Hacking Overclocking

[robiul]

Can the Wii be overclocked?

 

[WalkerOfTheDay]

Why would you wanna do that ?

 

[robiul]

Why would you wanna do that ?

Just for the fun of it, see how much power the little box can output.

 

[JussiPik]

yes, just download wiiclocker.dol from wiibrew.

 

[robiul]

yes, just download wiiclocker.dol from wiibrew.

Seriously there are some stupid people who would follow that.

 

[JussiPik]

lol, seriously, idk, i think it could be done.
it would be interesting.

 

[Bladexdsl]

um no it's not a pc

 

[payas]

I dont know thay managed to overclock the psp from 166 to 333 mhz. Maybe possible

 

[agentgamma]

I dont know thay managed to overclock the psp from 166 to 333 mhz. Maybe possible

If I recall correctly, the PSP processor is actually a 333mhz processor that was downclocked by Sony to 166mhz to save battery life.

 

[Vater Unser]

I dont know thay managed to overclock the psp from 166 to 333 mhz. Maybe possible

Uhm, no.
333mhz is the actual clock rate of the PSP, Sony just downclocked it to 166mhz so the CPU wouldn't drain the battery so fast.
[whoops, agentgamma was faster.]

That aside, there really is NO point in overclocking your Wii.
When it's overclocked, then what?
What kind of software would you run on it that would actually make use of the faster CPU speed?
It's not like the existing games will suddenly look better once the CPU's overclocked.

 

[noONE]

Sounds completly useless, unless ofcourse it would be able to play 720P .MKVs which it probably wouldn't since it'd overheat before reaching anything impressive, especially since it already has some heat issues...

 

[incinerator]

If you are the type to ask "Why?" or say "Sounds useless" then you are obviously not the type to overclock your Wii =P

Sometimes, you do things just because you can. That in itself is the fun part. Of course, there's the added boost of performance if you were to run any processor intensive homebrew. But sometimes there's more fun in the journey than the destination

 

[nicksasa]

the psp was NEVER on 166 mhz its 222 mhz

and yeah its just a 333 mhz processor that was downclocked

 

[Bladexdsl]

That aside, there really is NO point in overclocking your Wii.
When it's overclocked, then what?
What kind of software would you run on it that would actually make use of the faster CPU speed?
It's not like the existing games will suddenly look better once the CPU's overclocked.

not to mention it will shorten the cpu life.

 

[toguro_max]

Why bothering asking "why"?
It's just like incinerator said, "(...) sometimes there's more fun in the journey than the destination".
When someone wants to know if something is possible, s/he does not want to know (for now, at least) what to do with it, s/he just wants to know if it is possible.
For me, for instange, i think overclocking anything is stupid, but that is just my opinion, i don't point fingers at anyone's face becaus of it...

Back to the question, it probably is possible. I mean, heck, they even overclocked an Sega Genesis!

 

[teq]

That aside, there really is NO point in overclocking your Wii.
When it's overclocked, then what?
What kind of software would you run on it that would actually make use of the faster CPU speed?
It's not like the existing games will suddenly look better once the CPU's overclocked.

not to mention it will shorten the cpu life.

Thought I'd chime in: WRONG.

The transistors that compose ICs do not have "lives". They live as long as their physical state is intact(ie: you don't go breaking the die in half). Any wear placed on an IC has more of a chance of being exterior and mechanical(such as pressure from the heatsink) than not.

Heat on a transistor is only a factor when electronic leakage begins to occur, and even then the transistor doesn't "wear out" -- it just doesn't carry any accuracy.


But, in response to the thread starter: It's safe to assume the Wii CPU is probably already overclocked. If not, the most you'll get out of it is 1Ghz, as the Broadway is based on the PowerPC 750CL, which scales up to 1Ghz. Not exactly much of a triumph. Besides, these are RISC cores -- they don't need a high clock speed to attain high IPC and efficiency.

 

[stiansoftcore]

Idiots. You guys know you can run Linux on your Wii, right? Clocking your CPU to a higher frequency will of course improve your performance when using Linux.

And yes, the Wii is basically a low-end PC. It's about as powerful as an office computer from 1995.

 

[teq]

Idiots. You guys know you can run Linux on your Wii, right? Clocking your CPU to a higher frequency will of course improve your performance when using Linux.

And yes, the Wii is basically a low-end PC. It's about as powerful as an office computer from 1995.

Again, false and false.


A 300Mhz increase on a RISC processor is extremely subtle in comparison to the same increase on a CISC processor. These processors(PowerPC especially) do not rely on pure clock speed to perform. They have high IPCs, little to no supervisors, and well balanced internal to external bandwidths.

Linux distros on the Wii currently have no window manager, restricting processes to the command line. Aside from servers and renderers, there are very few command line based processes that are resource intensive.


Finally, the Wii is actually as powerful as a home computer was a few years ago. Despite its seemingly limited memory, the processor has a lot of potential for a wide host of uses. Good software doesn't always require a lot of memory to do the job. There are Linux distros that only require 16MB of ram and still compete with the likes of Ubuntu.

 

[Bladexdsl]

who cares about linux

 

[Mrkinator]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlzVpo5IPdM

Crediar was able to do it.