RIP-Felix
Senior Member
I was specifically asking about the 2501A. I have recorded 3x 2501B models from you already. The A is the only one I couldn't find the core/VRAM frequencies of. Now you say that was core. But didn't say what VRAM is. Can you see why this is frustrating?
It's actually quite hard to find a post from you or anyone else that shows the LV1 string of the console you're currently talking about.
My E01 Franky with a NOS 40nm CXD5301 does 800/975 in what I'm calling Murder Crysis, which is Crysis3 with hacked Cvars pushing everything to the max.
I'm using crysis 3 because it's late in the PS3 lifecycle and uses the CELL SPUs to the full. The PS3 hardware if fully leveraged when the hacked config and the specific test location I used has every element on screen. Shading, lighting effects, water physics, particle effects, explosions, NPCs and AI behaviors, grass and foliage animations stretching off into the distance. A long alley way for loading textures off in the distance to load into VRAM, leveraging the maxed out draw distance. Plenty of 3D models and high resolutions assets. Action occurring in the scene keeping everything in motion.
This one spot is perfect for leveraging everything the game can do to push the PS3 HW.
At stock 500/650 it'll only do 12FPS and at 800/975 it does about 19FPS, which is actually playable, surprisingly! This level of detail is absurd and I didn't think it would even come close to approximating stock performance in this game at normal settings. This game without my Murder Config struggles to maintain 20FPS.
The OverPowerd heatsink keeps the 40nm nice and cool. I think actually makes the OC's more stable. I set a static 35% Fan and recorded temps and FPS to characterize it's potential. This is fairly accurate and you can use it to predict the relative performance of any OC. In my case, 800/975 took 12FPS to 19FPS. A 37% increase in true performance. And I know this because the games settings can make full use any performance increase. There's nothing unused in this game/config/scene.
| Core | VRAM | FPS | CPU | GPU | Ambient | GPUΔT | Fan% |
| 450 | 900 | 12.25 | 62 | 54 | 25.3 | 29 | 35 |
| 450 | 950 | 12.45 | 63 | 55 | 25.3 | 30 | 35 |
| 500 | 650 | 12.06 | 63 | 54 | 25.1 | 29 | 35 |
| 550 | 700 | 13.22 | 62 | 54 | 25 | 29 | 35 |
| 600 | 750 | 14.31 | 63 | 56 | 24.8 | 31 | 35 |
| 650 | 800 | 15.02 | 63 | 56 | 24.6 | 31 | 35 |
| 700 | 800 | 15.8 | 63 | 57 | 24.6 | 32 | 35 |
| 750 | 800 | 16.65 | 64 | 58 | 25.1 | 33 | 35 |
| 800 | 800 | 17.29 | 63 | 58 | 25 | 33 | 35 |
| 800 | 850 | 17.75 | 63 | 58 | 24.7 | 33 | 35 |
| 800 | 900 | 18.15 | 64 | 59 | 25.6 | 33 | 35 |
| 800 | 925 | 18.42 | 64 | 59 | 25.3 | 34 | 35 |
| 800 | 950 | 18.75 | 63 | 59 | 24.8 | 34 | 35 |
| 800 | 975 | 18.98 | 63 | 59 | 24.6 | 34 | 35 |
I wanted to see if down clocking the Core 50MHz to 450MHz, but overclocking the VRAM to as high as was stable (950) would match performance of stock clocks but reduce overall temps. While I was able to match and exceed FPS, the temps were not significantly different. Perhaps even slighly higher. However, I believe 450/850 would match 500/650 in FPS for this game. That might reduce temps. It should be noted that this approach is going to sacrifice some Core performance and tasks that are shader/processing heavy, such as lighting/shaddows, water simulation, explosions, particle effects...etc will ne negativly affected. Whereas high resolutions texture loading and streaming data to/from the Core will improve. These could balance out and be unniticble to the end user. And if that comes with a reduction in temps, especially for a 90nm RSX with defective underfill where small reductions in temps are a net positive, then this may not be such a bad idea.
And this is where it gets really REALLY weird. @Nascar1243 found that 300/900 and 300/750 punched a hole in spacetime and initiated Core Fusion...
He jumped from about 10FPS at 300/800 to 18FPS at 300/900! And 15FPS at 300/750. And they accomplished this physics defying, mind bending, wacko non-sense with 7C cooler temps. IT'S COMPLETELY BONKERS!
Now temper your excitement. XMB ran sluggish and you wouldn't want to actually use the console like this. It's just a strange novelty and a curiosity from an architectural standpoint. As for why the actual eff this happened we still don't know.
- Hypothesis 1 (refuted): We thought it could be a quark in the way FPS calculates, but he said it actually does feel smoother in game. Like it really was running at that FPS, not just giving a false reading.
- Hypothesis 2 (strained): I speculate it could be because 900 VRAM is a perfect 3x integer of 300 CORE and that there might be an architectural explanation for why 3 VRAM cycles per Core cycle might synchronize and improve efficiency or bandwidth of the shader piplines. Allowing for less idle time and improved latency for coordination between VRAM and core. And if that were the case, then the same might be true of any 2x or 3x integer. But I was not able to replicate it using a 2x 450/900. That was the highest 2x integer I can achieve. 500/1000 wouldn't be stable for me. Other integers may reveal more context if other were to try them, but in our tests it has only occurred at 300/900 and 350/750. @nascar was able to replicate it on another console, so this isn't a fluke. It appears to only work with lower cores. HOWEVER, you'll notice 300/750 isn't an integer. So why would it work? That's a chink in the hypothesis.
- Hypothesis 3: It could be a quark in the way this game in particular uses CORE/VRAM and the available bandwidth. Or the settings I've enabled in the custom config.
- Hypothesis 4: It's possible that something broke at these low of cores. Like some visual effect or processor heavy task that isn't obvious while looking at the screen. If it literally cannot run and isn't, then it won't eat up compute cycles and the FPS would jump up. It doesn't cause the system to freeze or anything, but then we don't want to loose the save by running around, so maybe we would find an issue if we attempted to progress through the game. Like loading a new area.
Last edited:
I've still got spares but I don't have the models on hand as there in the loft at the moment.
