Hardware Misc Is it possible to overclock a TN new 3ds display?

[Sono]

Oh jesus, it could make an o3ds catch fire?!
Well, in that case what I'd do is have a check at the start BEFORE it doe s anything; If O3DS/2DS, cap overclock to 80hz or so. If N3DS/2DS, no cap, push it to at least 300.

Nah, it can't catch fire. "Burn in" means that the voltage in the pixel cell gets biased, making the pixel get stuck for a long time, or it'll change really really slowly. Sometimes it can get permanently burnt in by actually slowly destroying the "burnt" pixel.

Oh also, the reason I didn't clock it past what the demo already shows, is that past that FPS the screen shows a lot of annoying glitch lines at the top (in the display's physical orientation, that is), and didn't want that to show much in the demo.
However, I can make a demo which is clocked as high as possible, in 3D, while still taking up the entire display panel, yet displaying a valid image (so unrecognizable overclock is not allowed).

 

[Shady Guy Jose]

Oh jesus, it could make an o3ds catch fire?!
Well, in that case what I'd do is have a check at the start BEFORE it doe s anything; If O3DS/2DS, cap overclock to 80hz or so. If N3DS/2DS, no cap, push it to at least 300.

Not catching fire, but having an image burned in (as in seeing a ghost of that image regardless of what's displaying now), I think.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

Ah. I guess since I'm not used to LCDs ever burning-in I kinda forgot that it could cause dead pixels instead..

 

[ack]

Exactly my thoughts. If questions going beyond mainstream can not be discussed here, it is confession of failure.
Showing smug superiority (and even wrongly perceived superiority): "Hell, no. You must be soooo stupid for even thinking/asking this."


I have to say I'm pretty sick of flat answers
"No", "Nope", "Impossible"… as well as: "Use […] instead.", "Why would you want to?", "Limitation of [old device] → Get [new device]"
For giving the final answer "no", there has to be a reason provided along exactly WHY the answer is no, what limitations are in place and why they cannot be overcome.
@Sono Thanks for providing this. I remembered it from previous profile messages, but I didn't want to bother you at the moment. Please keep up the good work.
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Messing around with older stuff can be a lot of fun. A PC and a bunch of emulators can be used as killer argument against about everything regarding trying to do something on older consoles: "Use PC, End of discussion.", "Ikr, all shit show."
Embarrassing behavior!

ok then i ask you to hack a 3ds so that it runs internally on AC. They use AC in power lines 'cause it's more efficient, so therefore if you make a 3ds use AC it should have a longer battery life

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

I know that was likely a satire question, but I can't help it: AC power is more efficient for long-distance transfers of current like through the power lines and phone lines, but DC is more efficient for short distance transfers like powering something via battery or powering internal PC components with the PSU. I have yet to see someone put AC in a battery without putting a DC-to-AC converter between said battery and whatever you put it in as a power source. I do think it would be funny to see, though.

 

[sarkwalvein]

ok then i ask you to hack a 3ds so that it runs internally on AC. They use AC in power lines 'cause it's more efficient, so therefore if you make a 3ds use AC it should have a longer battery life

Power lines are more efficient (mostly) because you transmit energy at high voltage / low current. The transmitted power is the product of voltage and current, so for a given level of power the higher the voltage is, the lower the current must be.

As the losses in the conductor are proportional to the square of the current, if you increase the voltage and reduce the current then you reduce the losses a lot. The efficiency is due to the higher voltage/lower current used in transmission, not due to AC being used.

The problem is that you need to increase the voltage to transmit, and then you need to reduce it to distribute. And you need to do it in a cheap and efficient manner that requires as little maintenance as possible and that you need to do it for gigantic amounts of power.

If you use AC, you have a alternating voltage, meaning you can use simple classic transformers (based on law of induction of moving/alternating magnetic fields). These transformers are ancient technology that could be used since more than a hundred years ago to solve this problem. They are also simple as hell and can be built like a tank, requiring very little maintenance, and they are quite efficient. Thus they are used, and AC is used so you can use them.

Anyway... that's derailing quite a bit... but what you should try to do is not make the 3DS run internally on AC, but to instead work internally at 500 kV....... /s

 

[Sono]

ok then i ask you to hack a 3ds so that it runs internally on AC. They use AC in power lines 'cause it's more efficient, so therefore if you make a 3ds use AC it should have a longer battery life

It is actually possible to hack a 3DS so it can run without a battery, from the charger.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

It is actually possible to hack a 3DS so it can run without a battery, from the charger.

Is that a hardmod, or something that could be done in software? I think it'd be a little nice to be able to run charger-only on one of my systems.

 

[Sono]

Is that a hardmod, or something that could be done in software? I think it'd be a little nice to be able to run charger-only on one of my systems.

It's software, but it's an MCU_FIRM patch, so it's a bit dangerous.

I'm not willing to do a new2DS MCU_FIRM patch, but other 3DS systems I could attempt, as I'm mostly familiar with those.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

It's software, but it's an MCU_FIRM patch, so it's a bit dangerous.

I'm not willing to do a new2DS MCU_FIRM patch, but other 3DS systems I could attempt, as I'm mostly familiar with those.

Ah. Anything for O3DS?

 

[Sono]

Ah. Anything for O3DS?

It is possible (I have two old3DS running my customized MCU_FIRM, actually!), but I'm in such shambles that I don't want to risk bricking anyone's 3DS, sorry!

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

It is possible (I have two old3DS running my customized MCU_FIRM, actually!), but I'm in such shambles that I don't want to risk bricking anyone's 3DS, sorry!

Ah, alright. If you ever make it more stable somehow, or are hopefully in less shambles soon, drop a post on my profile! (plus the O3DS I'm thinking of for this is already a little broken, it wouldn't really be a huge loss)

 

[ZachyCatGames]

Atmosphere is just cfw for the switch. It allows you to overclock the switch, but I'm not sure if it's via an application or its built in. I want to mod my switch badly, but I'm in the same camp as you. I'm not gonna just buy a modchip, despite the fact I have a modifiable switch(I'm thinking of just keeping my switch on the current system software until homebrew catches up)

Then we explore FCRAM. Once we figure out how it works on old3ds, then we try to overclock it on the new 3ds. Same with the gpu, but it might be harder to overclock the gpu on the new 3ds. If the only possible thing thats overclockable is FCRAM, that's something at least something! Maybe exploring how FCRAM works with overclocking could help with a lot of things.

Atmosphere reimplements certain components of the Switch's operating system. You could port it but you'd be running a different OS that's not going to be able to run any regular 3ds processes (including basically the entire OS).
Also none of the switch's overclocking stuff would apply.

 

[ghjfdtg]

The 3DS simply doesn't have the hardware support for overclocking RAM, CPU and GPU. There are no configurable PLLs or system clocks. The closest is the CPU clock multiplier on New 3/2DS which maxes out at 804 MHz which is what Nintendo already uses.

 

[rassular]

Edit: removed mean things and swearing, corrected some grammar mistakes, and added technical info

Note: any mentions I make to the display assumes that you're holding the display in its physical orientation, that is the top screen is in your right hand, and the bottom screen is in your left hand, meaning that the 3DS is rotated to the right.

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I like (okay, actually not, because it's rude) how all of you keep joking on people who are defending the ability of display overclocking just because it sounds stupid.

I actually did a stable overclock of the LCDs up to ~81FPS on an old3DS, new3DSXL, and a 2DS, and all of them work just fine.
It is possible to overclock up to ~103FPS on my new3DSXL with minor glitches appearing at the top of the screen.

If you don't mind severe display glitches, then you can overclock to some ridiculous levels, but at that point you're really starting to trade image quality/stability for extra frame per second.

Oh, and the best part is... you don't trust me? Well, jokes on you, because I have attached an actual functional techdemo to the bottom of this post you can try out yourself
(Warning: hold down the power button to shut down the 3DS if you want to exit. If your display dims on old3DS then immediately turn off your 3DS!)

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Technically you could do "supersampling" with a gsp patch, but only for a very little benefit, as the GPU does not actually support anything like that. The PDC supports interlacing, and you could halve the render resolution, and just swap the interlacing each frame, which would create an "old TV effect" where lines appear if the content contains a lot of motion.

As for more interesting things you can do with display overclocking: technically you could do "GSync/FreeSync" on 3DS, but with some limitations.
On new3DSXL you could just poke the PDC in such a way so that you could make it start a new display frame on command.
On old3DS and 2DS however you sadly need to spin the CPU until it's safe to poke the PDC, otherwise the display will glitch out heavily on 2DS, or it can cause the old3DS screen to enter into a bugged "dim" mode where severe display burn-in can occur if you don't turn off your 3DS immediately.
(Note: it is safe to try the techdemo I have uploaded, and it should not trigger the dim mode on old3DS, but be aware just in case)

As for DS/GBA upscaling, or any modification, it's simply not possible. They use fixed-function hardware, which is incapable of having its display timing (and thus size) parameters changed.
On the DS you can do variable framerate adjustment by writing to the VCount register, but that's all you can get.

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Spoiler: Technical info

The pixel clock runs at ~11.17132733333[...]MHz (ARM11 minimum speed / 24 == 268111856 / 24), and you simply can't change that. There is a weird "clock double" bit I can't really figure out how it works, but when enabled, the top screen writes two pixels at once in column mode (weird line doubling), or it writes two pixels at once on the bottom screen (literally pixel doubling, so the image is stretched out horizontally).

While the displays have some processing in them (especially the original old3DS displays, which have a lot!), they are actually quite dumb otherwise, which means that overclocking them is as easy as just modifying the display timing parameters (things like front/back porch, blanking, display area, and total timing).

You can change just the vertical timings alone, and that can slightly overclock the display. Sadly the default is 413 lines, so you can barely get a few extra frames per second if you set it to 402 lines (the minimum functional value).

You can actually have a surprisingly high amount of overclocking by changing the horizintal timings, but even just a small change will start to glitch out the old3DS timings, and it makes sense why they have changed it to so high, as the old3DS display controller actually supports a ton of image processing built-in, which need a lot of time to get processed.
This is actually the reason why the new3DSXL screens are so overclockable, as the new3DSXL actually features a bugged PDC and an oversimplified display controller, which means that you can modify it to your liking as much as possible. Basically as long as the hardware can keep up with the signal speed, it'll try its best to actually work, and this is what actually happens in reality.

Out of all the 3DSes I have, I found that the new3DSXL's display is the most overclockable, able to be overclocked so high that it actually freezes the 3DS kernel! I remember reaching around 2.9kFPS-3.1kFPS before the 3DS froze, although at that point the image displayed on the display was absolutely destroyed, as it was glitching, only displaying blue colors out of whatever color channel happened to be clocked at the time; it was a mess.

Bit of a necrobump I know, but do you happen to know if the IPS screens on the New 3DS XLs are able to run this app for some overclocking too (without causing issues like the o3DS has a chance of having)? I'd assume it can't get as high since TN is better for that but it'd still be cool if it can go over 60hz

 

[Sono]

Bit of a necrobump I know, but do you happen to know if the IPS screens on the New 3DS XLs are able to run this app for some overclocking too (without causing issues like the o3DS has a chance of having)? I'd assume it can't get as high since TN is better for that but it'd still be cool if it can go over 60hz

IPS screens are a bit rare to have anyone testing it for me.

All I can say is, you could try it out, but if the screen does weird things like intense ghosting, darkening, brightening, or vignette, IMMEDIATELY turn off your 3DS.

 

[Anxiety_timmy]

(Bump, sorry)
Wanted to point out that I actually damaged a 3ds by using the display overclocking. Specifically an old3ds. Essentially unless the hinge is fully extended or the bottom cover is removed, it will always be forced at 100% brightness no matter what, which I find somewhat funny.

 

[Sono]

(Bump, sorry)
Wanted to point out that I actually damaged a 3ds by using the display overclocking. Specifically an old3ds. Essentially unless the hinge is fully extended or the bottom cover is removed, it will always be forced at 100% brightness no matter what, which I find somewhat funny.

Brightness is not controlled by the LCD controller, so it's not possible that the overclocking could've caused this symptom.

Also, I'd expect the display to turn *dimmer* instead of brighter.

 

[Anxiety_timmy]

Brightness is not controlled by the LCD controller, so it's not possible that the overclocking could've caused this symptom.

Also, I'd expect the display to turn *dimmer* instead of brighter.

Interesting. The symptoms started showing after running the overclocking so I assume it had something to do with it. Oddly there wasn't any burn in though

 

[Canned_Noodles]

This is probably the coolest thread I've found on this site. @Sono your overclocking tool is very cool, but how exactly do I use it to get higher than the default 99 FPS? My understanding of display timings is very basic (too basic). I can't exactly tell whether or not there is vignette/bloom/etc on the upper display due to the fact that it is blank in the software. My N3DSXL has an IPS upper display and a TN lower display. I am very willing to help you any way I can.