Extreme Netbook Pro Overclock to 796 mhz!

I overclocked my Netbook Pro today to...796 mhz using the PA255 overclocker utility designed for the Sigmarion III. The interface is in Japanese, but not too hard to understand. The performance is absolutely insane now, and everything seems stable, thus far. Here are the BMQ benchmark scores:

Integer: 1639
Float: 148
Draw: 312
Window: 243
Memory: 1716

Total:811

The total score is dragged down quite a bit by the weak video performance on the Netbook Pro, but the individual scores in most areas are very high. Only an overclocked Sigmarion III comes close.

C'est increblu

I hate to think what that is doing to the CPU. Any instability?

No instability experienced thus far. I left it at that setting for about half an hour while running bmq, tcpmp, quake and other CPU stressing applications. I rebooted the Netbook Pro to restore its default cpu speed of 400 mhz. I am more concerned about what running at that speed would do to battery life than instability at this point, although I am not sure how hot the CPU is getting when running at ~800mhz. Does anyone have any photos of the interior that would show where the CPU is located and how it can be accessed? I would love to stick a thermister on the cpu and see what sort of temp results at different cpu speeds.

lol i heard sig3 can be overclocked to over 800...

first owner before me used it at 530 all the time.

probably it does reduce battery life noticeably. but i should try once heh.

Ya, my experience so far (not with an HPC but PPC) with the PXA255 is that it is radically underclocked by default. My Dell Axim X5 Advanced (piddle PC with PXA255 400MHz and WM2003) runs quite comfortably at 600MHz with a 200MHz FSB (instead of the default 100MHz). It runs OK at 472MHz with a 236MHz FSB, except that the digitizer doesn't work well. (You can click OK, but dragging is impossible.) Most people report similar overclock capabilities for the PXA255. My guess is that they crank it down to improve battery performance, and system builders neglect to give you the software to ratchet it back up if you want to.

BTW: Anyone have experience with overclocking an SA-1110 at all? i.e. Jornada 720 overclockers?

Now give us some thoroughput data. I mean of course the cpu is working faster (and harder) but how does this translate into everyday use? Do web pages that are graphically intensive open faster? Do you have some comparisons of before and after?

Where is this software located...I might see if I can burn up my unit with it...

Rich

You can try using Pocket Hack Master on a MobilePro 900/900C with some hacking (it's a Piddle PC application). You can buy it from Handango, PocketGear, etc etc etc... The developer website is:

http://www.antontomov.com/

I managed to hack the app so it would run on my ViewPad 100, even though it's a CE 3.0 system, but unfortunately the software can't overclock an SA-1110 CPU. It only works on PXA25x, 26x and 27x CPU's.

Hmmm, does this only work with Netbook Pro? I mean, I have heard of overclocking, like the Sig3 can go around 500mhz... But 800?? That's crazy.

Netbook Pro has very long battery life anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. But I don't know about heat...

The software I used can be found at

http://sigmarion3.org/archive/xclkcfg101.lzh

You will need a good archive handler like 7-zip to work with lzh files. It is an obscure archive format and I don't know why the Japanese seem to like it.
The file in the archive that you want to copy to your Netbook Pro is named xclkcfg.exe
The software is in Japanese. The source code is included in the archive. Anyone want to make an english version? The asian HPC community is alive and well and has obviously produced a lot of useful apps and hacks. I would speculate that most of the active HPC developers at this point are asian. I wish we did a better job of communicating. Then we would be a force to be reckoned with!

Just about everything is noticeably faster when overclocked. A lot of the UI elements of programs respond far more quickly. The Netbook Pro still suffers from lack of good video acceleration, but watching movies in TCPMP is finally tolerable (although I still get a clicking noise in the audio for some reason, but that was present before the overclock).

You can also use WinRAR

LZH and LHA are pretty old archive formats. I remember using them back on my Amiga A1000 back in the 80's/early 90's

Yes, but 7-zip is free and handles pretty much every archive format known to man, including obscure ones like lzh/lha.

yes, you can overclock the j72x's and the SA1110, i can send you the overclocker app. max is 236 Mhz though, strongarm has never been famous of being easily overclocked.




yep it can do 800, but i dont dare to try on mine, lol.
the same software works on sig3 afaik, i'll try it later... but not at 800.. hmmm or will i ..?

I overclocked my J720 back when I first got it, using the ipaq overclocking util. It worked fine, as long as I didn't want to access the CF card or use my pcmcia wireless card. In other words, it was rather useless!

strange, same experience here, at 236 mhz i had problems with the cf card on the j720 too, BUT: no problems whatsoever on the 728!! (i will try again on another 720 and 728's)

Thanks Rocketman and BTrimmer. I downloaded both sets of software. Haven't hacked the one BTrimmer mentioned, but the other loaded and ran on the 900C without any problems.

I used an old program called Sabotage which is one of those shoot-em up types. It was made for the older slower machines, and at my 400mHz it was nearly impossible to play. I was able to slow down the cpu speed to 100mHz and the game was playable.

I then increased the speed incrementally until the default cpu speed of 400mHz. Seemed to work just fine in that area. I then increased the speed up to the max 796mHz. The programs all ran fine, but I didn't notice any speed increase over the 400 mHz speed. None, zilch, zero! Weird.

Rich