You Can Now Overclock a Raspberry Pi 4 For Some Nice Performance Gains (hothardware.com) 93
MojoKid writes: The Raspberry Pi 4 is one of the cheapest single-board computers around. The new 4th generation is a solid performance lift over its predecessor and good bang for the buck if you're interested in learning Linux, working with embedded computing, or just want to kick back and play some retro games on an emulator. In addition, the latest version of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Linux distribution, Raspbian Buster, comes with a new firmware revision for the tiny DIY PC that removes its 2GHz clock speed limit and allows voltage adjustments to wring out additional performance, with proper cooling of course. In testing, while there are no guarantees in overclocking, HotHardware was able to realize more than a 40% lift in their Raspberry Pi 4's processor clock speed, and a 50% boost to the GPU with an air-cooled mini case kit. Combined, they're not enough to turn the Pi 4 into your every day PC, but the performance gains are measurable and valuable. All it takes is a quick firmware update and a couple of Linux commands to dial things in.
Therr are cheaper ways to create a bonfire ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't the damn thing already overheating in its standard configuration?
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I'm sure some phones are potentially more capable in some ways but then again that isn't much good for most of the reasons someone might have for using a Pi.
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Re: Therr are cheaper ways to create a bonfire ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Therr are cheaper ways to create a bonfire ... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm running an 3b+ with Nexcloud and it's been an awesome replacement for Dropbox since they started their shenanigans. It's everything Dropbox used to be before their IPO. Again, no problems.
I've had Pihole running for over a year now on another old 2B+ that I got for free and it's serving up DNS to all my devices and computers here at home. It pulls power off the USB on my router.
I just bought a 4 last weekend with 4GB ($55) to install Home Assistant and move all my smart devices out of the cloud and under my own control.
I'm running a 2B+ at work on a remote job site out in the middle of nowhere with a mobile hotspot to control and monitor some data logging equipment and return the data to the office. I use a watchdog pi-hat to make sure nobody has to drive 600 miles to reset everything when there's a power glitch. It's been running for 6 months so far without a single issue.
It's a truly wonderful little device for not a whole lot of money.
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I'll bet your G3 doesn't heat soup as well as the RPi4.
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Don't compare a kit to a basic board. A bare 1GB Pi4 goes for $46 on Amazon. You can pick up a Pi 3 for $35. USB cables are ubiquitous. Almost everyone has some spare micro sd cards laying about from some other piece of electronics. A basic plastic case can run $9 or you can get a passive cooling heatsink that functions as a case for $13
As for uses, well, you can use a cell phone but oh what if you want it on wired ethernet with some USB ports?? Plus who needs that screen once it's setup. Does your c
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What other computer can I buy that gives me better performance for £50 or less?
I suppose you can find a Core 2 Duo for that much.
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You hadn't specified a new, power-efficient computer that you can buy for £50. No moving the goalposts.
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Someone suggest a Core2Duo. Like WTF?? ? Are we back in 2005 again ?
The C2D line was introduced in 2007, actually. But the point is that: a new Pi performs like an old PC. If you don't need a tiny, low-power machine, the PC will be the better deal.
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The C2D line was introduced in 2007, actually. But the point is that: a new Pi performs like an old PC. If you don't need a tiny, low-power machine, the PC will be the better deal.
But that's the main point of RPi as a production machine: small, cheap and power efficient. I just retired an old HP7700 core 2 duo this past summer that I rarely used because it heated up my office by 3 or 4 degrees every time I turned it on. For my Pi use cases you couldn't pay me to take an old dinosaur like that and use it instead. The Pi is rock solid. Quiet. Boots in 7 or 8 seconds. No post EOL spinning drives or power supply fans at death's door. No cleaning dust blankets off CPU heat sinks.
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No, YOU stop dodging.
Fact: The rPi might as well be a shit-tier power efficient Pentium 4 processor. You can get those with full fucking case and motherboard from a thrift store for $20.
You do the rest of the fucking legwork and quit being disingenuous.
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Check eBay, Craigslist, OLX, or some local equivalent.
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"Thrift stores sell no such thing for $20."
Bullshit, that's where my last P4 with 64MB GeForce 4 MX440 Windows 98 system came from. Goodwill, bitch. Do you even?
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There are plenty of those Android TV boxes that have more RAM, built-in eMMC and better processor.
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Which android TV boxes are cheaper, have more ram, and a better processor? The only cheap one that I know about that has any quality at all is the xiaomi mi s, which is $70, has 2GB of RAM and a quad-core cortex a53 processor, wheres the raspberry pi can be had for $55 with 4GB and a quad-core cortex A72.
Honestly though if you just want an entertainment platform, the nvidia shield is probably the way to go, though it is expensive. The raspberry pi is more for tinkerers and educational applications.
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" What other computer can I buy that gives me better performance for £50 or less?"
Practically any smartphone made five years ago.
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a raspberry has some pins to interface directly with real world hw and enough juice to run a server for that stuff without a hassle.
also it's nice just due to there being so many of them sold so you can have os images and stuff without hassle.. like, our cable tv box isn't that far off in power but it would be a hassle to root it and get the things in there that would be useful.
pi4 is a tad expensive though. surprisingly so after you put in the power supply and hdmi cable converter that you have to have an
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What it does lack however is a SATA interface. If they added one of those it could very handily function as a low end office tasks/net browser device. The Pi3 was a bit undergunned for comfortable use, but the Pi4 is actually pretty decent, except for the fact you gotta rely on an SD card for storage with all the slowless that entails
SATA (Score:3)
The Broadcom chipset doesn't feature any SATA lanes (nor PCIe, for that matters).
At that point, if you want to go the Pi route and still have serious storage, you'd better off using one of the numerous USB3-to-SATA/NVMe daughter boards from the likes of Geekworm [geekworm.com] (I use x850 for that purpose).
Or skip the Pi and try to find a good long-term supported SBC with SATA/PCIe (Pine?)
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The Broadcom chipset doesn't feature any SATA lanes (nor PCIe, for that matters).
It helps to remember the history of the Raspberry Pi and its chip. Essentially, Broadcom designed a video decoder for embedded devices, and included an ARM core to make it an all-in-one option for device builders. Two engineers thought "gee, it'd be fun to put Linux on this" and turned it into an educational effort.
Now Broadcom seems to be celebrating their success a bit more, and increasing the capabilities of the chip as the product line matures, but at its heart, it's still primarily meant for embedded v
Origins (Score:2)
It helps to remember the history of the Raspberry Pi and its chip. Essentially, Broadcom designed a video decoder for embedded devices, and included an ARM core to make it an all-in-one option for device builders. Two engineers thought "gee, it'd be fun to put Linux on this" and turned it into an educational effort.
...as witnessed by the weird booting protocol. The Raspberry Pi up to the 3+ are among the few devices that boot the GPU up first, and then the GPU is responsible for bringing up the CPU.
but at its heart, it's still primarily meant for embedded video. You get GPIO lines for buttons or communications, USB for peripherals, and some nice video bandwidth... but support for extra storage or PCIe peripherals is wildly outside the current design.
Funnily, it's outside the current design *now*.
Extra storage would absolutely NOT have been out of place a few year ago, back when TV set-top boxes did the time-shifting by physically recording stuff locally on a disk (as opposed to nowadays when "time-shifting" actually consists of streaming on-demand older content from a
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Actually, the SoC has a PCIe lane. It's connected to the USB 3.0 chip, but you can hack the Pi 4 to get at it. [hackaday.com]
I have a Pi 4 and am pretty happy with it; it's the 4GB model and works adequately as a desktop computer for web browsing, reading/writing email and light LibreOffice work. But IMO, the Pi foundation should not have sold the Pi 4 without an active cooling solution; I use mine with a heatsink and fan to avoid over-temperature warnings.
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What it does lack however is a SATA interface. If they added one of those it could very handily function as a low end office tasks/net browser device.
Why does the Pi 4 need SATA to function as a net browser device? It has a high-speed USB 3.0 interface that is fairly well supported by the processor, providing decent file storage. [raspberrypi.org]
The Raspberry Pi was not designed as a desktop replacement, it was designed as a low-cost kit for users with small budgets and limited access to more traditional computers.
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The micro-hdmi thing really pisses me off. Could they thought of a less useful way to provide power and video?! USB-C for power only, and not fully compliant at that, and two obscure video ports that nobody will be able to use natively.
The damn thing quickly becomes $100.
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Micro HDMI was forced by the decision to handle two monitors on the Pi - it's regrettable, but a $6 cable [walmart.com] solves the problem.
Raspberry Pi Foundation offers a $10 USB C power supply. [microcenter.com]
Starting from nothing, the Raspberry Pi was always about a $100 computer when kitted out.
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The adapters are a solution, but it really complicates use. I use mine as a traveling remote desktop console, and it is bad as all the dongles required for my Apple gear. Specific to micro-hdmi, my issue is they are not (and will never be) readily stocked in stores when you need it now. The Walmart example is online only.
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And yet, there's millions of CNCs and 3D printers out there running on ATmega2560... No, the GUI isn't driven directly by the Arduino, because that's handled by displays with built-in controllers.
The GUI (Score:2)
And yet, there's millions of CNCs and 3D printers out there running on ATmega2560...
...and whose GUI is a nearby RaspPi running Octoprint webserver (with its USB ports stuffed with printers).
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Only a minority of those. Most 3D printers only have either a 128x64 matrix display, or a 40x2 characters display. No Raspberry Pi involved.
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While carrying out realtime tasks such as driving the motors that run a 3D printer? The ATmega2560 is about at its limit handling Cartesian or CoreXY kinematics. Throw in something like automatic bed leveling and you'll need to make sure your models don't get too complex, or else your printer will start stuttering as it runs.
I swapped out the Arduino Mega knockoff for a Re-ARM, which puts a 100-MHz LPC1768 into more-or-le
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While dealing with real-time, fine control of four stepper motors at a time? Yes. There's a reason why most delta 3D printers owners prefer to use a 32-bit CPU.
Re:Therr are cheaper ways to create a bonfire ... (Score:4, Informative)
I have to bring up this point every time. The Pi was never meant as a desktop replacement or a media center or an open source hardware design. It was created to bring down the price of single board computers for students to learn with. I'll say it again. Price was the only consideration during the design phase. Before the Pi single board computers were still over $100. This is so students can write some code and use the IO pins to interface with more hardware. The fact that it runs Linux is incidental.
Re: Therr are cheaper ways to create a bonfire ... (Score:1)
The Pi was designed to be an educational device for children. So many adult nerds try to shoehorn it into being something else. The real value of the Pi is the foundation behind it and the educational infrastructure.
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I have to bring up this point every time. The Pi was never meant as a desktop replacement or a media center or an open source hardware design.
The original wasn't. This one was meant to do more stuff. So what's your point?
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Then why does it need two HDMI outputs and use the micro-HDMI interface? Bad design compromises.
Peripherals (Score:4, Interesting)
TL;DR: Yes, they had students in mind, but that pushed them to make a lot of choice that made the platform interesting for everybody else.
It was created to bring down the price of single board computers for students to learn with. I'll say it again. Price was the only consideration during the design phase.
Price, yes.
- ...And being able to use "whatever you have laying around" peripherals.
(hence using microUSB for power because you're bound to have a couple left from other gizmos, hence the capability to just throttle down instead of brown out if said charger is anemic, hence using HDMI (or earlier: composite) for easy connecting to any TV/PC monitor. Using SD cards or even USB stick (Pi3 and up ) for booting. Using standard USB peripherals for input.)
which also helps bringing down the price by avoiding to need to buy extra peripherals, increasing afforadbility by students.
- ...Also mass-produced with long availability (a school could build a teaching course around Pis and the student will still be able to get the necessary hardware couple of years laters. Contrast with any SBC that you see on Kickstarter/Indiegogo and rarely go to live any longer than said campaign, if even that long).
- ...Also running an OS and a software stack that would be affordable to the students without relying on expensive licenses. (Hence Linux and not Windows XPe nor any industrial real-time OS - even if that last one was technically supported).
Before the Pi single board computers were still over $100. This is so students can write some code and use the IO pins to interface with more hardware.
Yeah, but to achieve that, you need to balance all the above goals, and once you have that, it's a dream product for all the hardware hacking people and other uses (media center) due to most of the same reasons.
And then these users drive demand up, helping drive the production costs down due to bigger volume scales and thus indirectly *help* the student having it even cheaper.
The fact that it runs Linux is incidental.
It has to be used by students. Linux comes at the top of the list of OSes with a cheap license that the student and the school can afford.
(Maybe the school could have tried to negociate some volumne licensing of Microsoft Windows XPe, but it performance would have been craptastic.
And forget about anything industrial real-time os, unless the school has an extremely rich donor).
The crazy success of Linux in that niche is probably when shocked Microsoft with surprise into eventually developing Windows IoT.
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Raspberry Pi being initially done for students, makes me thing a bit like the IBM PC was done with one single purpose in mind (IBM try to get a slice of the "personal computers" pie, specially since those started to pop-up in business settings - a setting that until recently was IBM's bread-and-butter (that's what "B" in their name stands for) with their mainframes).
But by doing so the inadvertently became a whole industry standard (by rushing into the market while late, IBM build their PC exclusively out of widely available cheap off the shelf parts. But that meant that any competitor could take the same cheap parts off the same metaphorical shelf and built a PC-compatible.)
(This was made even easier due to the special licensing deal with Microsoft which allowed them to continue selling MS-DOS on their own, and due to Phoenix who managed to make a clean room re-implementation of the BIOS).
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It has to be used by students. Linux comes at the top of the list of OSes with a cheap license that the student and the school can afford.
Windows 10 licenses for low-end devices like the Raspberry Pi (or very low-end Win tablet/laptops) is FREE (as in beer) - that is how we have a plethora of craptastic windows tablets and laptops hovering around $100.
Refurbished laptops with windows 10 licenses and 256 Gig storage, 4-8 Gig RAM and an i3 or i5 processor from a few years ago can be gotten for about $200-250 ($150 if you are OK with Windows 8.1 with a free user upgrade to Win 10) - https://www.dellrefurbished.co... [dellrefurbished.com].
Starting from scratch, a Rasp
Check the calendar (Score:2)
Windows 10 licenses for low-end devices like the Raspberry Pi (or very low-end Win tablet/laptops)
Check your calendar, and keep in mind the time flows forward :
- Raspberry Pi, first of its name, got release in 2012.
- Windows 10 got release in 2015 a whole 3 years later.
You got your cause and consequences mixed up.
Windows 7 was the only version available back then that wasn't a complete joke (with Windows 8's release approaching slowly at the horizon. But, hey we said "not a complete joke" so that one doesn't count).
So Windows Embbed Standard 7 would have been what Microsoft would have had as an offer co
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I never saw the point of those things. An Arduino would handle embedded applications better
Depends on the definition of "better". For something that's hard realtime/time-critical, the Pi isn't a particularly good choice and an Arduino might be a lot better. If you still need realtime but with more capability than an AVR chip can provide, something like a Beaglebone Black would be a better fit. However, for a lot of applications, something like a Pi Zero W is ideal. It's cheap and very handy to be able t
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I never saw the point of those things. An Arduino would handle embedded applications better and just about any modern computer can provide better performance at the same or lower price.
Although the Raspberry Pi looks like it was designed for embedded applications, it was not - it was designed to be a low cost system to allow children to learn to program and control trivial devices (LEDs, servos, relays, etc.).
What can a Raspberry Pi do that a desktop, laptop, palmtop, smartphone, tablet or Arduino can't do better?
Try and hook a servo up to your smartphone.
The Arduino, while a lot of fun to play with, is as I understand it, designed to have a single "sketch" downloaded on to it - it is a completely different model than students today are used to with iDevices and Android phones and tablets.
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> What can a Raspberry Pi do that a desktop, laptop, palmtop, smartphone, tablet or Arduino can't do better?
The Rpi is designed as an educational tool - it can be shipped as a standard platform to schools, who can then use it for all sorts of interesting projects. The GPIO ports are more convenient to program against for IOT applications than legacy hardware. As compared to an arduino, it's a real computer with a real operating system. There is a whole ecosystem of add-ons and software for various k
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Indeed. And remember that +10C approximately halves the lifetime. I have seen that in action on a bunch of older Gigabit network cards. You can easily end up with a dead CPU after a few months this way. Overclocking is generally not a good idea unless you only expect to use the hardware for a short time.
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Wasn't the damn thing already overheating in its standard configuration?
Yes, it was. And so was its predecessor (3+ onwards).
You just have to put a small fan on it (Score:2)
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Wasn't the damn thing already overheating in its standard configuration?
It's almost like you didn't read either of the sentences in TFS that mention you need to modify the cooling solution here.
Man getting modded up is cheap these days.
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Wasn't the damn thing already overheating in its standard configuration?
Yes, the stock configuration even with the commonly included heat sink overheats. It is too bad the CPU is not mounted on the bottom like some other similar single board computers because that would allow for a much better cooling solution.
Did it melt? (Score:3)
The thing has heat issues at stock speeds - a fancy passive design just keeps stock speeds acceptable, just.
Let alone overclocked, active cooling is a must.
However, with 4GB memory and a fairly lean linux distro, I imagine you could get a fairly competent 'grandma desktop replacement' with one.
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Thanks for repeating TFS for us. TFS only mentioned twice that you need to modify the cooling solution which definitely isn't enough to get the point across.
underclocking (Score:5, Insightful)
more interested in underclocking.
the raspi4 already runs hot as it is, the need to add additional cooling is totally missing the point of what made the previous versions so great.
usable for any little project, with small and thight space requirements, run and forget, etc.
lowering the cpu speed could also increase battery life, for those that use the raspi in a battery powered project.
Re: underclocking (Score:2)
Also interested. It has great connectivity but runs too hot and has more speed than many embedded apps need. Sloooow Pi4 would be great.
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Underclock it, nothing stopping you from doing that.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you going to do with a Pi that requires more than a few hundred Mhz never mind the standard 2Ghz clock speed? I'm sure its fun to overclock these things from a technical perspective, but its also utterly pointless.
Re: Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why do people install performance parts on cars when the speed limit is 70?
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Acceleration up to 70 and track days.
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The speed limit is 75mph here and some places like Texas have a few isolated highways with a speed limit of 85mph.
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Been there doing 90 & getting passed by an officer that was just driving by.
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Top speed limits I've seen nearby are 75 in Nevada and Arizona and 80 in Utah.
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If you drive 85 in Nevada on those long open stretches, and the NHP suddenly appears on your tail . . .
Pull to the right lane *carefully*, as he's about to whip around you . . .
I've seen the same at that speed in CA, too . . .
When a cop has hundreds miles to cover on a shift, and is the only primary coverage (relying on locals or even the next state for backup), 85 in dry weather on a straight desert road with visibility to the horizon is about the lowest priority he has . . .
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In Pennsylvania, in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, traffic on highways travels an average of 80mph.
The speed limit is 70mph.
I usually travel around 90.
Fastest I ever had the balls to do was a little over 130, things start to get scary. Physics change. Starts to feel like you are skipping almost. Then you think to yourself what if one of these cars i am passing (like they are standing still) decides to change lanes without looking.
Why you ask?
To see what it's like, to try something new. To play wit
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Not quite as cheap as expected (Score:2, Troll)
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How did you manage to spend about £115 on accessories? The official R-Pi PSU is £13 on Amazon. You can get a reasonable mouse and keyboard for under a tenner each if you didn't have any spares lying around the house. R-Pi cases are at a similar price point, some as low as a fiver. And about a fiver for a 16GB microSD card. That's about a £40 spend on accessories.
Not bring your own ? (Score:3)
After buying the power block, keyboard, mouse, SD card and case,
What? You mean that you didn't have any spare laying around?
Case, I can understand. Thought the device works just as nicely without one.
But the rest? You probably have a couple of spare in a drawer somewhere.
Even the power circuitry is designed in such way that if the power block is under delivering, the device will simply throttle back instead of browning out. You can literally get away be re-purposing some older phone/tablet/electronic gizmo's power block.
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If you can't even image a blank memory card with the tools provided, I would suggest that the Raspberry Pi is not for you.
Hint: I work in a school and the 8-year-olds can do that themselves, and they've never "formatted" anything in their lives.
read carefully (Score:2)
The article makes mention of the previously held limit of 2GHz. this is followed by stating "42% increase". this is a little misleading as the 42% is referencing from the stock 1.5GHz. The actual gains in OC per this firmware is only a 9% rise over the previous, which was already a 33% increase over stock. Had a few people look at it and ask how 2GHz to 2.14GHz was 42%.