Nokia N900 Cpu Overclocked To 1Ghz


Elanzer

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Someone in the Maemo community managed to overclock his N900 to 1ghz, which uses the same Cortex-A8 600mhz CPU the Pandora does.

Should be some nice news for us future Pandora owners who are interested in overclocking/modding the device.

http://theunlockr.com/2010/04/04/nokia-n900-overclocked-to-1ghz/
 
Oh and guess which processor the iPad has running at 1ghz! The Apple A4 is allegedly just a combination of the ARM Cortex-A8. Of course we already know that some pretty hefty overclocks are theoretically possible with the Pandora, but it's really going to be luck of the draw getting it to run stable. And with all the emulators targeting and optimising for 600mhz I hope it'll not be necessary.
 
I've been following the thread on TMO, yesterday. 1.050Ghz is what Lehto tried last I was online. At least one person got immediate instabilities @900MHz and had to go to 850MHz, though.
 
I haven't tried the overclock yet, just reading through the reams and reams of posts to figure out whether or not I should go straight to 900mhz. I don't use my N900 too heavily, but could do with some responsiveness in the menus and browser... at the moment, even after a reset, it can be an unresponsive pain in the backside.
 
Most of the people are happy at 900MHz without problems so far. Gonna check the thread, yesterday it was 77 pages long, now it's 88, lol.

edit:
Just in case, here is the link
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39753
 
Ipad's cortex A8 cpu (in the Apple A4) is a specialised revision, probably its using (possibly) 45nm process and some other optimisations to reach that frequency.

Later Samsung revisions of their chipset (which is similar by design to the iphone 3GS), (Apple A4 chipset is still manufactured by Samsung but is designed by Apple) is using similar optimisations to reach that frequency.

Pandora's OMAP3530 is a 65nm process chipset, and uses an older revision.
Manufacturers always improve their chipsets and fixing the errata with every revision,
so a later revision of the same chipset will possibly have a better performance/less bugs.

Thats why is always better to wait until a chipset is matured and not jump in the bandwagon, because the technology is new.

The chipset that we have in Pandora is matured (from errata point of view) but not optimised (optimised versions will be probably more expensive)
 
One note about N900, Nokia messed up big time, cause they didn't add USB host support. It wasn't hard to set up a gamepad on my N800 running KDE after some tweaking, but it's impossible on the N900.
 
If I'm not mistaken, the Pandora has also already been run at 1Ghz. It's just that not all chips stably reach those speeds, and even if they do, power consumption shoots up heavily.
 
mali said:
One note about N900, Nokia messed up big time, cause they didn't add USB host support. It wasn't hard to set up a gamepad on my N800 running KDE after some tweaking, but it's impossible on the N900.

PS3 controller works fine over bluetooth for me.. why would I want to drain the battery with USB host?

What they have messed up, though, is the ability to connect the N900 to mass storage, which I can do with my N810. That's not a big concern at the moment, but narrows the options for my N900 when it's retired to some other function (media player is ruled out, more or less)

I've just flashed the 900mhz kernel.

One word: WOW!

Finally my gigabytes of SNES roms will be playable!
 
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The N900 seems to be rather slow, even when overclocked. I just found this video running PSX emu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AM3JlmEKpQ
The fps drop below 10 rather often.

edit:
The lifetime/warranty discussion that broke loose is rather interesting.
I wonder if Nokia will block the ability to overclock in future firmware updates.
 
I for one hope they dont.. This is pretty much the breaking point for me to buy an N900 (and keeping waiting for my damn Pandora)..


Mer + LXDE is around too.. Dual boot! WOO!

Edit: Thanks for that link Mali - Also its now 120 pages!
 
I just ordered a N900 today, this news pushed me over.

I think it would be a great companion to the Pandora even though they overlap in function a bit. I don't have a cellphone, GPS, or digital camera currently and the Pandora isn't very suitable those purposes stand alone (Pandora would work with BT GPS, but I want to mount it to my motorcycle), much like the N900 isn't very suitable for gaming.
 
I'm with you on this!

I just don't want to spend over $700 on another phone (which will never officially be released/supported in Australia).

I'm trying to hunt one down on eBay for $500 (no more) and then I'll get one!

As you said - This new has officially pushed me over the edge. I've been downloading all the fun files (Mer so I can have Mer + LXDE DUAL BOOT!).

I'm hunting down Android.. I can't wait.. Just have to convince myself to allow that much money to go on a frivolous toy...
 
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