Raspberry Pi 5 Overclocking, Part 2
Table of contents
Unlocked firmware
Thursday, on Pi-Day, an unlocked firmware for the Raspberry Pi was released.
[…] I’ve removed the 3GHz limit, and attached a zip file (you can flash it to an sdcard with rpi-imager) you can test. […]
— popcornmix1
You can download the unlocked firmware from GitHub2, or from my website3 (backup, just in case of).
The method of updating the firmware is very easy:
- Format a SD-card.
- Copy the content of the archive onto the formatted SD-card.
- Insert the SD-card into the Raspberry Pi 5.
- Power on the RPi5.
- The LED on the back should start blinking green and if you have a display attached it should show a green screen.
- Unpower the RPi5.
- Swap the SD-card with another one with a working image on it.
- Now you can set clocks higher than 3,000 MHz inside
/boot/firmware/config.txt.
Overclocking results
With the stock Raspberry Pi 5 air-cooler my Raspberry Pi 5 was on the edge. 3,100 MHz was the highest kinda stable (not really) overclock I could benchmark at Geekbenk 5 and 6.
This was also the clock speeds I tested the x264 Benchmark.
The HWBOT Prime Benchmark was tested on a 32-bit OS and since the load is not that heavy, in comparism to Geekbench, max. clock was 3,175 MHz.
Jeff Geerling was a quick one and made a video a few hours after the firmware was released.4
His RPi5 booted with 3.2 GHz, so the clocks are slightly better, but it wasn’t stable enough for Geekbench. Maybe the HWBOT Prime Benchmark, with its short load could be benched at this clock.
Looking at the temperatures, there should be enough headroom. Like Jeff said, maybe the VDD_CORE of 1.0 V holds us back.
So watch out for part 3. I guess it’s time for sub-zero temperatures combined with a higher VDD_CORE than 1.0 V.
Benchmark results
Here is a quick overview of the benchmarks I tested so far:
| System | HWBOT Prime | Geekbench 5 | Geekbench 6 | x264 Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stock (2.4 GHz, 0.88 V) | 4,742 pts.5 (100 %) | 622 / 1,6856 (100 / 100 %) | 795 / 1,6197 (100 / 100 %) | 1h 38m 27.126s8 (100 %) |
| Old Max. Air (3.0 GHz, 1.00 V) | 5,284 pts.9 (109 %) | 743 / 1,86110 (119 / 110 %) | 929 / 1,74011 (117 / 107 %) | 1h 21m 18.982s8 (121 %) |
| New Max. Air (3.1(75) GHz, 1.00 V) | 5,422 pts.12 (114 %) | 754 / 1,93413 (121 / 115 %) | 956 / 1,79114 (120 / 110 %) | 1h 18m 44.740s8 (125 %) |
HWBOT Prime Benchmark Script
Beside the new firmware some updates of the OS broke my HWBOT Prime benchmark script, which I had to fix last night.
Java v8 on a 32-bit system couldn’t be installed, so I had to switch back to the Buster-builds. I guess the script now be more stable against updates of the OS. I know the benchmark itself ist kinda old, but unfortunatelly the development of it ended some time ago.
Since the last years weren’t the best for RPi overclocking I missed the point where the HWBOT Prime Benchmark was removed from the website.
No new submissions are possible.
Kinda sad, because this benchmark was a quick and easy way to check if your overclock was stable-ish enough.
I will update my benchmark script, because it gets its job done for me.
Thanks!
What a big and unexpected surprise from one of the firmware engineers.
If you asked me one month ago, I would have bet money against what happened on this Pi-DayS. My joy is so much greater now.
Thanks popcornmix!15
