Over the last days i updated the tweaker a little bit. Now the GUI is entirely rewritten and a whole bunch of new features are included. For more information check the ReadMe which is a little bit blown up (364 lines ^^).

What's new:
===========
CPU/LCD/RAM Tuner 2.0
---------------------
- complete new menu
- RAM-Tuning Options
- Saveoption for Configfiles
- complete new commandline-options
- no SDL anymore
- CPU-Tester

The RAM-Tuning can speed up the whole RAM-performance a bit. With a bit stricter timings i gained a overal performance plus of 4-5% in Quake. this isn't much, but you have to remind, that Quake is no havy RAM user ... with applications like GnGeo you should experience a noticable speedup .

The GUI now looks like an AWARD-Bios and let's you save your configurations. Another big plus is, that you can use the program WITHOUT using scripts. The commandline is better than before, but you can the new configfile for filestarting too. Just add a run-parameter and the program in the config-file and the tweaker will set the parameters and run the application after that .

Here's a picture of the new GUI:


Get it in the File-Archiv
OR from my Server until the archiv is updated.

EDIT: I think i'm stupid ... i forgot the links ^^;

It's not updated in the archive and the link to your server doesn't appear to be working.

:-(

hm .. .works for me.... strange. But in a few hours the archiv should be updated, then you can load the new version for shure

is this meant to be in the gp32 section?

It's working now, how strange. Trying it now.

@Paradox: No .... the GP2X Section. I don't read the caption I orient myself on webpages/forums by experience ... wasn't the GP2X block under the gp32 block?
I'm like a old woman in a supermarket.. if you rearrange the market, i'm lost.

I just tried it and overclocked it to 266mhz, then went to save and exit and it froze. I'm afraid to turn it off. Is it safe to?

yes it's save ... when you turn off the gp and reboot all settings will be set to normal.

Ah, I see. Thanks. Seems to be working good.

This doesn't appear to be on the GP2x forum - perhaps you would like to post it there - many people will be interested in your work!!

Would it be possible to add the ability for the tweaker to set itself up to run on boot? I was just thinking of a script dumped in to rc.d based on the current settings.
If the script exists, the option would be to turn off run on boot.

Sorry for throwing this in straight after a new release, only just thought of it

Good work, though. Extremely useful app

Looks brilliant. It also crossed my mind that, if it's doable, adding in a file launcher might be the perfect icing on the cake for this - it'd mean that people who aren't happy about using scripts ("It's done in notepad! It must be programming! Aaagh!" - ok, not so common in as tech-savvy community as this one, but commone enough, I think... plus writing a script for every application is frustrating, I must say) will once again be able to perfect the LCD and overclock without worrying about the menu resetting it. Just a thought.

This really is a cool util, though.

@Wite_Noiz: Firmware 2.0 allows autorun ... just enable it and rename the tweaker or do a script whith the autorun-name. I didn't test this FW2 feature, but i know of people who do ... it should work.

@Tobriand: A filebrowser is allready on my TODO-list (it's written in the readme too ). The thing is, that my exams are on the door and i don't realy have the time to code for the next two weeks ... but ... like i know myself i will do anything to prevent learning

This is great! Nice work!

an auto-autorun config creater would be a good addon to this i think, mess with your settings, and do "Create autorun file" or something... and have it write the settings for the autrun file etc.. and then all i gotta do is setup autrun in firmware options

I do that anyway... Everything seems to need its own directory, so I let it have it, residing inside /mnt/sd/roms/z. I, however, like to access things from one place, so I have placed scripts linking to all my emulators in /mnt/sd/Emulators and scripts linking to all my games in /mnt/sd/Games. The effect of this is when I load up the games menu, I only see three directories on my SD card, Emulators, Games, and roms (which is not capitalized so it will always be at the end of my directory list, with the directories I want above it using capital letters). I can then pick the category I want, and launch the emulator or game that I want. It's a little difficult to set up, but it's worth it simply for the ease of control (plus whenever one of my friends plays it, I don't have to explain where everything is now).

My slow gp2x clocked 285Mhz with the Ant Test. It's rather chuffed but I know very well it doesn't like it past 270Mhz with emulators

mine went to 295 on the speed test thing but i can only go 288 odd and then it'll freeze. also..should be a way to exit the speed test without restarting the 2X.

Any chance we can get a backlight brightness adjuster in the next release?

I realise that, I just thought it would be nice to have the app do it all itself (especially for people who don't want to play with scripts)

i have no idea how to get the script to work or even where to begin, an example script would be nice, and we could just edit the valued and directory of the gpu

Same thing here.

I think it's to be expected. It's when a program really pushes the unit that the freezes start. Not that I need to overclock many programs nowadays due to the quality of the emulators

I tried adjusting the memory timings as per the readme example (tRC(5), tRAS(5), tWR(2), tMRD(4), tRFC(4), tRP(3), tRCD(3)). It ran and gave a 10% performance boost in UAE4all Nice one.

I really like the BIOS - style interface. Has anyone recompiled firmware 2.0 with a launcher which doesn't reset the CPU speed? It would make life much much easier.

Ok .. then you are very lucky, because i made a mistake in the Readme .

The RAM-Values i provided there were from the test-phase and the aren't in cycles, they are the register settings. So every value has to be +1. I myself get a garbled screen with the values .
the right ones are tRC(6), tRAS(6), tWR(3), tMRD(5), tRFC(5), tRP(4), tRCD(4) ... but if they work, you got some good RAM.

To the Speed-Tester: the problem is, that the tester plays only with the CPU, whereas Emulators play with Sound and much more RAM. The second problem is, that i don't know if the compiler detected the for-loop without calculation in the anttest and replaced it with a hold. This for-loop pauses the calculation-loop ... if it wasn't there, you wouldn't see a moving because the calculation-loop would be over at start. So it could be, that the cpu isn't stressed much with the anttest.
Anyhow .. the main reason i put the test's there was for fun .

@devestation: I didn't find any registers to set the background-brightness ... so i don't have a clue how to do this.

@Paradox: You can get my Quake-Script. Get it here (Rightclick-save)

Personally, I'd rather not have to write a single script for my GP2X from the ground up. If it were up to me, there was a simple utility that let me specify the location of the script and what it would do. Fiddling around with scripts for every other program is not what I want to spend my GP2X time on, to be completely honest. I'm not a tech-idiot, but I'm really that savvy, either, and the less time I can spend making things work at all, the better.

(One of the very reasons I'm getting an iMac.)

EDIT: That being said, I am willing to put up with a lot for certain things like the GP2X. But doing a bunch of scripts is, as of right now, kind of not an option.

That's on the TODO-list for the next release too....

LOL God at Hell, I did think those were really aggressive timings, given the defaults!

Maybe that worked because I didn't overclock the CPU at all (I haven't sorted out the scripts yet). Either that or I have L33T ram

God at Hell, I appreciate your work, pal.

I loved the old one before I upgraded to 2.0 and now I get owned on overclocks. I just have to break down and do a script for SquidgeSNES now I guess. Until such time as you build an application launcher into the tweaker.

As for the speedtest, mine passed 290, but died at the 295 test. Thats impressive, as previously I didn't dare clock past 266 running any emus or it would eventually die, but as was said emus put a lot more strain on the whole system.

I get the same result, and have found 275mhz stable in everything. Some emus (DRMD) I can go a bit higher in, not that it's needed.

As a non-techie, I have to say I'm a bit frightened of overclocking. Can't the chip basically burn out or something? Is it not probable that some moron will kill his GP2X by OCing to 400 MHz or something?

Nope, as mentioned before numerous times, you can't fry ARM cores like these by overclocking - they just don't heat up enough. All it can do is crash.

Even when overclocking to 10 GHz?

So many pp are talking about oveclocking so easily. Whenever I try to use an emu to overclock past 250, I get lockups, and even at 250 after about 10 minutes sometimes.

I read somewhere that the "2" version of the GP didn't put heatsinks on the CPU's (Why??). Is this a possible reason why all you guys can OC so easily? i.e., you all must have "1" versions of the GP.

Different ARM chips can overclock at different speeds due to minor nuances when manufacturing the chips themselves. Just because someone can run their GP2X stable at 290 MHz, it doesn't mean your unit can do the same. In fact, the chips are only tested at their manufactured speed, which means that theoretically, if you get a chip that runs stable at 333 MHz, even a modest bump to 340 MHz can cause it to crash.

The GP2X (to my knowledge, since I don't own one) does not have a heatsink. The ARM chip doesn't put out enough heat to warrant a heatsink.

And it's true that it's a chip will crash long before you fry anything. Even if you have a 2.0 GHz processor and you try to overclock it to something insane like 4.0 GHz (on air cooling and stock heatsink), the processor will lock up long before it fries itself. For all intents and purposes, given the proper cooling, there is no way to fry a processor by overclocking. The most you can do is lock up the system.

There never was a heatsink in any gp2x.
Most gp2x run fine at 260 MHz, a lot can go higher, some can't go that high.

You can be lucky or unlucky...

I may be making a daft mistake somewhere, but I just can't seem to be able to get this to work. There's no problem until I press select to set the changes and exit, at which point it exits making no changes whatsoever. When I open the program again it tells me that it's still running at 200Mhz. It can't be a problem with my CPU since overclocking in emulators that let you control the speed work fine, and older releases have worked on this GP2X before now. Are there any daft pitfalls that I should be looking out for? I'm definitely pressing select and not start by the way!

The problem is that the GP2X menu resets the clock speed - you need to make a script to run the cpu speed tweaker and then execute the program you want. Kind of messy, but that's how it is right now.

Heh, knew it'd be something silly like that, thanks!

But there were thermal transfer pads which had the effect of heatsinking the GP2X's CPU to the back of the LCD display. These were removed on non-first edition units, due to the fact that they caused color distortion on the LCD when the thumbstick was moved.

My MAX Timings for MK1's RAM. This is the maximum without losing MAX CPU Clock (+300MHz). For all the others out there, try the values in the () s

CAS 2 -> 2 OK
tRC 8 -> 7 OK (6 stable till ~260 MHz)
tRAS 16 -> 4 OK (3 stable till ~250 MHz)
tWR 3 -> 1 OK
tMRD 8 -> 1 OK
tRFC 8 -> 1 OK
tRP 8 -> 2 OK (1 stable till ~250 MHz)
tRCD 8 -> 2 OK

Refresh Period: 257 -> 507 OK

I did not try this on MK2, so be careful.

only program i ever overclock is gngeo2x to 240, no higher.it gives me around 30 frames on samurai showdown 5

Hmm, well I don't think think most of the memory settings are doing anything. I can run both CPU tests (both prime and ant) at the following settings up to 290Mhz stable. Things get strange at 295MHz:

CAS 2 (default)
tRC 8 -> 1
tRAS 16 -> 1
tWR 3 -> 1
tMRD 8 -> 1
tRFC 8 -> 1
tRP 8 -> 1
tRCD 8 -> 1
Refresh Period: 257 (default)

If I use the same settings above, but bump up the Refresh Period to 507, I can only get to 285 Mhz stable in the CPU tests.

Are these memory settings actually doing anything (except for Refresh Period), or are the CPU tests just not able to test correctly, or do I have super RAM?!

1.
these are ram-timings, but the cpu-tests doesn't do anything with the RAM. Ergo ... there can not be any big performance gain.

2.
The RAM-Timings are only set when you leave the menu with select or use a script... The settings aren't set when starting a speedtest.
To use the RAM-tinings in the tests do this:
- Start the Tweaker
- set the timings
- exit with select
- start the tweaker again and run a speedtest

Ah! Exiting tweaker was the missing step. Thanks G_A_H. I'll get to testing right away!

Just to follow up after doing testing on a MK2 unit. Here my timings for my 280MHz overclocking:

CAS 2 -> 2 OK
tRC 8 -> 6 OK (5 stable at 200Mhz)
tRAS 16 -> 1 OK
tWR 3 -> 1 OK
tMRD 8 -> 1 OK
tRFC 8 -> 1 OK
tRP 8 -> 2 OK
tRCD 8 -> 2 OK
Refresh Period: 257 -> 467 OK

tRC, tRAS, and Refresh Period seem to be the ones that vary the most between units.
Tested in SquidgeSNES, Gngeo2x, MAME, Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and others.

My conclusion is MK2 RAM isn't all that bad!