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-- Overclocking (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=2522)

Question for you techno-knowledgeable people out there.

What's the deal with overclocking? How does it work and are the any drawbacks?

Whoops, that should read are THERE any drawbacks. Sorry!

Well, overclocking has the advantage of making your handheld more responsive or quick, but then on the other hand it also drains your batteries faster if you overclock. Underclocking is quite nice if you need to conserve batteries, but as you can imagine it makes your handheld slower. I also feel overclocking may do damage to the hardware, just as it may with PC hardware. HTH.

I started out overclocking my IVX but only got 3-4 days out of the batteries (as it is I only get 7 - 8 days). Also, in his book about "Writing on your Palm" Jeff Kirvin (http://www.jeffkirvin.com/writingonyourpalm/) tells horror stories about "random" damage done to the smaller, more delicate electronics of Palm devices by extended overclocking. I've never read anything "definitive" on this subject, but Jeff has a pretty complete overview of the consequences of overclocking.

I have one of the first Visor's that shipped and have been running AfterBurner II over-clocking utility for months without problems. My battery life did not decrease in an any obvious way. I run all apps, except beaming ones, at 22MHz.

I have tried running without AfterBurner, but I find that the standard "slow" 16MHz is unacceptable.

Cool. Thanks for the info geezaz. If anyone else's got overclocking info, please post it up. I'm curious to know how it actually works......?

One other thing, does anyone know if overclocking invalidates the Visor warranty?

Take care and stay happy,

The Wizard.
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If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you.
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Ok guys, you've stumped me. What's overclocking? And is it unique to PDAs, or is it something you can do to your PC also? Does it require software to implement?

Overclocking makes the CPU run faster than was intended. In most devices this is not problematical as the manufacturers generally build in a lot of lee way. Typically, if you have any problems as a result of overclocking, you will find the CPU getting hot or you find apps misbehaving. I have not either problem with running mine at 22MHz (instead of the Visor standard 16MHz). The CPU is supposedly much the same as the Palm Vx and that one's default speed is 20MHz so I don't feel that increasing the speed this much is very risky.

Yes, overclocking used to be used extensively on PCs. Many unscruplous manufacturers used to overclock their PCs and sell them as 400MHz machines when they were only 300MHz machines (for example).

As I understand it, CPU manufacturers often sell the exact same chip at different MHz ratings. The higher speed chips may just pass a higher quality standard during testing.

I overclock some programs and UNDERCLOCK others. Some programs run better faster, while others run just as well slowly. For the latter, underclocking will extend battery life a tad.

Will it fry the CPU? Depends. Overclocking is done all the time on PCs. I have mine a bit overclocked - very useful for specific applications, while gamers go to extreme lengths to squeeze the last bit of juice out of their CPUs for those coveted increased frame rates. In the PC world, it seems that light overclocking doesn't really do much to the CPU or other components (if more recent). Severe overclocking sometimes does lead to fried systems though. You're basically running chips and cards at faster than they're guaranteed to run.

However, for specific chip models, overclocking runs very well. If you get the current 1 GHz chips, those will be virtually impossible to overclock stably because the compromises they've used to get that speed are similar to the things overclockers use to overclock their CPUs. If previous reliability standards are to be used, there are few real 1 GHz chips right now. On the other hand, the famed Celeron 300 often can be stably overclocked by 50% to 450 MHz. Strangely enough, some recent lower end Macs may have been using chips that were underclocked on purpose, probably for marketing reasons and the desire not to eat into sales of the higher end Macs, for which there was a shortage of fast chips. Indeed, a few (very brave) users found that with some creative soldering, they could reliably overclock their Macs too.

What about the Motorola chips in our Visors? It is not entirely clear, but there is stuff out there on it (see above). Suffice it to say, if you don't need to overclock, don't bother. If you do overclock, don't go overboard. And don't forget about the potential benefits of underclocking.

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Eugene Hsieh
Editor, VisorCentral FAQ
Come visit my homepage.

[This message has been edited by Eug (edited 03-11-2000).]

Thank you all for the info.

one last thing.. my friend uses afterburner (I don't know what version), but he has to turn it off to beam anything. It doesn't affect anything because he can just turn it right back on afterwards... Just thought I'd mention that.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone!