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Topic: Overclocking the Dreamcast

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Morph
unknown
Posted:
Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:39 pm
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Posts: 299
I mentioned this in another topic, but I thought it deserverd one of it's own.

From another site, I found a link to a site with step by step instructions along with pictures that teaches you how to overclock your Dreamcast. Unfortunately, its all in Japanese, and Babelfish isnt working. If somebody could translate this for me, I have an available old-type liquid/heat sinc cooled Dreamcast that I would test it out on.

Imagine a Dreamcast that could play Unreal Tournament on 4-player split screen without sucking....or even play Half-Life through without framerate hiccups, or any game for that matter!

The link to the site is here.

http://www.echna.ne.jp/~kim/Kim4/Link5.html
 
Einhander
rank 20
Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:23 pm
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Not to bump an ancient post, but this information is far too badass not to at least get a gander at. It appears that a stock DC (model 0 and 1 only, model 2s don't seem to pass bios) can be overclocked to 240MHz safely, which is a 20% performance boost. It's not for the faint of technical knowledge, however. General electronics skill seems to be a prereq.

http://www.ucm.cjb.net/ is the URL for the English translation of the page you're wondering about, Morph. It also has info on OCing the N64 and Genesis.
http://devcast.dcemulation.com/mods/overclock/overclock.php is the same article, only this site focuses on DC modding in general, and has a lot of badassed info, such as modding instructions (LED kits, internal VGA boxes, homemade coders cables, and controller mods), and a mod gallery.

Here are some discussions with some excellent info linked from the above pages:
http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=59879
http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=60642&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 (<--- Picture)

Basically, if you don't want to read the whole page and both threads, your DC's PLL (clock chip, in essence) gives the SH4 CPU a 33.3r MHz line, and the SH4 multiplies this by 6 internally (33.3r x 6 = 199.9r MHz), hence your Dreamcast's 200MHz.

Using a 40MHz Crystal Oscillator (http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10 001&productId=12203740MHz) in between the PLL and CPU, the SH4 could be fed a 40MHz signal as opposed to 33.3r MHz, with the final tally coming in at 40 x 6 = 240MHz.

The Website wrote:
At 240 MHz, I noticed a considerable difference in speed! My DivX movies played more smoothly, my original DC games that once lagged are playing at a full framerate. For those who use DreamSNES for Super Nintendo emulation: Yes, it still lags, but not as bad.

As for the heat, 240 MHz is as high as I am willing to go without constructing a new cooling system. It does get pretty warm, but the original cooling does the job just fine. If you plan on going faster, then prepare to design a new cooling system. The DC is tightly packed, and trying to cool it efficiently will be a challenge. Good Luck!


While in theory, speeds up to 280-300MHz would be capable without upping core voltage or replacing the DC's RAM, 240MHz seems to be the safest speed to OC to without putting your DC in serious jeopardy.

I would like to try this out, OCing to 240MHz, but I have very little sautering skills, so I'm going to wait until next paycheck so I can pick up a couple of dead DCs at a gamestore not too far from here for $5 a piece and learn on them. I need the controller port blocks for some DCs at work, anyway. I'm not sure where I'm going to get the 40MHz Crystal without going online, however. I'll have to check some electronic stores around here. Maybe those D-bags at Radio Shack may just come in handy if I can get them to shut up about Sprint Cell Phones for the ten seconds it takes me to ask them a question. It would be nice to play a smoother version of HL, or a non-hiccupping Test Drive 6. I know, I know, I shouldn't be playing Test Drive 6, but whatever...

I'm looking forward to trying this out, as well as learning how to do some LED mod work. Hopefully this will make DreamSNES chug less (the reason I haven't tried it out) with sound enabled. I hope this info helps.
 
SirSolBadguy
banned!
Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:13 pm
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If it gets rid of the slowdown in shenmue, I'm interested.
 
Morph
unknown
Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:50 pm
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ok, very cool.

i actualy have an electronics store down the road from here that sells those crystal ocillators. Oh, and on dcemulation, one of the guys who did an overclock said that the DC wont boot anything past 280mhz. So in that case, I would probably just get the 40mhz chip. I plan on making a custom liquid cooling system later this year, then i will probably get a 45mhz chip, and push it to 270mhz, probably the DC's working limit, since it supposedly cant go past 280.

We shall see Very Happy
  _________________
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beatdown
rank 11
Posted:
Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:09 am
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I am really weary about doing something like this to the DC, though I might try it on a backup one I might be able to get.
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Morph
unknown
Posted:
Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:24 pm
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Well, I suppose it simply depends on what you want to use it for.
  _________________
Server: Morris
Status: Under Maintenence
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Video: MGA MIL/2GN 4MB PCI
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OS: Windows 2000 Professional
Einhander
rank 20
Posted:
Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:46 pm
quote : #7
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Posts: 389
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I'd do it just to speed up DreamSNES, or for the occasional slowdown in my legitimate DC games.

There are a few SNES games I missed out on, and refuse to pay $80+ for online, if you know what I mean.
 
Quake_shot
rank 5
Posted:
Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:36 am
quote : #8
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Posts: 35
This is acool mod simle too. The only trouble would probably be the switch to be able to turn on and off the overclock. another thing would be the CPU overheating with this mod. In the end i could be well wourtch it.
 
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