PS3 Project RSX Boost: Overclock your Retail PS3 RSX Speeds (ps3 cfw only)

[Succ]

Crysis HD is a better test for overall stability. You're lucky you didn't brick your system. You were supposed to start from 650/800 mem if it's a Frankie, cause frankie process could degrade silicon OC potential due to the heat. OC on Frankies are the only data we don't have much on here. Now data on slims we do have. Plenty. I have tons of data due to me buying and owning like 7 or 8 PS3s. And I know what all the PS3s silicon are capable of based on model and manufacture date.

like I said, was my first time overclocking and I didn't see a lot of info around and I decided to F around and see what happens. Was probably not the wisest choice form me… oh who am I kidding, that was a stupid decision on my part and I should've done more research before starting this. That being said, I got very lucky and this RSX seems to be pretty potent.

 

[Tanzu15]

like I said, was my first time overclocking and I didn't see a lot of info around and I decided to F around and see what happens. Was probably not the wisest choice form me… oh who am I kidding, that was a stupid decision on my part and I should've done more research before starting this. That being said, I got very lucky and this RSX seems to be pretty potent.

Yeah you got real lucky. But count your blessings. Your Frankie should be fully stable at 700/900 easily. Since it's a 40nm. 40nm PS3 slims can all do 700/900 easily out of the box. It's the minimum fully stable. Which is still a huge overclock over the terrible stock clocks.

 

[Succ]

Yeah you got real lucky. But count your blessings. Your Frankie should be fully stable at 700/900 easily. Since it's a 40nm. 40nm PS3 slims can all do 700/900 easily out of the box. It's the minimum fully stable. Which is still a huge overclock over the terrible stock clocks.

yea and I think I'm probably not gonna touch those speeds anymore. Thats already a huge overclock like you said and I don't feel like playing with fire anymore. I hope we do get a cpu overclock eventually. Even if the 90nm CPU from a CECHA is not capable of much OC at all, I think a small overclock would be great for those games with a CPU bottleneck. Especially 3D dot game heroes as that game seems to have really bad fps drops even with the rsx OC. Seems to happen when you are around water and there's lots of dots flying around the screen

 

[cha0shacker]

Essentially the Cell can be considered to have the same horrible performance as P4s with net(nut)burst then, something along the lines of a Willamette lets say. 25.6GB\s bandwidth really isnt a lot by the time you have factored in overhead(s) (such as API used, latency, etc) and that figure is only specifically for the XDR system memory anyway, read\write operations are further crippled to 20\15GB\s (at best) depending if data is coming from or going to the Cell which is why I say CPU bandwidth is an issue and why an XDR OC would likely be rather helpful. Pipeline stalls will be a regular occurrence if shitty code is running on top of all of those other issues as well. Probably why so many games can dip under 20FPS, the worst Ive seen so far is with AC1, near the end of the game frame rate can bomb hard down to like 11-12FPS at critical times making things totally unplayable. Things like that never should have been allowed past QC but given the fairly open and large detailed maps that bandwidth is a good shout for being the cause on both CPU and RSX but I will stick my neck out and say more the CPU. Not entirely the CPUs fault though Ubisoft likely did nothing to optimise the code for the Cell.

You get something very wrong with the numbers you talk about. 25.6GB/s of CPU memory bandwidth is a shitton for 2006. CPUs in the PC space at the time had around 10-12.8GB/s (dual channel DDR2-800). 25.6GB/s is similar to Haswell (Core i7 4th gen).

The other numbers you quote are for the case the RSX (GPU) needs to access CPU! memory and the RSX is the device that is very bandwidth starved for the time. Increasing XDR (CPU memory) bandwith won't do shit because the CBE (CPU) isn't bandwidth starved at all and it also won't increase the bandwidth available to RSX since that's mainly on the memory clock for that chip, which we know kinda hits a wall at around 1000MHz.

 

[Tanzu15]

You get something very wrong with the numbers you talk about. 25.6GB/s of CPU memory bandwidth is a shitton for 2006. CPUs in the PC space at the time had around 10-12.8GB/s (dual channel DDR2-800). 25.6GB/s is similar to Haswell (Core i7 4th gen).

The other numbers you quote are for the case the RSX (GPU) needs to access CPU! memory and the RSX is the device that is very bandwidth starved for the time. Increasing XDR (CPU memory) bandwith won't do shit because the CBE (CPU) isn't bandwidth starved at all and it also won't increase the bandwidth available to RSX since that's mainly on the memory clock for that chip, which we know kinda hits a wall at around 1000MHz.

Man none of my 8 PS3s can do 1000 on the memory stable. But most can do 975. Which 975 might as well be 1000 since 25mhz isn't gonna much more.

 

[Mitsu™]

Man I'm curious about your overclocks

I'm currently using 750/900 on it, no artifacts at all in Crysis, no crash. I will push the VRAM to 950MHz later and see.
800MHz core itches but it scares me a little, I had a hard time finding that PS3 ^^'
(I still don't have a hardware flasher and don't know how to use it anyway)

 

[Tanzu15]

I'm currently using 750/900 on it, no artifacts at all in Crysis, no crash. I will push the VRAM to 950MHz later and see.
800MHz core itches but it scares me a little, I had a hard time finding that PS3 ^^'
(I still don't have a hardware flasher and don't know how to use it anyway)

Bro if you're stable at 750 that means you can easily do 800 core or even 850. Try the 800 core. Also just do 950 memory. That PS3 you have can easily do 950 zero effort. If 800 core is not stable. It's simply gonna show artifacts in crysis. The fact you are doing 750 core is a blessing and that's already a silicon winner. Try 800 ASAP. This PS3 could be the one for you. I know this cause binning and testing PS3 slims, I know your model eats 950 memory for breakfast. And it seem 750 is no issue. Crysis HD is a blessing seriously. This game easily tells you if you're stable with an overclock or not. It's the harshest test.

 

[cha0shacker]

Man none of my 8 PS3s can do 1000 on the memory stable. But most can do 975. Which 975 might as well be 1000 since 25mhz isn't gonna much more.

Stay calm, mine only does 900 mem

 

[Tanzu15]

Stay calm, mine only does 900 mem

Yeah but what month? I have 7 PS3s that span from July to January. They all do 950. Though it's true. That there could be horrible horrible luck and the Max you can do fully stable is 900. But 950 won't cause a brick as long as it's the 40nm 25xx ps3. At worst you'll get artifacts. So you need to tone it back to 925 or 900. Which are still big nice overclocks. 700/900 is already super good.

 

[cha0shacker]

Yeah but what month? I have 7 PS3s that span from July to January. They all do 950. Though it's true. That there could be horrible horrible luck and the Max you can do fully stable is 900. But 950 won't cause a brick as long as it's the 40nm 25xx ps3. At worst you'll get artifacts. So you need to tone it back to 925 or 900. Which are still big nice overclocks. 700/900 is already super good.

I only have the date code so i cant tell the exact month. It's the second quarter of 2010. 650/900 is the max it can do. 700 core goes artifacting in Crysis. 950 mem goes artifacting everywhere.

 

[Mitsu™]

Bro if you're stable at 750 that means you can easily do 800 core or even 850. Try the 800 core. Also just do 950 memory. That PS3 you have can easily do 950 zero effort. If 800 core is not stable. It's simply gonna show artifacts in crysis. The fact you are doing 750 core is a blessing and that's already a silicon winner. Try 800 ASAP. This PS3 could be the one for you. I know this cause binning and testing PS3 slims, I know your model eats 950 memory for breakfast. And it seem 750 is no issue. Crysis HD is a blessing seriously. This game easily tells you if you're stable with an overclock or not. It's the harshest test.

I will try 750/950 first to see but yeah, 800MHz core is planned.

I only have the date code so i cant tell the exact month. It's the second quarter of 2010. 650/900 is the max it can do. 700 core goes artifacting in Crysis. 950 mem goes artifacting everywhere.

It's a 21XX right ? They have different RSX models, the "CXD5300AGB" which is not present in the later models.
Some 25XX have the "CXD5300A1GB", which maybe is quite similar though.
Mine possess a "CXD5300CGB".

 

[RIP-Felix]

I saw that evilnat finally released the OC Variety of 4.91 PEX and I wanted to get into overclocking and I wanted to post my findings. I have been testing the Overclocking firmware for the first time. I have a CECHA00 40nm Frankenstein ps3 with new capacitors with the tantalACEr array for the capacitors. I tried using the base OC of 600/750. Perfectly stable! Tried going up from there using small increments because I don't have a NAND hardware flasher on me at the moment so I was being as cautious as I possibly could.

I almost F'ed up when I jumped to 850/875. I noticed severe artifacting when I played 3D dot game heroes and i immediately quit out of the game and toned down the OC to 800/850. I then played TLOU with those setting and i noticed artifacting after a while on the door in the opening scene.

I downgraded it further to 800/800 and it seemed stable although I noticed something weird with my mounted games (turns out, webman messed up my mounted games during the process so I used Managunz to remount the games and they work perfectly now). I took that as I sign that my OC was too high and I then used 700/800 which was perfectly stable.

I then had an itch too see if I can push my console a little further so I tried using 800/800 again to see if it was stable. I played Crysis and noticed bad artifacts so I then tried 750/900. I read on this thread that too high gpu clocks can cause artifacting while too high VRAM can cause instability. Since I haven't had any instability issues at 800 VRAM, id figure why not try 900 VRAM and see what happens.

750/900 seems to be going good so far but I did noticed some very small artifacts during the opening scene of cyrsis but they went away and were short lived. Right now I'm using TLOU for stability testing and after about 30 mins, it seems to be running good with no crashes or artifacts.

in case you're curious, the console has MX-6 thermal paste, my webman fan speed was set to AUTO at 68C, and my room temperature is 20C spring coming up on summer.

Please post your LV1 RSX string. You can dump it using CFM dumping tools. Open it in HxD and search for your current clock speeds. For example, "700/900". Then post the information here so we have a record of it.

 

[cha0shacker]

I will try 750/950 first to see but yeah, 800MHz core is planned.

It's a 21XX right ? They have different RSX models, the "CXD5300AGB" which is not present in the later models.
Some 25XX have the "CXD5300A1GB", which maybe is quite similar though.
Mine possess a "CXD5300CGB".

Yeah its a 21XX

 

[Tanzu15]

Yeah its a 21XX

There's your issue. 21xx can't do above 650 core. It's a 65nm chip.

 

[Mitsu™]

There's your issue. 21xx can't do above 650 core. It's a 65nm chip.

Nope, it's a 40nm chip since 21XX. It's just a less advanced version.

 

[Tanzu15]

Nope, it's a 40nm chip since 21XX. It's just a less advanced version.

Oh it must have been the very first bad batches. Those yeilds got huge by January. By the way. I bought my 4th 2501B January and it arrived just now. Mint condition. Too. Guess what? I'm destroying 800 core ill likely be doing 850 easy. Then even 900. I can finally confirm. January 2011 2501Bs are the golden samples on a more consistent basis. Which is something we all knew here already honestly. The later the cfw capable console the higher it can OC. @RIP-Felix
Yup can easily do 850 fully stable. When I do 900 it plays for a bit with zero artifacts but then crashes. So 850 is a great bin. The greatest bins are just straight up stable 900s. Which my best one is. I only have 1 though. So that's my baby now.

 

[cha0shacker]

First gen on a new node is never pretty

 

[Succ]

Alright, I had a random thought. If you can use a super slim 40nm and use the rsx to replace the 90 on a cecha, cechb, cechc, or ceche could you technically get even higher OC than what you can get on a 2500 slim ps3?.

 

[Tanzu15]

Alright, I had a random thought. If you can use a super slim 40nm and use the rsx to replace the 90 on a cecha, cechb, cechc, or ceche could you technically get even higher OC than what you can get on a 2500 slim ps3?.

Yes. I have a super slim that's manufactured in July of 2012. Lol the super slims weren't even out till September too. These first super slims have in fact a more mature 40nm. So these would yield the best results for Overclocking and efficiency. If I ever get a Frankie. I'll want to donate my super slim 40nm to it.

 

[Ketxxx]

You get something very wrong with the numbers you talk about. 25.6GB/s of CPU memory bandwidth is a shitton for 2006. CPUs in the PC space at the time had around 10-12.8GB/s (dual channel DDR2-800). 25.6GB/s is similar to Haswell (Core i7 4th gen).

The other numbers you quote are for the case the RSX (GPU) needs to access CPU! memory and the RSX is the device that is very bandwidth starved for the time. Increasing XDR (CPU memory) bandwith won't do shit because the CBE (CPU) isn't bandwidth starved at all and it also won't increase the bandwidth available to RSX since that's mainly on the memory clock for that chip, which we know kinda hits a wall at around 1000MHz.

I think you're misinterpreting what I'm saying, I'm saying that 25.6GB\s still isn't a lot of bandwidth even for it's time not that it wasn't considered a lot for it's time. Developers could also dip into the system memory pool if they couldn't store everything in the 256MB GDDR3 memory pool in scenarios like that an XDR frequency increase likely would help because the data stored in XDR can be moved to the GDDR3 faster, assuming no other bottlenecks. Less latency, less overhead.

There is always needed background tasks taking the resources they need as well so you need to think in terms of remaining available bandwidth after accounting for other essential processes, not total bandwidth. Off the top of my head a good example is a PCI-E bus, you can't dedicate 100% of the available bandwidth to every PCI-E device at all times, even if the devices have no bottlenecks of their own either due to them requiring little bandwidth anyway or where the devices themselves have gobs of bandwidth of their own you're limited by the demands of the devices (more devices = ess available bandwidth at any given time) and capabilities of the CPU\chipset, once you run out of PCI-E lanes things are just going to throttle back.

Anyway this entire conversation is pretty moot as there isn't a viable way to OC the Cell without also OCing every other bus in the PS3 the only way would be to use PLL dividers on each bus to keep them around the correct frequency and that's before the can of worms have been opened on getting the PLL dividers to actually work. There's literally only one guy I can think of that would really be qualified to have a say on the Cell CPU but actually being able to contact him let alone him considering the Cell being worth him even having a half hour conversation about it to pick his brain a bit is almost nil. It's also not really what I'm here for either I'm mostly interested in documenting bandwidth improvements on the RSX and putting some CFWs out for people but I can't do that until the fatal error I have is resolved when building CFWs, something weird is going on and I'm 99% certain I'm not missing anything or making any dumb mistakes.