPU/memory intensive and will drain your battery very fast. Read the wiki article on howto overclock (a little outdated but still valid in most of its part) if you find dsp profile is not stable for you.

Don't worry that kernel-power 49 is in extras-devel, there is an old bug in repos preventing it from entering testing and extras. Just enable extras-devel, install kernel-power and kernel-power-settings from there and disable it again, without updating stuff.


Anyway, don't seek consensus on overclocking, you won't find one here :D

@eight - I don't want to sound offensive, but judging from your join date, number of posts and software you are recommending I don't think you are the one to give advices on howto overclock n900.


EDIT:
and don't install Karam's stuff, it is also known as crappatch ;)

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Me, I don't overclock. I don't see any point to it, really. I'm not using my N900 as a gaming machine; I handbrake all my videos before loading them onto the phone; and I rarely need to have more than a couple of apps running at the same time. I find that when browsing the net, I'm usually limited much more by network speeds than by the phone's CPU.

I can see why Android phones might need mucho CPU power to sustain the horribly bloated UIs being forced on them by the telcos. But beyond the "oh cool, I've OC'd my phone!" factor, I'm not sure why you'd need to push the N900 up into the red...

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Battery life is one reason( google for race-to-idle), HD recording/playback is one of the others.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

I don't want to sound offensive
but what batterypatch do is just underclock your phone when its locked I think its better (I know im newer than eight and less post)
anyway why you think its crap??

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@ freemangordon
I just wrote how i overclock. I have my device now 2 weeks and am in the beginning, but i have a linux background. Until now i did not spend days to test overclocking, ok.

But do you think the first some should do is setting up custom dsp?
If he never has overclocked, these programs are handy for a short view.
Qcpufreq can be removed very quickly if you want to go deeper.

I did some benchmarking with nbench which is handy for a stress test.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@ravent-n900

Karam's patches break things that shouldn't be broken, are extremely unclear in what they actually do and so on.

Just read the mega thread on this forum to see all the trouble people put themselves up with.

Yes, there are things you can do to speed up your device or get a longer battery life. Somehow they don't involve wearing a blindfold and praying the gods while knocking on wood at the same time. The word "research" comes to mind.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

I really don't want to enter this discussion as it is OT here, but you can check on appropriate thread the amount of users having problems with it, it has a new version almost everyday, and that is not a good sign. I haven't seen any proof that it does anything good for battery life, it just uses precious RAM to keep DBUS listener alive. The battery saving is because of KP49 and SR support in it, not because of batterypatch, agree?

@eight - As i already wrote, I really don't want to be offensive commenting on your join date, peace :) .

But believe me, the short battery life you are experiencing is most probably a result of that status bar CPU/memory applet you are using, or some other crap you've installed, there is a lot of info about that here on TMO.

BTW you can try powertop someday to check what is causing it.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

When you play divx Video, or surf with 3g and download something, or f.e. playing a game like angry birds, how long does your n900 last?
I meant heavy usage, and i should say my battery is not new.

If not using the n900 and wlan enabled it will last some (3?) days i think (expectation from batterygraph as its heavily used:))
Ok maybe conky and htop where only usefull for me as i had an issue with trackerd after putting a few thousand files and folders on the sd-card. ;)

trying powertop right now ...thanks

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@eight, my typical usage is :

disconnecting the charger in the morning about 9, all day constantly connected to either GPRS or WiFi, 4 IM accounts logged on (GTalk, facebook, skype and IRC), 3 email accounts checked every 2 hours(2 pop3 and 1 gmail), BT headset connected all the day, 2-4 hours of browsing using either microb or helium-mobile-browser, some chat, several SMSs, some music through FM TX while going to work and back (my work is located near my home, so not much),used as a primary phone. When I am back home (around 6 p.m.) I have about 40-60 % battery charge remaining(depending on whether I've done other stuff as well). Don't know if that is heavy usage :D.

My sister's n900 (with similar setup,primary phone) lasts 3-4 days but she is not using it for browsing.

Also have in mind that it is the display which is the main consumer, not the CPU, so if you keep it always on your battery charge won't last long ;)

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Yup. Then again, I normally have plenty of battery to last me through the day, and I see no point to HD recording/playback on the N900. (If you really want quality high-res video recording, you shouldn't be using a phone in the first place; and playing HD video on a 800x480 screen is just a waste of storage space and processor power. Like I said, I handbrake videos to the appropriate size before loading them on my machine.)

Anyway, just my opinion...

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Ever checked the quality of 1024x576@30 or 1280x720@25, 13-15 Mbs video recorded with n900 camera? And while you may have enough time and will to play with re-encoding SW, there are people who don't have it. Not saying that you don't have your point, different people, different use cases, yet it is better to have options.

Also have in mind that every battery could be recharged only a limited number of times, so that prolongs the life of the battery too. Not that a new battery is expensive, but still.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

"My sister's n900 (with similar setup,primary phone) lasts 3-4 days but she is not using it for browsing." Seriously?!!?! No ways could I ever get that lol

Overclocking is all just down to personal preference, if you don't play games then why bother? i jam a bit of PS1/GBA now and then so is handy to overclock but there are a few threads on here with people poopooing the idea.

Batterypatch seems to get my battery running longer but battery graph shows only a slight change in battery drain so it could just be the update to power kernel 49, no problems as others have found though so im not complaining.

I listen to a bit of tunes on the way into work, say 10mins max, emails checked every few hours, a few txts and a few calls and my phone is porbably also around the 60-40% mark my office seems to be lead lined though so having my phone connected even to GPRS kills the phone much quicker!

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@freemangordon

Ok, my usage is different. I'm using it almost only as a tablet and ultra-mobile netbook replacement with a data-sim. Calls are made with a second mobile and another sim-card for calls.

Heavy usage and 3 - 6 hours is really meant as 100% - 50% cpu usage over hours. For example running a python script, a small webserver, some usage of the memory and cpu-usage of 40% my battery lasts approximately 4 hours.

I think the battery is 1,5 years old, time to get two or three new BL-5J, or something like that: Powerbank 5000 mAh :)

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Sorry for off-topic how did you get the helium-mobile-browser on the n900 or you are using it via nemo?
Thanks

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

what email client did you use, modest or other mail client?
how did you make it work?

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@freemangordon
I have talked about the battery-patch NOT about speed-patch. This is not the same. Battery-patch is a simple way to to overclock without any knowledge. Sure you can do even better if knowing what to do, BUT it works fine and it helps to save battery, too. So this is an easy way for a beginner - I think.

Greetings

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

i dont believe that , wifi usage on N900 doesnt last for more than 2 constant hours .batter gives up and usually i have to put a charger with it. I am using my laptop wifi ( turning my wire-net to a wireless connection and thus having about 100 mb or sometimes 50 mb / sec running on my N900.Probably that could be a reason but yes of course due to some great dsp profiles ,N900 batters has been improved a lot .it stays there for a day or so with a 40 % usage including browsing , songs ,picture taking etc ..
overclocking with kp49 is stable i would say ,rest the current 250-805 profile means the N900 is already overclocked and its good enough like that .

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

I compiled it for maemo.

@sLumPia - modest. It has been working all the time, no problem here.

@SirSocke AFAIK batterysuckpatch does more than just switching OC profiles on idle/resume, it play with vfs_cache_pressure and who knows what else kernel parameters. Which is not bad when done with understanding on what is actually going on behind the scenes, but I still fail to see such in Karams explanations what his "magic" patches do (if there are such explanations at all). Those patches are just shots in a dark and that is why everyone here having some knowledge/understanding recommends to NOT use them. It is up to you of course whether you will use them.


@The Winter - instead of calling me liar, you can just check your wifi power savings(Settings->Internet Connections->Connections->[your connection]->Edit->Next->Next->Advanced). On the last tab (Other) there is Power Saving, Turn it to On (maximum). Of course if you connection to laptop is ad-hoc, that won't work, ad-hoc connections does not support power management. In that case go buy a 15$ tp-link router, set-up your wifi in a correct way and come here to give me your apologies.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

would you share it?

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Sorry not providing .deb, could not find it. Put it under /opt/helium and don't forget to change permissions to 755 or so. And you will need some additional packages (like libqtm-sensors, what else?) installed.


EDIT: Have in mind that i have CSSU installed (Qt 4.7.4) have no idea if it works under Qt 4.7.0

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

apologies to freemangordon ,i didnt mean to call ya a liar but really thanks to you for clearing me about adhoc and regular tp wifi connections ;; sorry buddy ..

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

x2................

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Conclusion - consensus about overclocking is that there is no consensus ;) And that is good to hear in this case, as there are many use cases/preferences, and there is no point in creating "one universal rule".

Personally, I use 500-900 limits, due to race-to-idle (as per battery savings) and performance. Even if one isn't playing games, there are many situations, where having more resources available is helpful. From Easy Debian - especially, that thanks to Sulu's research (with my very, very little addition), ED is now running pure Squeeze - to pentesting. Not that IMm not one for emulating some great games through Dosbox, where MPU timing is most important.

There are some - amongst knowledgeable ones - that think overclock is wrong at all, but we wouldn't know why, cause they tend to get irrationally irritated on OC discussions, and tend to withdrawn when talking goes beyond basic electromigration stereotypes, to more wide-horizont approach (i.e, when real fun about new possible rationale start). And that's ok, cause no one is forced to OC (although, knowledge of less tech-advanced ones would definitely benefit from meritocratic discussion, so it's somehow pity).

There are some, that run device up to 1150 occasionally/ all the time using on-demand governor. I think it's quite unsane - considering, that our SoC is cooled 100% passively (don't confuse it with heat-pipe usage), and while it does awesome job on 'sane' frequencies (normally, up to 900 is considered 'sane'), we got no idea, how hot SoC get after ten minutes of constant 1150 mhz. We can only guess, cause our SoC doesn't have temp sensor. There are some bullsh|t packages like "save CPU" that claim to term throttle it, but they're based on battery pin temp sensor (sic!), so it doesn't have anything to do with real SoC temperature, not to mention MPU itself (basically, such packages are another cycle-waster, as they watch battery temperature all the time [= daemon], and change max frequency accordingly. Can't call it different than useless memory/cycle waster...). Bu, of course, if someone want to risk their devices to such degree, it's up to them.

And, there are people that use all kind of 'magic' packages - from mentioned save CPU, through battery/speed patches, to whatsnot. Well, if using placebo makes them feel better, why bother? At least, unless they irritate honest people with UFO bug reports about other packages (usually, KP), where error origin is untraceable due to overall mess their system presents.

Add to that common myths - like, that 805 is more "stable" than 850 and 900 mhz (this origin from vanilla [broken] SR efuse values, that were calculated for 600 mhz, and many times worked on up to 805 mhz), and You don't have much room for consensus. I'm pretty sure, than year or two from now, You will still find many folks propagating long-died myths about OC.

Yet, I agree, that it would be great to update wiki's 'Overclocking the N900' page, as it's highly outdated, full of assumptions, that were proved wrong for ages. I'll try to fix it, but as I have pretty full schedule -both personal, and one related to maemo.org - don't hold Your breath, and be my guest if You (=anyone) can start this process right now.

/Estel

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

Yeah, it was a bit jarring to notice that once I got to know my n900 pretty well the standard thing-to-do became to pretty much read up on everything on the forums (for the latest info) and graciously proceed to ignore all of those wiki pages unless specifically pointed towards them by the general chatter on the forums. A shame, really, that a lot of those pages on kernel-power, overclocking, NITdroid - you name it - are a bit deprecated now.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@freemangordon
I think you have some little problem with karam, eh?
The battery-patch switches between some profiles and modify the vfs_cache_pressure - nothing else. I've created something like battery-patch myself and then found out that karam has created nearly the same in a .deb. So I've downloaded and analysed his work and can't find anything strange within. For his speed-patch I think you're right: Nearly nobody knows what it really do.
Greetings

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

AFAICT, he doesn't have *any* problem with karam, they both converse peacefully in some threads, where batteryspeedmagic patches are not involved ;) Yet, if You're pushing this further - switching profiles by *any* "patch" require constant event monitoring. That eats up CPU (=some power) and some RAM (=little bit of performance). Yet, when they finally got something to do - like switching profiles to underclocked ones - it does *not* save any energy. In fact, it waste it again, as it cripple user device of race-to-idle capability. It's just based on *wrong* assumptions, from the beginning, to the very end. And, increasing vfs_cache_pressure - lol, it doesn't have anything to do with power usage. It just decrease performance of programs that require filesystem cached data (as it's kicked out to swap), at the same time increasing chance, that other RAM angry programs will get fresh free RAM faster. Generally, tweaking vfs_cache_pressure alongside other swap_related settings can make sense (but not, when done standalone, without other tweaks), but it doesn't have a sh|t to do with power saving. What does it do in so called ''battery patch''?!

As for speedpatches, it screws up cgroups. Some older version did funny thing - kicked every process to one cgroup, and rised priority only for ones started directly via xterm ;) (for less knowledgeable ones - it destroyed *any* priority settings, flattening everything). It seems, that it was corrected in later versions, but still it mess with cgroups and other kernel/system tuneables. In totally undocumented way, without any measureable proof that it increases performance - just many (most of the times, beginners) claiming that they "feel" it does, and at least same ammount of people claiming that it decreased they performance, or messed something to they point where it's unable to trace down origins.

---

Can we give this ages old myth a deserved rest, and finally end this part of discussion (unless someone have meritocratic, measurable arguments, of course)? Hearing about "magic" patches is becoming almost as irritating, as "ecosystem".

/Estel

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

while we talk abt overclock & powersave
what about POWERSAVE_BIAS is it affect performance??

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

My N900 has been overclocked since 2 weeks after i got it, and that was about 2010_10, and i have never had any problems, in the last few months i had been running ideal 600-900 and even at that speed it felt sluggish at times, so last night i set it to LV 250-1150, and damm it feels like it is on steroids, everything is just flying.

Running Power 49 only
kernel config:
load LV
limits 250 1150
no extra settings.

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

250 1150 ideal (sorry i meant ondemand)??
how much time take for your battery to die??

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

So far i can't see much difference via batterygraph, also with my not so heavy usage and a 2800mAh+ battery i can't even use the whole battery in one day.

EDIT: also as i posted it is 250 1150 LV, not ideal

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

@Estel
Thank you for the detailed information. I'll deactivate my own version of batterypatch and monitor the powerconsumption for a while...
Greetings

Re: Consensus On Overclocking
 

I've tried apt-get install using "batterypatch" "battery-patch" "Battery-Patch" and "batterypatch5" ... most of this being guessing. "speedpatch" installed fine... but I can't seem to get apt to find batterypatch.

Right now, I'm running the power49 kernel and the community ssu.