Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Hope my guide in sig helps. :D

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

hi
I'm running my n900 @ 850 (load ideal) sometimes go up to 950 (kernel-congif limits 500 950)
This is al that i do in Xterminal an then go to work:P
But i keep reading about the voltage, i don't really get this, do i also have to set the voltage to a limit or something, i really don't get it!
btw, i don't really care about battery use, i'm almost always around a powerplant (230 volt/car etc)

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Hi,
I am a newbie to this Linux and N900, I have had the phone since April but not tried too much on it, just some regular apps.

I want to overclock it now, however, since the warranty is void if I do so, is there anyway I could go back to the original and reinstate the warranty or will Nokia still know and warranty remains void?

Sorry for a stupid question but you know more if the overclocking will leave any residue for Nokia to pick up and void my warranty?

Thanks.
P Singh

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Can anyone help me out? I can't load any kernels with Titan's Enhanced kernel without my n900 rebooting in less than 5 minutes.

Thanks

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

hi,
as you have been very helpful I though I'd ask you directly.

my previous question is on the last page and also does overclocking cause apps not to work. e.g. panucci was working fine but since the overclock isn't anymore.

regards,
p singh

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

I also have the same problem, every-time I try put on ideal; it immediately reboots.
The rest just reboot within minutes and when I try to set limits, it also just reboots.
Is something wrong with my chip?

I previously had Lehto's kernel flashed onto my phone but have since flashed to PR1.2 and was thinking that should have been removed upon flashing.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Am i missing something or is this just a textbook case of an individual CPU not being able to handle the lower voltages?

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Did you try the lv8 kernel? and set limits to 250 805?

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

In both cases, "ideal" voltage profile might not be stable for your CPU as it uses very low voltages. Try "lv" or "ulv" voltage profiles instead of ideal. I have updated my guide so that people try lv profile if ideal is causing nstabilities.

Also, I will try to update my queen beecon widget section soon so that it utilizes the latest QBW version of 1.9.5 and the DBUS interactions. (which makes pressing the overclock widget to update the show frequency widget automatically as well without needing to press them separately) :D

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Titan

A question for you (hope you still check this thread). I have been doing some battery life tests (sorry, don't have any output to share) with the stock kernel and your power kernel. What I have observed is that with SmarReflex ON (on VDD1), the stock kernel lasts much longer than your kernel (I have tried XLV and ideal. Haven't tested with starving yet), even when I turn SmartReflex on in yours. Is there any reason why that would be the case? I know that for you, as for many others, extra battery life is more important than overclocking per se, so it is maybe something worth looking into.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

hello, somebody knows why went i return to the stok configuration my phone becomes very hot and the battery lose very fast?
the configuration and the conky say is running at 600Mhz, but the phone temperature looks like if was runing to 1000Mhz.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

can anyone help with this annoying problem
I've overclocked my N900 doing the following

kernel-config load lv
kernel-config limits 250 850
kernel-config save myconfig
kernel-config default myconfig

I rebooted the phone and checked using "healthcheck"
it showed min/max clock as 250/850

After a couple of hours the phone felt a bit sluggish when waking it up from standby. I used healthcheck and it showed min/max clock speed as 125/850

I checked with kernel-config show and got

current kernel configuration:
current frequency: 850
supported frequencies: 125 250 500 550 600 700 750 805 850 900 950 1000 1100 1150
min. frequency: 125
max. frequency: 850
avoid frequencies: 125

How can it revert to 125 if that's listed as an avoid frequency?
and why does it run at 250 for a couple of hours before reverting to 125??

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

I need a little help here.
I have the enhanced settings and kernel for power users, when I try to do kernel-config show, it just says:

/bin/sh kernel-config: not found.

I am in sudo gainroot.


ty

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

phonecalls changes it from 250/850 to 125/850. If you have conky, it is still 250/850 even if you type kernel-config show in xterm. frequency doesn't change even if it shows 125/850 in xterm. :)

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

try this:

sudo gainroot
kernel-config show

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

everytime N900 is rebooted, it loads the stock kernel to avoid endless reboots. try to load LV profile and change the limit to 250/850. try it for a few days and see if the battery still becomes very hot.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

I said i was in sudo gainroot pal

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

@RDK
Have you rebooted after the installation of the enhanced kernel and settings?

This is how I solved it:

Install rootsh
Open xTerminal
root
kernel-config show

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

to make it easier, (you dont have to be on sudo root)

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

or has he even installed the ENHANCED KERNEL FOR POWER USERS (SETTINGS)?

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

yes OC is possible and great even if it lessens the phone's life. 2years? good enough for me, i dont plan on keeping this phone more than that anyway..

profile:ideal
min: 500 MHz
max:1000 MHz

24/7 setting. gets a bit warm at maximum load, but stable. very fast even with 8 apps running.

no music stutter when entering phone mode. web page rendering faster. transitions faster. loading apps faster. faster!!!!! weeeee!!!

I dont have to wait for my contacts to load when there is an emergency.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

There is no proof that it will reduce the life anyways.
Unless you run it at 1.1Ghz with SETI running 24/7 maybe. :p
I have mine always at 1.1Ghz using ulv profile now. Love it.
Well, if it does die anytime soon, I'll let you guys all know. :D

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Yes you did, but sometimes, pal, people mistate things. Try asking someone else for help. I don't want to be called pal, so I'll skip helping you.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Jakiman, thanks a bunch for the guide, it really helped me to get my N900 up and running on overclocked speeds,

1> Just reading through this thread I understand that any call switches the min. freq. to 125, correct? is there any way I could stop that, just so I don't have to keep loading the ideal profile again and again? (ideal profile seems perfect for me as of now)

2> I got health check to check on the frequencies, any other app that would be better?

Cheers
Jackie

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

If I understand the 125 min freq issue correctly, you should just forget about it. It looks like that is happening, but in fact it doesn't actually go to 125. So you don't have to reload Ideal at all; that just makes you feel better but doesn't actually change anything. Don't worry, be happy.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be a problem that concerns people but that isn't actually an issue, just looks like an issue.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

So it just reports it as 125 while still being at the ideal min. (500 in my case) sweeet !! cheers and thanks a bunch !

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

I run 500/1000 with my N900 and its great and stable. The temperature gets sometimes high but so far everything looks really great. Even could run 1150 without troubles but was afraid to burn my beloved device.

Some comments on the posts that the phone reboots after chages: If your N900 reboots you may switch off the SmartReflex option. This is a conflict to the settings and lets your phone reboot...at least that is my experience.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

hey, ive had the n900 for a bit and it does seem extremely laggy. the application manager seems to lag for like a second and gets unresponsive when i touch on "1 application successfully installed". multitasking seems to be such a drag when i open two web pages at the same timeand it gets stuck alot. help?would overclocking solve this issue?and if so, to what speed?i am a power user and i do go to youtube very often(which also LAGS ALOT too!) using the cellphone is a drag sometimes. hope some one has an answer.
and please tell me how to over clock it the safest way possible please!!
(too many posts so i couldnt find the right one .)
has any phone been destroyed or malfunctioned after the overclock?
please reply.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Go there (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39753&page=78), it was save for me and worked great. As I wrote earlier the only puzzeling experience I had with the overclocked N900 was that, depending on the settings, the "Smart Reflex" results in rebooting. Once I stopped this option it runs great at 500/1000 (even 1150).

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Application manager unresponsiveness, particularly after installing an application, is a known bug. Overclocking doesn't help.

No N900s have been reported to have persistent problems after overclocking. Some freezing and glitching occur on some units when pushing 900MHz, but these problems are fixed by reducing the overclock margin. On the other hand, it has been less than three months since widespread overclocking began.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

I wish we could replace that very obsolete poll with overclocking info links like this one

http://wiki.maemo.org/Overclocking

Practically every day a newbie comes by and asks the same questions.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Dear All,

I used to have N96 before my current N900. I used to connect my N96 with my laptop through bluetooth connection. That time i can see incoming calls/sms on the screen of my laptop in the windows notification area which is in the right hand bottom side. But on my N900 i can't see the incoming calls and sms on the screen of my laptop. Is that because my N900 is not fully supported by PC Suite? Or is there any way around to make it possible? Pls help

Thank you

B.Batjargal

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

that is cuz n900 is a brand new mobile computer growing up very fast.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Hey, finally that's my first post here after I was just reading the forum for a few weeks since I own my n900. I'm a big fan of overclocking and I can say that there's a huge difference in speed you can experience on the n900 if you're oc'ing to 850 or even 1000MHz.

On the other hand I'm a bit sceptical about battery usage and cpufreq governors (especially ondemand). I'm aware of the fact that using a higher clock lets the cpu switch back faster to sleep mode, when it's done with work, which consumes a lot less power. But we shouldn't forget that using a higher clock uses _much_ more power. Therefore watching a movie (which of course must run smooth and without stuttering) at 1000MHz will definately drain the battery faster than running it at 500MHz.

But how's the case with processes that don't run for a specific time (watching a movie, playing a song) but just as long as it needs to to do its job. Letting it run at a higher clock to terminate faster and switch the CPU into sleep mode is what seems to be the general consens here and therefore should spare battery life.

To test this claim and check which clock is the most effective I've written some scripts, that regularly check the current drain of the battery and calculate an average value.

The exact configuration is to check the current drain every second for a time span of 1 minute. During this time it executes a python script, which calculates 6 digits of pi (it's not much but it's a nice stress test though).
At 1000MHz the pi calculation takes around 25 seconds, while at 500MHz it takes double that long. After all is set and done the CPU can then go into sleep mode for the remaining time (at 1000MHz it would have around 35 seconds in idle mode, whereas at 500MHz it's just 10 seconds).

At the moment I've done these tests with frequencies of 500, 600, 805, 850 and 1000MHz. Their corresponding vsel is 30, 34, 46, 50 and 60. My n900 was in offline mode during that time and the display was turned off (I've built in a sleep time of 5 seconds until the whole script runs, to have enough time to turn it off).

The format of the results is as follows:

Clock [MHz]
Time [s] when Pi calculation finished
average current consumption [mA?]

So here it goes:

500
49
556

600
41
560

850
31
609

1000
25
736

Take these results with a grain of salt, meaning they have definately some % of deviation. For example I had 2 runs where at 500MHz I had around 570mA of current which is more than I had at 600MHz. To improve the results I'll have to take longer time spans like 10mins or even more to be as accurate as possible. Once I'll clean my scripts and do some more testing and adjustment I'll post them here for everyone to test for their own devices and settings.

My conclusion at the moment though is that a higher clock (even with lowered voltage) isn't necessarily more battery friendly than a lower clock just because it allows the CPU to complete its tasks faster and have more sleep time. This is probably because at higher clocks it consumes so much more power that it's not worth it... anyway I'll also have to check how the CPU behaves at 125MHz and 250MHz... At the moment 600MHz seems to be most effective clock though.





However the big difference shows when you don't have a process that terminates after it has finished all its tasks but one that runs for a longer time (like watching a movie or playing games). I'll post my results soon but all in all I can say the higher the clock, the more current the CPU will drain (which is kinda logical), which in conclusion brings me to the cpufreq governors. It's useless to let the CPU scale up to its max frequency when the CPU has just i.e. 40% usage (like I've seen in some configurations) because it's not needed and will drain the battery much faster. I also prefer to have 1000MHz enabled for the extra power when it is really needed, but I would also like the CPU to choose wisely which clock is more adequate for the moment. Therefore I think that the conservative governor IS better for battery life but it needs to be tweaked and tested. At the moment I use ondemand with upscaling at 90%, but I'm still experimenting on this and I'm not too satisfied.

Oh and one more thing... it seems that the sampling rate of the governor doesn't affect power consumption at all. I tried values ranging from 1500 to 15000000 and neither current consumption nor wakeups in powertop were affected.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Thanks a bunch for your experimental results. Pretty much sums up the reality of CMOS power consumption which is proportional to Voltage squared.
So if one has to increase the voltage to get higher speed, the computation would be lesser and lesser in efficiency, no matter how high the clock speed would be.
:)

Again, you have summed up correctly that if we have a wayward program for e.g. OVI MAPS (which literally locks the CPU to the maximum MHz, and thus voltage), we can drain the battery in a jiffy. :D I have had this problem many times while using OVI Maps in my car without the charge connected. The battery is done with in 2 hrs flat :D

Thanks a bunch again...appreciate the effort!

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

@MONVMENTVM
Did you use the enhanced kernel for power user for your tests?
Did you load ideal, lv ulv, or xlv?

So to sum up your post running at 600 Mhz is the most efficient frequency?

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Yep I use this kernel but have my custom settings loaded (which are based on the "ideal" settings)... you can see the voltage settings for the tested frequencies in my first post. Maybe I'll upload the whole configuration file here too.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

Even while playing Music or running a movie, the CPU is not ON all the time. A lot of that is done via the DSP anyways, so your CPU would remain idle a significant amount of time (as an example, play an mp3 and run Conky and you would see that the CPU is usually at 500MHz if you are running ideal). So while the test is valid, the premise isn't. Also, to sample current properly, unfortunately once every second isn't enough. You are talking more like 30 times a second, given how many times the CPU is waking up every second.

Having said that, there is definitely a compromise frequency, which would vary from device to device. So for ideal, it could be 600Mhz but for LV, it could be lower.

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

so what IS the big advantage of overclocking??what do you GET out of it?please tell me better contact scrolling..less screen tearing!what DO you get?

Re: Overclock the N900?
 

i got my answer from page 78 thanks :P