Overclocking Pi4 with recalbox 7

[phimjohn]

Hi guys,

was just wondering if it is possible to overclock the pi 4 with recalbox 7 installed.
Would it work through emulation station terminal or config file?
There is an overclock option in the advanced settings, but it only has the "NONE" option.

[ian57]

@phimjohn config.txt file only but be very carreful... be sure tu have a good cooling heatsink fan system, because Pi4 heats up a lot.

[phimjohn]

@ian57 thanks for the response! I do have sufficient cooling and will go with a light overclock.

[ian57]

@phimjohn Please tell us the results :

post here your config.txt modifications and cooling devices to get a stable overclock.

[phimjohn]

I have tried:

over voltage 6
arm freq 2000
gpu freq 600

I have tested in Raspbian and its been stable, but I'm not sure how to check if the overclock went through when I'm running recalbox. I've tested dreamcast games and they look like they are running the stock values.

I have edited the config.txt found in the /recalbox/config.txt

Any suggestions to how I can check the status of the overclock while running recalbox?

[myjosito]

Hi

with Argon one case, I tried
over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2000
gpu_freq=750

Works pretty well for me so far (1h psp/dcst games + screensaver). Temp max at 54°.

[ian57]

@myjosito a weblink from @Bkg2k https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/how-to-overclock-raspberry-pi-4

[myjosito]

@ian57 Very interesting article, thank you Ian !

My first attempt was OV=4, arm=1750, GPU=600. temp was below 51°.
So I decided to increase cpu and gpu to resp. 2000/750. But still OV=4. Big mistake, the RPi refused to initiate all the time, and impossible to recover the config.txt in W10. So I had to create a new system in my SDCard. No big deal, but I was pretty upset with me

So I tried 6/2000/750 and it runs pretty fine with my Argon1 case so far, with pretty good temp (<55°C till now).
PSP games runs just fine now, except GoW, not very fluid. not a problem, will skip frames or decrease resolution for this game only.

the only cons is, from time to time, the RPIs refuses to start. the red led is there, but no signal to the TVset. Not a big issue, I restart everything and the 2nd time it starts well...
If I refer to the article, maybe an issue due to the GPU OC. I should try to decrease it to 700, or even less. Also it seems the OC of the GPU is not really useful/needed if I understand well. I also read benchmark results confirming this... I will investigate further...

[ian57]

@myjosito overclocking... is risky very risky
thx for the feedback

[myjosito]

@ian57 said in Overclocking Pi4 with recalbox 7:

@myjosito overclocking... is risky very risky

Yes, I confirm.
I managed to always recover tricky situations till now (with my desktop or laptop computers CPUs/GPUs)... with no or little damage. But wouldn't recommand it to ppl with no experience at all doing this.

[Malphaas]

This post is deleted!

[Bylos]

Hi all,
I have just installed recalbox 7 on my RPi4 and tried some overclocking settings such as :
over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2140
gpu_freq=750

When running Raspberry Pi OS, this settings work fine and I can track the CPU freq using the command line
watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_clock arm

This command cleary shows the CPU freq increasing to 2GHz and above, depending on CPU load. However when running Recalbox 7, the same command shows that the frequency stays stuck at 700 MHz.
Is there any limitation in Recalbox for overclocking a RPi4 ?

[myjosito]

@Bylos said in Overclocking Pi4 with recalbox 7:

shows the CPU freq increasing to 2GHz and above, depending on CPU load. However when running Recalbox 7, the same command shows that the frequency stays stuck at 700 MHz.

Hi,

I used "watch -n1 vcgencmd measure_clock arm" a couple of times, and I can tell you it was stuck at 1750 and then 2000 MHz (depending on the value I was specifying in config.txt) when using Recalbox. But I'm using it with the Argon case...

[Bylos]

@myjosito thx for the feedback, that's interesting.
Does the argon case involve particular configuration script which would change the rpi4 behaviour ?
That makes me wondering why it isn't working on my configuration !
Regarding temperature mine is never above 32°C...

[myjosito]

@Bylos said in Overclocking Pi4 with recalbox 7:

Does the argon case involve particular configuration script which would change the rpi4 behaviour ?

Don't think so...
But when running Recalbox, at least with a game, I guess your Pi should show 1500MHz, not 700 (idle I suppose)

[Bylos]

@myjosito indeed, that's what I thought
I decreased settings to:
over_voltage=5
arm_freq=1750
gpu_freq=600
And now it is working as expected !

I will try to increase values step by step, not knowing which one were causing the issue (overvoltage or cpu frequency)
Thx for showing me that this should have been working !
Regards,

[myjosito]

@Bylos No prob. Happy if it works now as expected

[LapinFou]

Very interesting topic. With the official support of the Pi4 with Recalbox 7, I decided to buy a 4Go Pi4 with the "GeeekPi ice tower" for the cooling.
Depending how the dreamcast and PSPP are running, I may try to overclock it. I will post my results here if I do so.

[LapinFou]

Hi folks,

I tested the overclocking on my RPI4B-4Go.
I used those settings:

# rpi4 overcloking
over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2140
gpu_freq=750

I added those lines (just before "include recalbox-config.txt") by following this procedure:

mount -o remount, rw /boot
vim /boot/config.txt

I'm using this to cool down my RPI4 → Tour de refroidissement pour Raspberry
The results are great! After 40min of Dreamcast game, the temperature stabilized to 43°C.
I got a speed gain of about 10FPS.

[Multimaniac]

Thanks everyone. This helped me overclocking my pi4.

over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2000
gpu_freq=700

Stable at 54° C in m Argon One m.2 Case.
Dreamcast runs perfectly and even Conker's Bad Fur Day is playable now

Yep, that game is my Crisis