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Google Nexus S Processor Overclocked To 1.2GHz

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

dkd903 writes "Though Google's Nexus S is powered by a single core Hummingbird processor, it looks like the one core would be enough to put LG's dual-core processor powered Optimus to shame. An XDA Forums user morfic has overclocked the processor on Nexus S up to 1.2GHz in a new kernel based on the Bionix NS1 mod."

78 comments

  1. So... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    How is the battery life after you install a pump for the coolant and a fan for the radiator?

    1. Re:So... by jsse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Funny as it seems, but overclocking could sometime save battery life as it could alter the default voltage usage of a particular frequency. At least, this is the case of Nokia N900 with Titan's Kernel Power, where we could choose 'starving' profile for overclocking with less voltage than default. Say it can run at almost half as much voltage at 600Mhz than normal. (fyi. N900 can be overclocked to 1.15GHz max. with Kernel Power)

    2. Re:So... by adolf · · Score: 5, Informative

      Funny as it seems, but overclocking could sometime save battery life as it could alter the default voltage usage of a particular frequency. At least, this is the case of Nokia N900 with Titan's Kernel Power, where we could choose 'starving' profile for overclocking with less voltage than default. Say it can run at almost half as much voltage at 600Mhz than normal. (fyi. N900 can be overclocked to 1.15GHz max. with Kernel Power)

      That's not necessarily overclocking -- see also, undervolting or even underclocking.

      On my Droid 1, I do all three: It runs at, IIRC, 1GHz, some of the time. Its lowest clock speed is 125MHz, where it spends most of its time (half of the default lowest rate of 250MHz). And all of these speeds are at lower voltage than default.

      In the end, it's about a wash: I get a faster device for about the same battery life as I had at stock clocks. Heat generation is about the same, by my estimation, in common use.

      None of this is particularly new: I have a fanless, diskless K6-2 350 that gets used for some realtime audio processing tasks using KX audio drivers. It is equipped with a big heatsink, clocked down to 200MHz, and running at low voltage. The hard drive is a CF card on an IDE bus.

      It's stable as a champ, doesn't make a peep, and never gets too warm. (These days there's better options for that sort of work, with Atom and SSD, but it was the best I could come up with back then, and it still works just as well today as it did then.)

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    3. Re:So... by wintersdark · · Score: 1

      While I'm not familiar with this particular processor, in a great many of these lower-power chips you can get significant overclocking gains without noteworthy increased heat. The Pandora, for example, sports an OMAP3530 SoC (which includes an ARM Cortex V8) rated at 600mhz. People have overclocked this to 1ghz with no heat issues and only minor losses in battery life (the chip doesn't remain at maximum speed but underclocks itself when not under load).

      It's not like overclocking a normal desktop processor. Instability occurs long before heat becomes an issue.

      --
      Meh.
    4. Re:So... by CreamyG31337 · · Score: 2

      The fastest speed at a given voltage is always the most efficient, so overclocking is really only a battery killer if you run at higher than stock voltages to reach the top speeds.
      n900 also becomes both faster and more efficient by disabling the 125 and 250 mhz frequencies. This is because they use very similar low voltages, with nokia's kernel they are close, and some of the other voltage profiles commonly used with titan's kernel they are identical. So it's better to do x cycles of work at 500mhz and sleep for as long as possible (shut off the cpu as much as possible to save power) than to run twice or four times as much to the same amount of work.
      Anyways, I wish people on the maemo forums would understand this before crying that the 125/250mhz isn't "working"...

    5. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is the battery life after you install a pump for the coolant and a fan for the radiator?

      Battery life isn't an issue when you don't have anyplace to go besides the basement. ;)

  2. Hummingbird by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does the Hummingbird processor require more nectar when it's overclocked?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Hummingbird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does the Hummingbird processor require more nectar when it's overclocked?

      If it does, it probably just flies down off of the clock and gits itself some nectar.

    2. Re:Hummingbird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just wondering...

      If you put a Nexus processor running Android into sleep mode,
      does it dream of electric sheep?

    3. Re:Hummingbird by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Sweet!

      --
      Infuriate left and right
    4. Re:Hummingbird by quenda · · Score: 1

      No, but if you overclock it too far, it will go backwards.

  3. 1.2GHz pretty standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Don't really see this as a huge amount of news the old snapdragons have been running at 1.2GHz (well 1.19 anyways) with the same base 1GHz speed for ages.

    1. Re:1.2GHz pretty standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right. This is nothing. G2 has hit 1.9GHz. Here's a Quadrant score from yesterday from someone @ 1.8GHz. He would have ranked 4th on this (old) chart.

    2. Re:1.2GHz pretty standard by mcvos · · Score: 1

      GigaHertzes don't mean anything. Some processors are faster than others at the same clock speed. I believe the Cortex A8 (in the iPhone 3GS, Motorola Milestone/Droid, and I think also the N900) is at 600 MHz about as fast as a Snapdragon at 800Mhz. In the Milestone/Droid, it can be overclocked to at least 1GHz, which would be faster than a 1.2GHz Snapdragon.

      So what we really need to know is how fast this Hummingbird really is. Not in GHz, but in actual computation.

    3. Re:1.2GHz pretty standard by cb88 · · Score: 0

      Well while you are heading in the right direction even that isn't entirely true... as ram isn't overclocked by overclocking the CPU so large programs that jump around alot won't see the speedup as much as smaller programs that are highly compute intensive. Also for emulation purposes like on the Pandora handheld .... the ram is probably the primary bottleneck as it isn't very fast at all and both the CPU and GPU share it.

  4. Really?? by mejogid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given that the LG Optimus 2x - also known as the Star - benchmarks pretty impressively, I doubt a Nexus S overclock will put it to shame. In the quadrant benchmark the Nexus S has been noted as obtaining a score of 1474, whilst the Star scores 1759.

    Assuming linear scaling from 1ghz, the Nexus S would obtain 1769 with android 2.3 whilst the star manages the previously stated 1759 with android 2.2 which has received fewer performance optimisations. Whilst this is only one benchmark, the more graphically focussed ones favour the Star's tegra (nVidia) processor to an even greater extent.

    Therefore far from putting the new dual core Optimus to shame, I would argue that an overclocked Nexus S can just about keep level with it whilst using a faster OS version on benchmarks that favour it. Hardly putting the Star to shame...

    1. Re:Really?? by teh31337one · · Score: 4, Informative

      Quadrant is a pretty flawed test.

      That said, based on some other benchmarks and their respective specs, tegra2 has roughly 2.5x more CPU power compared to the hummingbird SOC. (1ghz A9 runs 25% faster than 1ghz A8, and tegra 2 is a dual core A9) Anadtech's Linpack scores seem to show that too. (Ignore the bloated snapdragon class scores, it has floating point performance optimisations) Article here

      GPU performance is where it gets interesting. It seems like the PowerVR 540 GPU on the hummingbird SoC is better than the GPU used in the Tegra 2 SoC. Odd considering nVidia make the tegra2. Instances where Tegra 2 outperforms the hummingbird in GPU benchmarks are as far as i can tell down to the extra CPU power (roughly 250% faster)

      Samsung's upcoming Orion chip also looks promising, and is a closer match to the Tegra 2.

    2. Re:Really?? by toleraen · · Score: 1

      Thanks for tossing numbers to this, as the article, the articles links, xda, etc make no mention or comparison to the Optimus that I could see. Couldn't you also assume a similar situation with an overclocked Tegra2 as well? 20% increase would put it at over 2100.

    3. Re:Really?? by adolf · · Score: 1

      GPU performance is interesting, I guess, but it's interesting for different reasons to me than it seems to be for you:

      I, for one, am not surprised that PowerVR is doing better in this sector than nVidia, with the former having lost all relevance in the desktop and portable market, and the latter having spent the past few years trying to beat up ATI/AMD as top dog on the desktop. That PowerVR has a superior low-performance offering is really not very interesting.

      What is interesting is that people think that it matters. I've never downloaded and used a "3D" app on my Droid other than Google Earth, whereas I've played both Doom and Madden on my iPod Touch 1g with good results.

      In my experience, 3D apps/games on Android are few and far between.

      And, FWIW, Google Earth is more responsive on that ancient iPod than it is on my overclocked Droid.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    4. Re:Really?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And I have probably 80% of the top 3D games for Android on my X. It's kind of neat playing Asphalt 5/NFS-Shift on the big-screen TV from my phone (at standard definition).

      With that said, I haven't found any Android games yet that I've played for more than 1 hour at a time. None are particularly interesting.

    5. Re:Really?? by imgod2u · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. Most of the benchmarks of real-world games -- while they are a bit rare -- show the Tegra 2 as being slightly faster; take Quake 3, for instance. Neocore is particularly slow on Tegra 2 because it's a benchmark made by Qualcomm that targets tile-based rendering and also offloads a lot of the FP workload to the CPU (where Tegra 2 is particularly bad).

      Realistically, Tegra 2 is pretty much a beast of a chip, but I'm curious about its power numbers.

    6. Re:Really?? by Dr+Max · · Score: 1

      Mod the man up. Its comparing apples and oranges if only one of them has been overclocked.

      --
      Rocket Surgeon.
    7. Re:Really?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tegra 2 performs well, imho because the CPU more than compensates for the GPU. I mean - it's not a bad GPU, but I don't think it's as good as the PowerVR one.

    8. Re:Really?? by teh31337one · · Score: 1

      dunno why that came up as anon, but I posted that. ~teh31337one

    9. Re:Really?? by F34nor · · Score: 1

      Is any of this related to Samsung getting the DEC Alpha after Intel picked the bones?

    10. Re:Really?? by imgod2u · · Score: 1

      I'd say quite the opposite really. The CPU's are good at integer and branchy type stuff that the GPU can't do anyway. But the A9 implementation they chose is a really really really stripped down FPU.

      The GPU is what's pulling the weight in graphics related tasks.

  5. And? by teh31337one · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's a hummingbird. And it's been overclocked to 1.6ghz on Galaxy S phones. Besides, 1.2ghz OC is pretty standard. I've got my Galaxy S i9000 overclocked to 1.2ghz, and it's using the same voltage as 1ghz would. I've undervolted the other frequencies, and the battery life is great - better than stock 1ghz.

    1. Re:And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      totally otherwise unnoticable performance gain.

      Bullshit.

      My Droid came out of the box at 550 MHz. I over clock it to 1.2 GHz and experience significant performance gains. Programs start faster, there isn't any menu stuttering, the web browser scrolls smoothly, etc. At stock speeds, the phone runs okay but not nearly as well as with the over clock. It also helps with things like emulation, flash, pdf rendering, you name it, over clocking makes it better.

      And the really beautiful thing about it all... the battery life is actually better thanks to the kernel I have installed automatically undervolting the cpu. And it is 100 percent stable to boot. So, please, take your uninformed cynicism elsewhere.

    2. Re:And? by nomel · · Score: 1

      Agreed, especially considering the feature sets and straight execution efficiency that are added to the new chips. I have a 4 year old windows mobile smartphone overclocked from 500MHz to 700MHz. Sure, launching an app is fractions of a second faster..barely noticeable, but compared to a *modern* 650MHz, it's not really even marginally usable, especially graphics performance, which will be the case in this example too.

      You just can't compete with advances in technology...get the newer model and overclock THAT.

    3. Re:And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. Just, wow. So, basically, you didn't read anything I wrote at all and choose to just live on in your ignorance. Troll on.

    4. Re:And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you are a troll. nothing more.

    5. Re:And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What kind of masochistic drive compels people to be so obsessed with all kinds of stuff painfully displayed on a screen less lengthy and girthy than my cock?

      Those who want to use their phones as navigation assistants which don't choke horribly under the stress posed by running on 1st/2nd-generation hardware?

      Oh. Sorry... was I not supposed to burst your shell of arrogance with an actual real-world example?

      -- not the GP. I've owned a G1 (OCed heavily), N1 (briefly), and now a Droid X (undervolted).

    6. Re:And? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      What kind of masochistic drive compels people to be so obsessed with all kinds of stuff painfully displayed on a screen less lengthy and girthy than my cock?

      Those who want to use their phones as navigation assistants which don't choke horribly under the stress posed by running on 1st/2nd-generation hardware?

      Oh. Sorry... was I not supposed to burst your shell of arrogance with an actual real-world example?

      -- not the GP. I've owned a G1 (OCed heavily), N1 (briefly), and now a Droid X (undervolted).

      I too had a G1, ran a number of alternative ROMs and finally settled on Cyanogenmod. I also overclocked the hell out of it. Never had a problem with the thing stability-wise either. It was about as good as a G1 was ever going to get, although when I had it running as a Wi-Fi hotspot it could get kinda warm.

      Now I have a G2, and I normally run on-demand between 245 and 800 Mhz (I run Cyanogenmod 6.1 with the Pershoot kernel) for ordinary use, but there are times when I want to multitask. I'll have Google Nav running, some music in the background while I'm driving, maybe a Wi-Fi scanner or some other utility going and a few other background tasks ... and then I'll overclock to whatever I need. With the stock Cyanogen, I can run it up to 1.4 Ghz (the design max for that CPU, I believe) but Pershoot lets me bump it up to 1.5. Even so, 1 Ghz generally does what I need and it's smooth as silk.

      My battery life doesn't seem to be impacted very much by overclocking, although it does depend upon the mix of applications. Those that use 3G/4G extensively seem to benefit the most, presumably because if they can get their job done faster, they can use the radio less. Oddly enough, I've tried pretty much all the 3D games that are in the Market, and none of them really seemed to gain as much as I would have expected by overclocking.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    7. Re:And? by mosherkl · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Imagine that. More than doubling the clock on your D1 showed significant performance gain. So, that's like replacing that Civic engine with a V6 at double the HP. Bet you see some performance gain from that, too.

      However, going from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz.......yeah, not so much. That IS just like adding the fart-pipe and getting a barely-noticeable 25 extra HP on your Civic.

    8. Re:And? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      However, going from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz.......yeah, not so much. That IS just like adding the fart-pipe and getting a barely-noticeable 25 extra HP on your Civic.

      Is 20 percent "barely-noticeable"?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    9. Re:And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends what your metric is. If the interface was already snappy enough, what has your 20% gotten you?

  6. Nothing to see here... by msauve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    move along.

    How is this news? The year old Motorola Droid (also using an ARM Cortex A8 core) was overclocked to 1.2 GHz quite a while ago (as with all overclocking, it works fine with some units, not so well with others). I understand the Hummingbird has had some microcode tweaks, and so is a bit more efficient than the OMAP (5-10%), but that's mice nuts. This isn't news, or even very interesting outside of Nexus S owner circles.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:Nothing to see here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      exactly. i have overclocked original moto droids to 1.2ghz

    2. Re:Nothing to see here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aye... even the G2, with its stock speed of 800mhz, can easily hit 1.2ghz, and most can hit 1.5ghz without any problems other than reduced battery life.

    3. Re:Nothing to see here... by DeathFromSomewhere · · Score: 1

      I was about to post this too. My milestone (same hardware as the droid) runs just fine at 1.2 GHz.

      --
      -1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
    4. Re:Nothing to see here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is this news?

      CES starts tomorrow. Lots of people who have been making good money have settled into some low-stress methods of living. It'd be a lot easier if we could just tell people not to buy the new stuff rather than to let them make an informed decision.

    5. Re:Nothing to see here... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      Aye... even the G2, with its stock speed of 800mhz, can easily hit 1.2ghz, and most can hit 1.5ghz without any problems other than reduced battery life.

      What do you mean, "even the G2"? That's a fast phone. I can overclock it to 1.5 Ghz easily, like you said. But you're both right: the fact that a Nexus S can hit 1.2 gigs really isn't all that noteworthy in the overall scheme of things.

      I personally haven't really had any issues with reduced battery life though ... I think you'll find that you'll gain a lot more life by keeping track of what your applications are doing, and getting rid of the poorly-written ones and those that run unnecessary background tasks. You can't just install anything you want on a device with such a limited power budget: Android gives you the tools to monitor power usage, use them. There are also a number of tools (JuiceDefender, etc.) that can be used to help even more.

      Furthermore, my phone only overclocks when it needs to: most of the time (when it's idle) it's either asleep or running at 245 Mhz. Let the CPU governor change the clock rate on-demand, so you'll only use the extra power when you need it.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    6. Re:Nothing to see here... by metaforest · · Score: 1

      I have an OMAP 3 (Beagle board) running over clocked at 720MHz tasked with a Knight's tour solver it's been running for 6 weeks, on Angstrom. It draws about 1Watt (Video & audio turned off). To date it has solved 38M tours and 8.4B traversals from start pos . The current minimum depth is 24. I haven't even gotten the DSP into the mix yet. With a bit more work I could get this system to run 24/7/365 off a battery backed supply and add DSP solving support. I can let this sucker run for years if needs be. These high performance SoCs are amazing. My earlier attempts at running Tour solvers wasted a lot of power, and never found a single tour...because I could not let them run long enough, either due to other task needs, or power cost.

  7. Great phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've had this phone since launch day, its just been great. From a N1 owner's perspective its a huge upgrade. Touch screen works great, capacitive buttons work great. The screen coating is really slippery, which helps if you're a big swype user. Its still a fingerprint magnet though. Most importantly it supports fastboot, so the bootloader is unlockable right out of the box.

    Battery life has been great, I can get two days on average use, and I'll end a day on 20% or so after heavy use. I'm not sure why you would want to overclock it, as I haven't noticed any lag except on the largest web pages loaded down with banners.

    1. Re:Great phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wish it had more than 16GB though. This, plus the fact that it had no SD card slot was a deal killer for me.

      I'm going to wait until the next Nexus or other phone available from Google's ADP program... hopefully it will be one with a MicroSD slot with SDXC support.

    2. Re:Great phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But... why? I have like 160 apps installed (and ~10 of those are games which pulled down 100-150MB each) and last I checked I'm using less than 3-4GB on 24GB of stock storage.

    3. Re:Great phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A number of reasons for more than 24GB of storage:

      1: Music. It would be nice to carry around most, if not all, of my MP3 stash, as opposed to picking and choosing bands every so often. I prefer to store this on the SD card as opposed to main memory so it doesn't take space with OS/app level backups.

      2: Backups, both Titanium Backup and nandroid. I like popping a nandroid backup daily, as well as Titanium backups often. This way, I can restore a blown app, or the whole device with relative ease. However, both of these require space, and I would like to go more than a few days without having to save off the directories.

      3: ROMs. Sometimes I leave a version of a ROMs on the SD card, if I'm trying some out to see which one I want to stick with long term. Same with versions of these.

      4: Switching out SD cards for different tasks. For example, an app that I store data on for a client project has its info saved on the SD card, and if I'm not working on that project for a while, I swap out that SD card. This way, if the phone gets stolen, it likely won't have that sensitive info on it. Since Android has zero encryption capabilities, this is my best form of defense.

      24GB is not enough for anyone -- it would be nice to see more capacity for those who want to take their music collection on trips without having to lug a laptop.

    4. Re:Great phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK fair point about the music. I keep my phone's /system and /data images on a HDD though. MicroSD cards don't have the greatest lifespans.

  8. Overclocking != Dual Core by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not matter how fast a single core goes, there is still a cost associated with having to perform a bunch of context switches and you have to share all of the cache. There are benefits to having a real dual core implementation.

    1. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by vlueboy · · Score: 1

      I want to see duals in Androids as much as you do, but laptops took forever to get dual cores compared to desktops, and netbooks are a year or two older, but are *still* waiting for that tech (and they're waay underpowered and under-RAM'd as is.)

      Cellphones, which don't have "core fever" due to different marketting than PCs, will take forever to justify the performance/battery life drawbacks. Forever, unless phones REALLY become just another PC running full-blown Windows. We do not want to go back to Windows on the smartphone market after all the progress Apple and Android caused (eg: touchscreens and app centers.)

    2. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by mlts · · Score: 2

      Dual core devices are not new. The HTC Wizard had this in '05. However, the phone had separate cores so the radio could do what it needed to while the OS was able to do what it needed, both cores running at a fairly low clock speed. The device had a pretty amazing battery life though.

      I'd like to see multiple cores... perhaps fast and slow (but battery saving) cores and a smart process scheduler. This would go a way to help with battery life, as well as provide smoother performance for apps.

    3. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      netbooks are a year or two older, but are *still* waiting for that tech (and they're waay underpowered and under-RAM'd as is.)

      Atom-based netbooks can already run two threads with hyperthreading, so it's less of an issue. A dual-core Atom adds a sizable amount of power consumption and needs four threads to max it out; because of in-order execution there are usually plenty of stalls where the single core Atom can run a second thread at no cost to the first.

      Cellphones, which don't have "core fever" due to different marketting than PCs, will take forever to justify the performance/battery life drawbacks.

      The company I was working for in 2005 was building dual-core ARM chips for such lower-power devices; putting two low-frequency ARMs into a single chip ended up giving us the same performance at lower cost and power consumption than a single higher-frequency ARM for the markets we were aiming at. I think we had at least one cellphone company talking to us at the time.

    4. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by Mulder3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Dual core devices are not new. The HTC Wizard had this in '05. However, the phone had separate cores so the radio could do what it needed to while the OS was able to do what it needed, both cores running at a fairly low clock speed. The device had a pretty amazing battery life though."

      That's not dual core... All current smartphones use that... One Application CPU that runs Android/Symbian/iPhoneOS/whatever and another CPU inside the modem that runs the GSM stack on a RTOS... Only very low end phones run the GSM stack on the app processor...

    5. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by rrossman2 · · Score: 1

      Motorola and LG IIRC are releasing ones in early 2011.

    6. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by Xyde · · Score: 1

      I know linux is obviously SMP enabled etc but does anyone know how well optimized Android is for taking advantage of multiple cores and scheduling? How about iOS? (I assume it has Grand Central/blocks etc) How useful could it possibly be? As best practices backgrounded apps should either be suspended or at the very least certainly not burning CPU with reckless abandon. I understand that maybe games and certain uses (video encoding? isn't it hardware assisted already?) would get increased performance from parallel execution but aren't these are pretty esoteric when you consider the minutiae of daily smartphone use?

    7. Re:Overclocking != Dual Core by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      One Application CPU that runs Android/Symbian/iPhoneOS/whatever and another CPU inside the modem that runs the GSM stack on a RTOS... Only very low end phones run the GSM stack on the app processor...

      Actually, of those OSs, Symbian is the only one capable of running the OS and baseband on the same CPU. Not that Nokia uses that feature for the high end phones.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  9. "works fine" is difficult to determine by perpenso · · Score: 1

    ... as with all overclocking, it works fine with some units, not so well with others ...

    Judging an overclocked CPU to be working fine is quite tricky. Not all overclocking induced failures are catastrophic or otherwise noticeable. Sometimes the failure is as simple as giving an incorrect answer, a 1+2=4 for example.

    1. Re:"works fine" is difficult to determine by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      ... as with all overclocking, it works fine with some units, not so well with others ...

      Judging an overclocked CPU to be working fine is quite tricky. Not all overclocking induced failures are catastrophic or otherwise noticeable. Sometimes the failure is as simple as giving an incorrect answer, a 1+2=4 for example.

      Very true, and the CPU isn't the only issue. The stock speed that most phone vendors run their phones is often less than half of the processor's rated speed. So you can generally run the CPU quite a bit faster without it having any problems. Unfortunately, the rest of the components in the system may not be rated for the higher clock rate. Memory, for example.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    2. Re:"works fine" is difficult to determine by perpenso · · Score: 1

      The stock speed that most phone vendors run their phones is often less than half of the processor's rated speed. So you can generally run the CPU quite a bit faster without it having any problems.

      To elaborate on "generally" ...
      Running the CPU at its rated speed may generate more heat than the design of a particular device can accommodate. The design may only be within its thermal specs when the CPU is running at its reduced clock rate. Excess heat can cause incorrect results even if the clock rate is OK.

    3. Re:"works fine" is difficult to determine by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      The stock speed that most phone vendors run their phones is often less than half of the processor's rated speed. So you can generally run the CPU quite a bit faster without it having any problems.

      To elaborate on "generally" ... Running the CPU at its rated speed may generate more heat than the design of a particular device can accommodate. The design may only be within its thermal specs when the CPU is running at its reduced clock rate. Excess heat can cause incorrect results even if the clock rate is OK.

      Very true, although if your OS has a CPU governor that dynamically adjusts the CPU clock based upon demand, you can probably get away with a lot. Average heating will be a lot less if the CPU is only responding to peak loads.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  10. And Dual Core != Overclocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are disadvantages of using a Dual Core instead of Overclocked single core too. If you would mostly be running only one processor intensive application (typical for a mobile) at a time, you would be better off with a single core rather than a dual core.

  11. Errm... by Guspaz · · Score: 1

    I'm not seeing how a 200MHz overclock puts a phone with a 1000MHz aggregate clockspeed advantage to shame...

    Sure, performance doesn't scale linearly, but I'll still take a dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9 over a 1.2GHz single-core Cortex A8-alike any day.

  12. definite article? by vikstar · · Score: 1

    An XDA Forums user morific has

    How many morifics are there on the XDA Forums?

    --
    The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
    1. Re:definite article? by Bitmanhome · · Score: 1

      Seven maybe, but there's possibly over a hundred horonics perhaps, but not really.

      --
      Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
  13. Isn't technology wonderful? by shiftless · · Score: 1

    I remember like 10 years ago when somebody converted a big ass A/C unit into a chip cooler and overclocked a Pentium III to 1.0 GHz, and it was a big deal...now here we are discussing PHONES that come OUT OF THE BOX with 1.0 GHz, running Quake 3, like it ain't no thang. Gotta love Moore's Law.

    1. Re:Isn't technology wonderful? by quenda · · Score: 1

      meh, it was a big deal when an el cheapo Celeron 300 was overclocked to 450MHz routinely, with no special hardware. Almost enough to decode DVDs in real time :-)

    2. Re:Isn't technology wonderful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember like 10 years ago when somebody converted a big ass A/C unit into a chip cooler and overclocked a Pentium III to 1.0 GHz, and it was a big deal...now here we are discussing PHONES that come OUT OF THE BOX with 1.0 GHz, running Quake 3, like it ain't no thang. Gotta love Moore's Law.

      Why the hell would they have done that? Intel released 1GHz PIII processors, and those only required a standard heat sink...

    3. Re:Isn't technology wonderful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Different microarchitectures. PIII started life as a 450 or 500MHz part.

      Derpty derp derp

    4. Re:Isn't technology wonderful? by shiftless · · Score: 1

      Because at the time, there were no 1GHz processors available.

  14. New tech by Schmyz · · Score: 1

    Sooo since it is a google product does this mean I will get email up dates and promises of support only to find out later that I used MY personal computer that doesnt adhere to some "moral TOS" google has decided on and thus is banned from said support?

    --
    Joe Investor
  15. How is this news? by brunes69 · · Score: 2

    The Samsung Galaxy S and it's cousins have the exact same processor and it was overclocked too 1.2 Ghz 3 months ago.

    Is it news because it has Google in the title? Seeing how Samsung makes the phone and it is basically a copy of the galaxy S with a few minor changes, I don't see why this is new news.

  16. And... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Android will still be slow and butt ugly.

  17. not that impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Considering the g2 and a couple other snapdragon phones have been overclocked to 1.7ghz and remained stable enough to run benchmarkes.

    Written from an htc hd2 running android 2.2.1 that is currently overclocked to 1.5.

  18. Wonderful! by viyh · · Score: 1

    Maybe soon they will catch up to my Droid X which I usually run at either 1.3 or 1.45GHz...

    --
    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
  19. Again, Not news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Samsung Captivates are now running at 1.6GHz. This is not news.