Raspberry Pi Model B 3 Overclocking?

Question

With the release of the Raspberry Pi Model B 3 today, I'm sure we're all very excited to see the speed of this new Pi. The standard clock is 1.2Ghz, but I'd like to push mine further. I know the Pi 3 uses the 64-bit BCM2837 processor, but I couldn't find any fact sheets on the BCM2837, as all search results for it are about the Pi 3.

Does this new processor have any overclocking abilities? Or is it like the Pi Zero, which came at it's maximum clock speed?

Answer 1

Yes, it can be overclocked. Here are the details:

The Pi bootloader still follows the overclocking parameters that's usually placed in the /boot/config.txt file despite raspi-config not having any overclocking settings for the Pi 3. raspi-config doesn't have any of the overclock good stuff since the Pi 3 doesn't officially support overclocking.

Basically, what you'll do is manually edit those parameters in said file. I'll assume you're already familiar with the Pi so I'll leave out the how-to-edit part.

My stable frequencies were at 1.4 GHz for ARM, core_freq and sdram_freq were at 500 MHz. 7 overvolt.

tail -n 4 /boot/config.txt
arm_freq=1400
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=7

_{^{Note: I'm not responsible for any damage you may do to your Pi. Tests were done with adequate cooling measures (heatsink, fan, air-conditioned room). PandaLion98 and related entities are not responsible for any damage that you may do to your Pi. Do at your own risk.}}

Answer 2

Like any other processor, the Raspberry Pi 3 will be overclockable. Searching for BCM2837 is unlikely to get you any useful results at this point. It's a custom SOC designed specifically for the RPi 3. Within the SOC is a Cortex-A53 CPU. Unfortunately, the ARM page doesn't go into much detail about fast you can (or should) clock it.

That lack of knowledge said, it seems likely that the processor could be reliably overclocked, at least a little. It's extremely rare for processors to be shipped at their max speed for a variety of reasons. The most notable being the binning process. At this point, we don't have enough information to say how much the average RPi 3 can be overclocked, but I'd bet many of them could safely hit the 1.5 GHz mark.

Edit:

It's also worth noting that the RPi 3 comes with a much newer and more advanced system architecture. Assuming programs are being compiled to take advantage of said architecture, you'll notice huge performance gains from that alone. Overclocking may or may not be worth the effort/risk of overclocking.

Answer 3

According to this article about the Pi 3, overclocking is not an option. Not yet at least. The Pi 3 is stuck at 1.2 Ghz for now, which should be plenty fast.

EDIT:

Using the Overclock setting in sudo raspi-config on a Pi 3 returns this message:

This Raspberry Pi cannot be overclocked.

I'm sure there is (or will be) a way to manually overclock it, but it may not be covered by warranty anymore.

Answer 4

Sure you can overclock it. Caveat emptor: careful about the warranty rules, you will probably break them.

/boot/config.txt

arm_freq=1350 # default 600
core_freq=500 # default 250

force_turbo=1# Prevent regulation of speed down to 600Mhz when idling
boot_delay=1 # Avoid sdcard corruption when force_turbo is enabled

Official Documentation

• https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/overclocking.md

Guides

• https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/overclocking.md

Answer 5

I have my Piv3 running stable at 1.4/Overvolt 2 on Raspbian Jessie. No heat sinks and seemingly stays cool. It is a WiFi hotspot, NTP server with pool.ntp.org and a minecraft server with an 8 player limit. Does not skip a beat when full @ 8 players. haven't yet tried more than that. Runs 24/7.

Answer 6

THE Information Should be in the raspiconfig overclock settings at the bottom of the list.