CPU clock speed

[wpte]

hello,

I''ve seen 1 guy so far that tried overclocking his router
now the question also rises in me.

look at this file: http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/4780P-PB01-R.pdf
this is a spec sheet of the processor inside the WL-500g Premium, WL-700gE and WL-500W

at the first line it says:

Advanced 400 DMIPS / 300 MHz MIPS32™ CPU core

crazy enough the core is only running at 264MHz
is there a reason for running a slower speed than it should be?
otherwise it might be better to turn it up, and get those 400 drhystones
I mean... the normal pc''s of today already get more than 5.000.000
why bother with less when you can get more and it''s safe

[newbiefan]

Well, just keep an eye on cpu temperature.

If necessary glue a cooling sheet on your cpu.

Set to 300 MHz:

nvram set clkfreq=300,150
nvram commit
reboot

Have a look:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : Broadcom BCM947XX
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM3302 V0.6
BogoMIPS : 299.84


And backwards to original:
nvram set clkfreq=264
nvram commit
reboot

Be careful........if anything goes wrong, bricking your router is easy.....
sometimes it's hard to get him back to life.

Be aware, everything is at your own risk.
Have fun

[wpte]

system type : Broadcom BCM4704 chip rev 9 pkg 0
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM3302 V0.6
BogoMIPS : 263.78
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
unaligned_instructions : 12
dcache hits : 0
dcache misses : 0
icache hits : 0
icache misses : 0
instructions : 0

it doesn''t say my model tough... while all the docs I found said it should have
is it a bug? maybe the system expects a different processor, that''s why they lower the clock maybe.

system will be cool enough, I have a laptop cooler under it, it''s just cold :P
it even boosts my wifi somehow :P

[wpte]

and the overclocked result:

system type : Broadcom BCM4704 chip rev 9 pkg 0
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM3302 V0.6
BogoMIPS : 299.82
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
unaligned_instructions : 12
dcache hits : 0
dcache misses : 0
icache hits : 0
icache misses : 0
instructions : 0

php page generation time:
normal: 4 to 5 seconds
overclocked 1.95 seconds


this is how it should be

some bogomips results:

Intel 80386DX4 - 19 bogomips
Intel 80386DX4 - 37 bogomips
Intel Pentium 1 - 265 bogomips
AMD Athlon - 2793 bogomips
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ - 3076 bogomips
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - 8021 bogomips

faster than a pentium 1

[wpte]

for the ppl who want to know if it's stable...
it is, I've ran it the whole night with downloading torrents
it seems that the cpu usage is a lot less, it usually came around the 2, now it's mostly under 1

I do use a laptop cooler 24/7, wich is needed because of the hot weather these days
it once crashed, without overclock thanks to the heat... that's why I use it

[raas]

php page generation time:
normal: 4 to 5 seconds
overclocked 1.95 seconds

Did you do an honest comparisson?
With ~ 10% more CPU speed you just can not get more than double the performance.

From what I've read in this forum, the overclocking is not worth the hassle.
If I remember correctly the guy also monitored the whole thing and he only mentioned a temperature increase of 2 degrees celsius (55 to 57 or something)
He also did some benchmarking and came to the conclusion it wasn't worth the hassle.

Also, the chip might be able to run at 300mhz, but only if 'certain conditions' are met. It could well be possible that the asus design of the router doesn't meet those conditions. Whatever will be the reason, the guys at asus must have had their reasons to set the speed at 264 I suppose.

Just my 2 cents.

[wpte]

I did do a serious comparison, I've never seen sutch speedy page generations on my nuke evolution
and on transmission also a big difference.
unfortunately I can't get the older picture of the transfer, but if the scale is 2 the average green lines would look like this.
the lower line is overclocked and the upper is underclocked.
I think that is a big difference
also... the graph is generated quicker than before.

so far other pleasant results:
the webcam is able to get 5fps instead of the 3 when underclocked.
samba transfer speeds with vista increased 200-300kb/s
I have a faster boot up 5 seconds faster so far.

if you really want results, I'll do a mysql benchmark: importing a 15mb query
and I think it's quite logic to see these increases, I mean it's a mips processor, the same idea as a xscale processor: get more speed with less power and mhz. so if you increase the clock speed with 12%, the speeds should increase more than 1

If the sheets from the ffc I saw are correct, the wl500w has a kinda modified version of a laptop motherboard, the only thing that lacks the good conditions is the cooling, but I took care of that

[wpte]

page generation not overclocked:

[ Page Generation: 9.18 Seconds | Memory Usage: 5.09 MB | DB Queries: 54 ]
[ Page Generation: 7.83 Seconds | Memory Usage: 5.09 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]
[ Page Generation: 8.26 Seconds | Memory Usage: 5.09 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]
[ Page Generation: 7.83 Seconds | Memory Usage: 5.09 MB | DB Queries: 56 ]
[ Page Generation: 7.42 Seconds | Memory Usage: 5.09 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]

page generation overclocked:

[ Page Generation: 6.93 Seconds | Memory Usage: 4.55 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]
[ Page Generation: 6.87 Seconds | Memory Usage: 4.55 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]
[ Page Generation: 6.53 Seconds | Memory Usage: 4.55 MB | DB Queries: 56 ]
[ Page Generation: 6.89 Seconds | Memory Usage: 4.55 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]
[ Page Generation: 6.53 Seconds | Memory Usage: 4.55 MB | DB Queries: 53 ]

for both results I've don exactly the same thing before testing, these are clean results
still weird that the overclocked uses 0.5mb less of memory on the same pages

anyway, the average:
normal: 8.104 seconds
overclocked: 6.75 seconds

speed increase: 20%

note I used a different page then before in my posts, this one has more queries and a complexer script for better benchmarking

[raas]

Well then ..

looks good.

how 'bout temperature..

I know it can get quite hot in the place I've stashed my wl500gp

[wpte]

Well then ..

looks good.

how 'bout temperature..

I know it can get quite hot in the place I've stashed my wl500gp

yeh, I wouldn't let it run overclocked without cooling with the temperature like last day
I dunno what the exact temp is, but it shouldn't be a lot of watts, otherwise it wouldn't cool down to room temp with the laptop cooler I've bought
I think it's more the fact that the air doesn't go in and out that good, so it might overheat that way