First Overclocking Tool For Mac

Intel® Power Gadget is a software-based power estimation tool enabled for 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processors or newer. It provides real-time processor package power information in watts using energy counters. Overclocking Your Mac: An Introduction. Evan Kleiman - 2002.06.24. One of the most common complaints computer owners have is that their computer is too slow. Unless you own a shiny new G4, you have probably had this complaint in one form or another throughout daily use of your computer.

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Development Team

Windows*: Joe Olivas, Timo Kleimola, Mark Price, Timothy McKay
MacOS*: Patrick Konsor

Previous Contributors

Windows*: Seung-Woo Kim, Karthik Krishnan, Vardhan Dugar, Joseph Jin-Sung Lee, Jun De Vega

Introduction

Intel® Power Gadget is a software-based power usage monitoring tool enabled for Intel® Core™ processors (from 2nd Generation up to 10th Generation Intel® Core™ processors). Intel® Atom™ processors are not supported. It is supported on Windows* and macOS* and includes an application, driver, and libraries to monitor and estimate real-time processor package power information in watts using the energy counters in the processor. With this release, we are providing functionality to evaluate power information on various platforms including notebooks, desktops and servers. Windows 7* and 32-bit versions of the Intel® Power Gadget for Windows* has ceased development from 3.0.7. Starting with version 3.5 and going forward, only the 64-bit version and Windows 8* will be supported.

Background

Traditional methods to estimate power/energy usage of the processor has always been a cumbersome task that included special purpose tools or instrumentation on the platform along with third party equipment. The motivation for the tool was to assist end-users, ISV’s, OEM’s, developers, and others interested in a more precise estimation of power from a software level without any H/W instrumentation.

New Features

In version 3.0 there are additional features that include estimation of power on multi-socket systems as well as externally callable APIs to extract power information within sections of code. The multi-socket support essentially evaluates the Energy MSR on a per-socket basis and provides an estimate of power draw per socket. The API layer is a set of libraries and dlls that can be called and offers the flexibility to build the tool within code sections of an application. Latest release also includes support for Windows 10*.

**Brief Description (Windows*)**

Intel® Power Gadget 3.5 consists of the following components. Set of driver and libraries which access and post process the processor energy counter to calculate the power usage in Watts, temperate in Celsius and frequency in GHz (default install directory will be ~Program FilesIntelPower Gadget 3.5). A command line version of the tool (PowerLog3.0.exe) is also included

**System Requirements (Windows*)**

Windows 8*
Windows 10*
Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012
Microsoft .NET* Framework 4
Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable package
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Processor or later, older processors not supported
- Single socket
- Multi-socket

**System Requirements (MacOS*)**

macOS* 10.11 or later
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor or later

Known Limitations / Issues

Graphs will not appear if your processor does not have the appropriate hardware counters
Discrete graphics cards are not supported and GPU graphs will not appear unless Intel graphics is in use
Windows 7* supported builds are below in the Archive section

**Installation / Setup (Windows*)**

Run the msi package as an administrator. Accept the UAC, if one appears
Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation
1. .Net Framework 4 (will automatically be downloaded from Microsoft* site if not yet installed in your system) needs Internet connection
2. Microsoft* Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable Package (will automatically get installed if not yet installed)

**Installation / Setup (macOS*)**

Double click the downloaded DMG (Intel Power Gadget.dmg)
Double click the package (Install Intel Power Gadget.pkg)
Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation

On recent macOS versions, after installation users need to explicitly allow the Power Gadget driver to load:

Open System Preferences, and click on 'Security and Privacy'
Click the lock at the bottom of the page to unlock changes
Click 'Allow' to allow system software from Intel Corporation:
Restart your computer to apply the changes

On macOS Catalina (10.15), users may need to perform additional steps to enable the Power Gadget driver to automatically load (this is due to a bug in macOS).

Open the Terminal application
Enter the following command, and press Enter (requires a password to complete):
Restart your computer to apply the changes

**Usages (Windows*)**

Common use of Intel® Power Gadget is to monitor energy usage of the processor

Provides processor power (Watts), temperature (Celsius) and frequency (MHz) in real-time via graph displayed in the GUI
Let you log the power and frequency measurements and save it in a csv format.
Double click on the desktop shortcut and the GUI will launch
Drag to move the GUI.
Right click the GUI and a pop-up menu will show up allowing you to choose options or close the application. Options have the following parameters. Click “Start Log” button in the GUI to start logging. Press the same button “Stop Log” to stop logging. While it’s logging, red label “REC” will blink in the power chart area.
You can choose to add time-stamp to the log file name or not.
You can choose the log file name.
You can choose to resize the GUI from 100% to 300% by dragging the slider and testing the new size with the “Apply Size” button and accept the changes by pressing “Ok”.
Screen Update Resolution lets you change how often the GUI is updated at runtime. This may range from 50 ms to 1000 ms. (Default set to 1000 ms)
Log Sampling Resolution lets you change the logging sampling resolution ranging from 1 ms to 1000 ms. (Default set to 100 ms)
In a multi-socket system, you can choose which package information to display in the GUI. The log will record all package information in a csv file.
Click 'Start Log' button in the GUI to start logging. Press the same button 'Stop Log' to stop logging. While it's logging, red label 'REC' will blink in the power chart area

Using Intel® Power Gadget 3.0 in a script

In order to start and stop the logging in a script, first launch the GUI as usual.

At the beginning of the script, call 'IntelPowerGadget.exe -start' and it will trigger the logging in the GUI.
At the end of the script, call “IntelPowerGadget.exe -stop” and it will stop the logging.

The parameters for the log are based on the options set in the GUI.

PowerLog3.0

PowerLog3.0.exe is the command line version of Intel® Power Gadget in logging power usage

Usage:

Log power data to logfile for a period of time:

Start a command a log power data to logfile until the command finish:

Logfile data

Logfile will include the elapsed timed, package power limit, processor frequency, GT frequency, processor temperature, average and cumulative power of the processor

Processor Energy (Total energy of the processor) = IA Energy + GT Energy (if applicable) + Others (not measured)
IA Energy (Energy of the CPU/processor cores)
GT Energy (Energy of the processor graphics) – If applicable , some processors for desktops and servers don’t have it or may have use discrete graphics

Only works on 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor family or newer. Atom processors not yet supported.

First Overclocking Tool For Mac Os

Use only 32-bit installer for 32-bit OS and 64-bit installer for 64-bit OS

Application may hang after running for a long period of time (just close and restart application)

Contact your local Intel sales office or your distributor to obtain the latest specifications and before placing your product order.

This document contains information on products in the design phase of development.

All products, platforms, dates, and figures specified are preliminary based on current expectations, and are subject to change without notice. All dates specified are target dates, are provided for planning purposes only and are subject to change.

This document contains information on products in the design phase of development. Do not finalize a design with this information. Revised information will be published when the product is available. Verify with your local sales office that you have the latest datasheet before finalizing a design.

Code names featured are used internally within Intel to identify products that are in development and not yet publicly announced for release. Customers, licensees and other third parties are not authorized by Intel to use code names in advertising, promotion or marketing of any product or services and any such use of Intel's internal code names is at the sole risk of the user.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Intel® Power Gadget also provides a C/C++ Application Programming Interface (API) for accessing this power and frequency data in your program; the API is supported on Windows and Mac OS X. For more information on the API's, see:

For Mac Using the Intel® Power Gadget API on Mac OS X

For Windows Using the Intel® Power Gadget API on Windows

End User License Agreement included in Windows* download

Notices

INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH INTEL® PRODUCTS. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN INTEL'S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR SUCH PRODUCTS, INTEL ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND INTEL DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, RELATING TO SALE AND/OR USE OF INTEL PRODUCTS INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT.

UNLESS OTHERWISE AGREED IN WRITING BY INTEL, THE INTEL PRODUCTS ARE NOT DESIGNED NOR INTENDED FOR ANY APPLICATION IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE INTEL PRODUCT COULD CREATE A SITUATION WHERE PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH MAY OCCUR.

Intel may make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time, without notice. Designers must not rely on the absence or characteristics of any features or instructions marked 'reserved' or 'undefined.' Intel reserves these for future definition and shall have no responsibility whatsoever for conflicts or incompatibilities arising from future changes to them. The information here is subject to change without notice. Do not finalize a design with this information.

The products described in this document may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request.

Hardware Introduction

The Raspberry Pi's VideoCore IV System-on-Chip has several components, each of which can be run at different clock speeds. They are:

ARM - the main general-purpose CPU
SDRAM - the 1GB or 512MB or 256MB of main memory
Core - the GPU processor core (confusingly named)
GPU - a quick way to collectively refer to the following three parts: * H264 - the hardware x264 decoder used when watching movies and TV shows * ISP - the Image Sensor Pipeline, does things like color profile correction and image scaling * V3D - the 3D block, does the work described by OpenGL commands

All of these plus the voltages have an 'idle' setting which they run at normally, only increasing to their individual maximums when they are used and placed under enough load. Changing this maximum is what Raspberry Pi overclocking does.

The H264, ISP, and V3D all share the same clock generator (a PLL) so all run at the same speed.

Both of these default behaviours can be changed if desired.

As a component is overclocked it may become unreliable. Unreliability is most often seen as program crashes, hardware lockups, and graphical glitches.

One way to increase that reliability is to increase the voltage to the component. This has the tradeoff that more heat is generated by the component. A component may be damaged if too much voltage is supplied.

A cooler component will usually perform more reliably than a hotter component.

Lifespan and Warranty

Whilst there are overclock settings which are considered 'supported' by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, not every Pi will be able to reach all supplied overclock settings, and overclocking always runs the risk of shortening the lifespan of your Pi.

There are some settings which flip a hardware switch inside the Pi and void the warranty, these are:

over_voltage greater than 6
force_turbo=1
temp_limit greater than 85

Best Settings

There are no 'best settings' for overclocking, each individual Raspberry Pi has a different maximum capability. Just because some guy on the internet says he can reach some huge speed and play every game smoothly does not mean your Pi will be able to do the same. Likewise perhaps yours will run even faster.

Why is this?

There is no way for a silicon chip manufacturer to make a processor which runs 'at' a certain speed. There will always be some variance in the reliability of the components. Manufacturers make silicon chips so that the majority of a production run can achieve the chip's advertised speed, then they test all of the chips at that speed and throw out the small number of failures. This means there are always some chips which can do more than their advertised speed, though it's not known exactly how much more any given individual chip can do. It might be a significant percentage or it might be none.

This is seen all throughout processor history. Intel originally tried to make the first Pentium a 66MHz CPU but they couldn't get the production reliable enough, however, the chips which didn't run at 66MHz did run just fine at 60MHz so they printed '60MHz' on those chips and sold them at a slightly lower cost than ones with '66MHz' printed on them. The Raspberry Pi 1 (700MHz) and the Raspberry Pi Zero (1GHz) use the exact same System-on-Chip, the only difference being in the ~4 years between those models, Broadcom managed to make the production process better so they could make faster chips more reliably.

That said, there are some sensible starting points for Pi overclocking which are discussed below.

Power Supply

A good reliable power source and power cable are strongly recommended for overclocking.

An overclocked Pi 3 could draw over 1.5A of current, so a 2A supply should be the minimum considered. Many power supplies drop their voltage as current draw increases towards their maximum rating, so a 2.5A or higher power supply is a better choice than 2A. Some good suggestions are:

Raspberry Pi Foundation official 2.5A power supply
Genuine Samsung and HP tablet chargers

Users have reported success with:

Canakit 2.5A power supply, common on Amazon
Kootek 2.5A power supply
Genuine Apple 12W 2.4A iPad charger, available in stores

The Pi runs off 5V but there's nothing wrong with a power supply providing 5.1V or 5.25V. There's usually about 0.25V drop over a typical USB power cable so the extra voltage helps compensate.

A good power cable is just as important as a good power supply. The wire in the cable should be 22AWG or thicker. Wire gauge goes down as it gets thicker, so 20AWG is thicker than 22AWG which is thicker than 25AWG. A longer cable drops much more voltage than a shorter cable, so use USB cables under 1M/3ft in length. A mobile phone or tablet 'fast charge' cable should be sufficient.

Ensure you have a good solid connection at the MicroUSB connector, a loose or poorly-fitting connector can pass less current than a well-seated connector.

If you are powering many USB devices or power-hungry USB devices like rechargable game controllers off the Pi's USB ports, consider powering them off an externally-powered USB hub instead: http://elinux.org/RPi_Powered_USB_Hubs

There is a maximum current you can draw through the Pi board itself, dictated by the polyfuse next to the power connector:

Pi 1: 750mA
Pi 2: 2A
Pi 3: 2.5A

So there's no point getting a massively over-rated power supply like 10A and continuing to run many devices off the USB ports. There is also a smaller polyfuse on the USB ports which makes doing this even more unfeasible.

The exception to this is the Pi Zero, which has no current protection anywhere.

Rainbow Square or Lightning Bolt

If you see either a little rainbow square or a lightning bolt icon in the top right corner of the screen, those are the 'under voltage' warnings, indicating your power supply is sending under 4.65V.

If this appears, shut down your Pi down properly and:

Pull out your power cable and plug it back in, at both ends if using a USB-A to MicroUSB cable, to ensure a good firm connection
Test without any powered USB devices
Try a different power cable
Try a different power supply

Temperature and Cooling

The Pi idles around 35C with usual operating temperatures as high as 75C depending on environment.

At 80C you'll start to see the red/orange/yellow square or thermometer icon in the top right corner of the screen, this is the temperature warning.

At 85C the Pi will throttle the CPU speed down to reduce temperature and performance will suffer greatly.

Cooling can be mainly broken up into two parts: heatsinks and fans.

Heatsinks

The small (14mm x 14mm x 4mm) heatsinks that come with most Pi kits are next to useless on their own without a fan, they'll only drop 5C at most.

Depending on the case used to house the Pi, a larger heatsink up to 25mm x 25mm x 15mm can usually be fit in. These will perform a bit better, dropping up to 20C without a fan.

Heatsink material - copper vs aluminium - is a never-ending debate within the overclocking community. For a relatively small Raspberry Pi heatsink, it's unlikely to make a huge difference.

There are three main areas available to cool on the Pi 2 and Pi 3 - the main SoC, the Ethernet controller, and the voltage regulator - however only the SoC in the middle of the board really benefits from any cooling. The Ethernet chip and the voltage regulator operate within specification without a heatsink. The RAM is underneath on the bottom on the board so is more difficult to cool.

When applying a heatsink, clean the surface of the SoC chip with isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol) and a lint-free cloth to clean off any impurities or fingerprint oil and to ensure good contact with the thermal conductor to the heatsink.

The usual method to hold heatsinks on is thermal transfer tape. This is an extremely thin (less than 0.5mm) sticky layer and is designed specifically for thermal conductivity. 3M are a common brand to see. You can buy rolls or squares of it if you need to.

Cheap heatsink kits have been seen with double-sided tape to hold the heatsinks on. This material will act more as an insulator and probably raise temperatures! Double-sided tape is easily spotted as it's over 2mm thick and can be compressed then slowly springs back and retains its shape like a sponge. If you have this, remove it and get proper thermal transfer tape.

Another method to hold heatsinks on is a thermal glue/epoxy like Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive however be aware this is a permanent solution. Trying to take off a heatsink fastened with thermal adhesive is more likely to remove the chip from the board and cause permanent damage.

Fans

A fan is needed to make the Raspberry Pi cool very well. With the right heatsink and fan combination, flat-out running temperatures as low as 55C are possible.

Fans can be powered externally, via the USB ports, or via the 5V GPIO pins. Pi 2 and newer models can use the 3.3V pin to power a fan if the user wants slower/quieter fan.

Fans are available from electronics suppliers, as well as the usual eBay and Amazon and Chinese gadget manufacturers. Specifically getting a quiet fan is a really good idea, some 5V fans sound like small jet engines!

It is sometimes possible to use a 12V fan like from a PC. Popular overclocker brands like Noctua make PC fans which are designed to run off a low voltage so these should work well. Cheap 12V computer fans often don't have enough power to start spinning with only 5V, though they may continue spinning with 5V once you start the blades turning with your finger.

Some Pi cases have a place specifically to mount a fan, sometimes you can cut a hole in a case, sometimes you have to get creative to mount your fan.

Overclocking Methods

There are two ways to overclock, either the Pi Foundation's raspi-config tool, or by manually editing /boot/config.txt.

After making any changes, reboot to apply the new settings.

Supported Overclocking

The Pi Foundation's supported overclocking tool provides some options for the Pi 1 and Pi 2. It does not provide any options for the Pi 3 or Pi Zero.

This tool can be accessed from the RetroPie menu in EmulationStation, or by typing sudo raspi-config in the terminal, and selecting the Overclock option:

You'll see this warning that overclocking may shorten the lifespan of your Pi:

Then select your preferred overclock setting:

This menu shows the options for Pi 1, the Pi 2 has only None and Turbo.

Manual Overclocking

All Raspberry Pi models can be manually overclocked by editing /boot/config.txt and rebooting. Read the SSH page if you are not familiar with editing text files in Linux.

Parameters are set like:

For example, to set the ARM to 1000MHz:

Useful Parameters

The following speed parameters can be set:

arm_freq - speed of the ARM core
core_freq - speed of GPU processor core
gpu_freq - speed of all GPU components
sdram_freq - speed of SDRAM
sdram_schmoo - a set of SDRAM timings

The following voltage parameters can be set:

over_voltage - voltage of ARM and GPU
over_voltage_sdram - voltage of all SDRAM parts (c, i, and p)

The voltage starts at 1.2V and adjusts up or down in 0.025V steps. 0 is equal to 1.2V, the minimum -16 is 0.8V, and the maximum 8 is 1.4V. Voltage starts to help when running core/GPU/SDRAM at or over 500MHz.

To set voltage greater than 6 you must set force_turbo=1 which voids the warranty.

Other Parameters

There is a complex mathematical relationship between the clocks for the GPU core and the individual GPU components. Setting these without understanding their relationship may result in running a component faster or slower than intended. You are better to just set gpu_freq and not worry about it. The individual components only get faster when they are used anyway.Note This section no longer applies. Currently the GPU core and individual GPU components do not have need to have related PLLs.

By setting avoid_pwm_pll=1 (which negatively affects 3.5mm audio quality) you can overclock the individual GPU components with the parameters:

v3d_freq - speed of OpenGL 3D graphics processor
isp_freq - speed of Image Sensor Pipeline
h264_freq - speed of x264 video decoder (not used by emulators, used by Kodi)

These more complex RAM voltages are set together by over_voltage_sdram and there is often not a need to set them individually:

over_voltage_sdram_c - voltage of SDRAM controller
over_voltage_sdram_i - voltage of SDRAM I/O
over_voltage_sdram_p - voltage of SDRAM PHY (physical RAM chip)

There is also:

temp_limit - CPU throttling temperature in Celsius

You can set temp_limit lower than the default 85 if you'd like your Pi to slow down sooner than normal. You can also set it higher if you like, which voids the warranty and heavily risks killing your Pi due to over-temperature.

force_turbo - disable dynamic clocking

Setting force_turbo=1 results in all components running at their maximum speed at all times. This will void the warranty and make your Pi run quite hot, though it may also perform faster.

First Overclocking Tool For Mac Torrent

Default Settings

The default settings for each model Pi are:

Where Do I Start?

Where emulation benefits from overclocks, there are two types:

Emulation restricted by the CPU
such as MAME which has no 3D acceleration at all (neither on the Pi or on any other computer)

Emulation restricted by the GPU
such as N64 which is based around graphics plugins and is relying mostly on the OpenGL V3D core to do work for it

You can measure CPU usage with top or htop. If emulation runs poorly and CPU usage is at maximum, emulation is probably limited by the CPU. If emulation runs poorly and CPU usage is not at 100%, emulation is probably limited by the GPU.

CPU-restricted emulation will not benefit from GPU speed increases, though GPU-restricted emulation may benefit slightly from CPU speed increases.

All types of emulation will benefit from increased RAM speed.

Some rules of thumb to start Raspberry Pi overclocking:

If overclocking the CPU (arm_freq), start at the original speed and take it up in steps of 50MHz.

If overclocking the GPU (core_freq or gpu_freq), start at 500 (or 400 for Pi 1) and take them up in steps of 20MHz or 25MHz. Remember gpu_freq will overclock all of the GPU (including core_freq) and core_freq will over clock just the GPU processor itself. This also influences the L2 cache of the CPU which has very minor performance increase mostly seen on the pi zero.

For voltage, you are probably best to start with over_voltage=2 then increase by 1 if the system becomes unstable.

For RAM, start with the original speed and again go up in small steps of 20MHz or 25MHz, increasing voltage in steps of 1 if things become unstable. The schmoo setting is some timings known to help increase stability of overclocked RAM:

After many config file edits and reboots it's difficult to remember exactly which settings were best and which didn't have any effect and which broke things. It's best to:

change only one setting at a time
write down exactly what you changed
write down the results of that change

Test your overclock thoroughly before going up to the next speed. Some people like to leave automated tests running overnight, some people only test for 15 minutes or so. Besides automated tests, test the things you actually care about and are trying to improve. There's no use making a commandline benchmark faster if your games don't run any better.

If emulators start crashing (check logs for segmentation fault or general protection fault or similar) or the kernel panics or the system freezes or any other such unexpected result, you're probably past the limit of what your individual Pi can do. Back off the overclock to the previous stable setting. That's probably as good as it gets.

How Do I Test?

This is a difficult question to answer for RetroPie, as there are not many easy automated ways to fully exercise the GPU and 3D components.

If you wish to install Quake 3 and have a keyboard, running the ioQuake3 console commands timedemo 1 and demo four provide a good exercise of the GPU.

Playing an N64 game is also a good way to use the GPU. A game which runs poorly and totally maxes out the system, like Conker's Bad Fur Day, might be a better choice than a game which runs well.

Some cryptographical functions to exercise the CPU can be benchmarked by running: openssl speed

The LINPACK benchmark runs a multi-computer CPU-based workload on one computer: https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/hpl-high-performance-linpack-benchmark-raspberry-pi/

A test script which runs simple processes in the background then does sdcard I/O is available at: http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Overclock_stability_test

A very thorough set of tests which exercise many components of the Pi is documented at: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=952371

Help! I Overclocked Too Far and Cannot Boot

Place the sdcard in your computer, both Windows and Mac will see the small FAT32 partition which contains config.txt which you can edit and change the bad overclock settings.

If you have a USB keyboard attached to your Pi, holding the Shift key while powering on tells the GPU core to avoid applying overclock settings until the next boot.

What Speeds Can I Expect?

Whilst every individual Pi is differerent, experience shows most are able to reach at least these frequencies. Some get higher, some get lower, but these are common:

Pi 1 - ARM 900 and core/GPU/RAM 400, any higher is pretty lucky
Pi 2 - ARM 1000 and core/GPU/RAM 500, RAM over 600 is not unheard of
Pi 3 - ARM 1300 and core/GPU/RAM 500, RAM over 600 is not unheard of
Pi Zero - ARM not widely tested, core/GPU/RAM 500

Settings Examples

As much as copying someone else's settings simply may not work, people still ask for them, so here are some usually-safe baselines to start from:

Raspberry Pi 1

Raspberry Pi 2

Raspberry Pi 3

Raspberry Pi Zero

Measurement Tools

To display a Frames Per Second counter in RetroArch cores to see the effect on emulation speed, edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and set:

You can SSH into your Pi while playing a game and run these commands to measure the effect of normal operation.

The temperature of the SoC can be queried with the command:

The currently applied config.txt parameters which differ from default can be queried with:

The current frequency of the components can be queried with (remember they only increase speed under load unless using force_turbo):

The current voltages of the components can be queried with:

CPU usage of currently-running processes can be viewed with

A nicer display of CPU usage can be installed with sudo apt update && sudo apt install htop and then:

Storage Overclocking

While loading a small ROM of a few kilobytes or even a few megabytes happens almost instantly, improved storage speed has benefits such as faster booting and regular operation, as well as providing quicker loading time to emulators dealing with very large ROMs and disc images such as PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PSP.

The sdcard specification says that when operating in 'High Capacity (SDHC) mode' an sdcard must run at 50MHz, but when running in the faster 'Ultra High Speed (UHS) mode' an sdcard must be able to run at 100MHz.

Whilst the Pi runs its sdcard reader at the 50MHz speed and does not enter sdcards into UHS mode, a UHS-capable card can probably still run at 100MHz while in SDHC mode, so we run the sdcard reader faster and hope the card is happy with it.

UHS cards are identified by the capital I of the UHS-I logo, as well as U1 or U3 speed markings. These are usually high-end expensive sdcards like Samsung Pro/Evo or Sandisk Extreme.

It is recommended not to try this with a regular non-UHS SDHC card.

The sdcard reader speed can be increased in /boot/config.txt with the following line and a reboot:

Once booted, the sdcard reader frequency can be queried with:

Spotting a bad sdcard overclock can be very difficult, as the sdcard will probably write corrupted data and everything will appear to work fine, you won't notice the data is corrupt until you access it again later on.

If your sdcard doesn't boot when overclocked, place the sdcard in your computer, both Windows and Mac will see the small FAT32 partition which contains config.txt which you can edit to remove the setting.

There are actually several frequencies in between 50MHz and 100MHz which can also be used, the exact speeds vary depending on Pi model. When a speed is applied which is not one of the useable frequencies, the next lowest frequency is chosen.

For example, setting 100MHz on a Pi 3 results in 100MHz, but setting 99MHz actually results in the sdcard reader running at 83MHz, and setting 82MHz would bump down to the next frequency under that.