Overclocking

Warning: There is the possibility of damaging your equipment by overclocking. Do so at your own risk!

This page is incomplete, you're welcome to improve it.

All information regarding clock speeds, voltages and more are stored in the DTB (Device Tree Blob). You can learn more about it here.

Overclocking is a way to get more performance out of the system by running it at higher clock speeds than the factory default, usually while putting out more heat and using more power (You can also downclock to possibly reduce power consumption and thermals at the cost of performance). It is highly recommended that you avoid overvolting the device, as that has a high risk of damaging the hardware, hence the warning at the beginning of this page. However, just some slight overclocks without the added voltage can not only improve performance, but carry little risk to your device. It should be noted however that overclocking can cause instability, so you will need to test and see what values work best with your device (There is a silicon lottery for the Pinephone's hardware).

Preparation

TODO

Kernel Compilation instructions

Recompile just kernel DTB instructions

In the future there will likely be a driver to adjust clockspeeds from userspace without the need to recompile.

A64-based boards

GPU

Open arch/arm64/boot/dts/allwinner/sun50i-a64.dtsi (You will have to find the source of the kernel used by your distribution) in a text editor.

Look for

		mali: gpu@1c40000 {
			compatible = "allwinner,sun50i-a64-mali", "arm,mali-400";
			reg = <0x01c40000 0x10000>;
			interrupts = <GIC_SPI 97 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 98 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 99 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 100 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 102 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 103 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>,
				     <GIC_SPI 101 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>;
			interrupt-names = "gp",
					  "gpmmu",
					  "pp0",
					  "ppmmu0",
					  "pp1",
					  "ppmmu1",
					  "pmu";
			clocks = <&ccu CLK_BUS_GPU>, <&ccu CLK_GPU>;
			clock-names = "bus", "core";
			resets = <&ccu RST_BUS_GPU>;

			assigned-clocks = <&ccu CLK_GPU>;
			assigned-clock-rates = <432000000>;
		};

The assigned-clock-rates line is set to 432000000, this means that the GPU is clocked at 432MHz. So if you want 500MHz, set the value to 500000000.

Save the dtsi file, and recompile the DTB.

The GPU appears to run stable overclocked to 560 Mhz, however more testing with a wider group of devices is needed.

Remember to run a benchmark tool (such as glmark2-es2) to help check stability.

CPU

Stock speed: 1.152GHz CPU

DRAM

Warning: It is not recommended to exceed 667 MHz clockspeed on the DRAM. 624MHz is likely the upper limit.

Make sure to set your DRAM to a multiple of 24.

When overclocking the GPU, it is a good idea to also overclock the DRAM, as the main bottleneck of the A64 SOC is the memory. The A64's maximum ram clockspeed falls just short of 667MHz. This may be unstable on your device however.

Around 600 MHz (PC-1200) should work fine, however some people have reported instability at lower clockspeeds. Arch Linux Arm uses a default clockspeed of 624MHz, with uboot builds available to easily switch out for a lower DRAM clockspeed.

It is possible that by reverse engineering the DRAM driver from allwinner that auto tuning can be accomplished to get the best performance.

Setting the DRAM clock is accomplished by modifying pinephone_defconfig in uboot (https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/u-boot/-/blob/crust/configs/pinephone_defconfig)

You can find simple instructions on doing so here: Here

Rockchip RK3399 based boards

The RK3399 clocks are found in arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3399-opp.dtsi

More optimised voltages and clocks can be found in arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3399-op1-opp.dtsi These include a slight overclock and undervolt, they are intended for the OP1 CPU found in many chromebooks but have worked fine in all recorded cases on regular RK3399s in other devices.

Specific to the Pinebook Pro DTS in tsys' kernels is an extra clock speed entry for the big cores in arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dts
It overrides the opp08 entry for the big core cluster with one that runs 2GHz at 1.3V.
It is up to you how to deal with this, either by just skipping opp08 in the main dtsi to keep using that entry or by removing that entry from the Pinebook Pro dts and adding your own to the regular dtsi.

GPU

Any clock speeds can be added for the GPU in gpu_opp_table

The highest safe voltage for the GPU is 1.2V as specified in the RK3399 schematic from Rockchip.

TuxThePenguin has found that the RK3399 in his Pinebook Pro can reach 950MHz on the GPU while being stable.

The stock speed for the GPU is 800Mhz

CPU

A set of available clock speeds that can be added to the CPU clusters can be found in drivers/clk/rockchip/clk-rk3399.c under rk3399_cpuclkl_rates for the little cores and rk3399_cpuclkb_rates for the big cores.

These clock speeds can be added to cluster0_opp for the small cores and cluster1_opp for the big cores respectively.

There is a hard limit of 1.8GHz on the little cores and 2.2GHz on the big cores.

The highest safe voltage for the little cores is 1.2V and for the big cores is 1.25V.

TuxThePenguin has found that the little cores on his RK3399 can run at 1.6GHz, and 2.08GHz on the big cores.

DRAM

TODO

Rockchip RK3328 based boards

TODO