Lightspeed to modify the CPU speed?

[apurvab]

I currently own a Clie NX70V, and have tinkered with the CPU boosting utility Lightspeed:

http://www.clievideo.com/

I'm wondering if anyone has tried this on the iQUE. It works on intel XScale CPU's. Currently, it supports most of the newer Clie's

It allows you to both under and overclock the bus and CPU. Underclocking allows you to extend battery life, while overclocking allows you to improve performance.

Additionaly, it allows you to assign differenct bus and CPU settings for different applications. You could boost up the mapping software to the max, for example, while lowering the CPU and bus speed for routine apps to improve batter life.

As I am considering purchasing the iQUE, this might be good to know. I haven't seen any mention of the iQUE on their website yet, but if the iQUE uses an XScale CPU, someone might want to whisper this into the ears of the developers, if they don't know of it already.

-Apurva

[Stymyx]

My guess is Lightspeed would not work on the iQue, since the iQue uses a Motorola ARM-compliant processor and not the Intel XScale processor. I think it’s written for the specific processor, not for the specific operating system (PalmOS 5)

I probably would have been interested in Lightspeed… if I still owned a Clie NX70V! :D

[Sony convert]

Lightspeed v2.0 public beta is out and has added support for the iQue. You can download it here (http://www.clievideo.com). Back up all your data before trying it as it did force a hard reset when I tried overclocking Map. Seems to work okay so far for underclocking which should help to improve battery life. You can customize the clock speed for all your apps that are in RAM. If you are using ZLauncher, you can move an app to the SD card and create a shortcut for it in RAM. Then, you can customize the clock speed for applications on your SD card as well.

[JMckie]

Originally posted by Sony convert
Lightspeed v2.0 public beta is out and has added support for the iQue.

Thanks for the tip. I've been wondering for a long time to see if underclocking will improve the battery life. Going to do the following experiments:

Reading ebooks with palmreader - currently 3.5 hours from full charge to 20%.

Hiking with Pathaway, backlight off, battery save on - about the same.

I'm not really interested in making it faster, it is plenty fast for me.
Actually I can't think of a single application whose performance bothers me.

[JMckie]

On the main application screen,

What does the Single | Multiple | Multiple (yellow) button do?
What does the "Change" button do?

Boy do they need to work on their UI.
Set Palmreader to 50 from the normal 192. Hard to tell if its working or not...

[audscott]

I o verclock my computer...done it for years without ever burning up a chip - Intel or AMD.

But I know lots of people that have fried their system, corrupted data and computer peripherals through overclocking.

It's one thing to go from 2 GHz to 3.5, but for the measly 10% you'll get with an overclocking tool on the iQue, it's not worth it to me.

[Curious Cat]

Originally posted by JMckie
Thanks for the tip. I've been wondering for a long time to see if underclocking will improve the battery life. Going to do the following experiments:

Reading ebooks with palmreader - currently 3.5 hours from full charge to 20%.

Hiking with Pathaway, backlight off, battery save on - about the same.

I'm not really interested in making it faster, it is plenty fast for me.
Actually I can't think of a single application whose performance bothers me.

Please keep us all updated on how your experimenting goes. Your 100% right that improving battery life would be far more important than extra speed.

[JMckie]

No problem Bokkie. So far on Palmreader, I have not noticed any performance changes. Manual scroll, Autoscroll, shift to landscape, font change, find - these are all just as fast. Strange.

How do I know it is working? Well you'll find out soon enought this version has a nag screen that comes up when you open the application being under/overclocked.

[Curious Cat]

Originally posted by JMckie
No problem Bokkie. .....


Bokkie? Did I pass gas? :D

[audscott]

Please keep us all updated on how your experimenting goes. Your 100% right that improving battery life would be far more important than extra speed

That's a big nevermind.

Since I only use mine for scheduling, contacts and navagating in the car, my mind was not on other potential (underclocking) uses.

[JMckie]

Whooops sorry Mr Cat! When I was replying from the corner of my eye I must have read the "kie" from "JMcKie".

[Sony convert]

Originally posted by JMckie
On the main application screen,

What does the Single | Multiple | Multiple (yellow) button do?
What does the "Change" button do?

Boy do they need to work on their UI.
Set Palmreader to 50 from the normal 192. Hard to tell if its working or not...

Single: allows you to change the clock speed for one application at a time.
Multiple: allows you to select several or all applications at once. In Multiple Mode, you must highlight the applications you want and then click on Change.
Multiple (yellow): I think you are just referring to the color change to show that you have selected an item with the stylus.
Change: as above. Used only in multiple mode once you have selected the applications for which you want to change the clock speed.

I'm not convinced that this program is working. I've tried underclocking many applications and I see absolutely no difference in speed. Some applications like Addressbook and Datebook you may not expect to see a difference. But, I would expect to see some slowdown in iSilo when opening large docs(6MB+) and I have not.

[Bokkie]

Originally posted by Curious Cat
Bokkie? Did I pass gas? :D

That's ok CC. Someone trying to muscle in on my user name. Today the "kie", tomorrow the "Bok".:D

[JMckie]

There's got to be a utility that reports on your CPU performance. I just downloaded one called Speedy.

Running normally it clocked at 1145Mhz

With lightspeed underclocking to "Low" it ran at 1154.

Ah, one more app to the trash bin.

[Curious Cat]

You guys have got it all wrong. If you want to slow everything down, insert a SanDisk. :D Right Bokkie?

[Sony convert]

Originally posted by JMckie
There's got to be a utility that reports on your CPU performance. I just downloaded one called Speedy.

Running normally it clocked at 1145Mhz

With lightspeed underclocking to "Low" it ran at 1154.

Ah, one more app to the trash bin.
Uh, I think you were looking at the speed% vs. a Palm Vx. I don't think your iQue is 5-6 times faster than mine.;)

[JMckie]

Yep my units were in pct pts.
Did you notice that you could pick the iQue on the list of benchmarked devices? I was surprised bec. I thought Speedy hadn't been updated in a while.

Speedy has a benchmark value for the iQue of 259MHz
Here are 10 consecutive test results:
227, 261, 231, 229, 256, 259, 227, 229, 261, 233

Updated:
The experiment is a failure. Using lightspeed to "slow down" palmreader, I was able to get 3.25 hours of use, even a little less than normal.

Oh well.

[atreyu]

Yeah, Lightspeed ain't doing a thing on my iQue.

Tried to use it to slow all apps (including Speedy) down to 50... Speedy doesn't show any benchmark difference at all.

Oh well. Anyone else know of any other underclocking app?

I'm desparate to improve battery life.

[whattha]

How about some benchmark results while overclocking? Is Lightspeed better at what is, judging by its name, its primary purpose?

I'd try meself, but my Que is in RMA #2 at the moment.

[Blackbeard]

I've tried overclocking, underclocking, enable, and disable but nothing changed the benchmark that Speedy gave. Disappointing at best.

[atreyu]

Disappointing at best... catastrophic at worst.

I was forced to perform a hard reset when I tried to run Lightspeed again, which was disabled at the time. I got a blank screen (except for the row of icons along the bottom) and the unit locked up. A pin reset resulted in a a crash at the Palm Logo screen... pin reset resulted in same crash, etc. Hard reset was the only way out.

Woulda been sunk without BackupBuddyVFS!

[lostSoul001]

so the consensus seems to be it is not worth it for underclocking..

but I am much more interested in overclocking primarily for the following:

currently processor is not fast enough to play full length divx movies without using unbearable framerates.

would love to see a boost in speed when doing a search near location (currently takes several minutes in some instances)

AvantGo always seems sluggish to me.


I have overclocked PCs before, but I am always sure to provide additional cooling methods. For those that are using lightspeed to overclock their Iques, have you found that it crashes more often? Are you worried about frying your Que? How much are you overclocking?

[Sony convert]

Originally posted by lostSoul001

currently processor is not fast enough to play full length divx movies without using unbearable framerates.

would love to see a boost in speed when doing a search near location (currently takes several minutes in some instances)

AvantGo always seems sluggish to me.




What type of SD card do you have? I wonder if it is the card that is the limiting factor for you and not so much the processor. Searches can be sluggish, but with my Panasonic 512MB card they never take several minutes. Also, Avantgo seems to run okay. I have had problems with MMPlayer, but can still view movies at a decent resolution and framerate. I have a feeling overclocking won't make much of a difference for you unless you upgrade your SD card.

[weegee]

Well, it actually works.. I've loaded about 55 MB of detailed maps from Germany and zoomed to 50km on max. details setting.
Running the "Map" application @ 75 MHz it takes 20 seconds to completely draw the map, running @ the default 192 MHz it takes 10 seconds, running @ 240 MHz it takes 9 seconds. I didn't test the battery impact. Maybe it doesn't affect the run time much because (hopefully) the OS5 has a good power management, so the processor isn't wasting CPU cycles for waiting for the user..