And they said it couldn’t be done.
We have multiple reports of modders overclocking the Motorola DROID X. Neither the eFuse nor the locked bootloader was any match for hackers on a mission. The first report came in that the “unmoddable” smartphone was running stably at 1.1 GHz, 10% overclocked past the already impressive 1 GHz the phone’s CPU is rated at. Subsequent comments to this Phandroid article reported 1.3 and 1.4 GHz performance just hours later.
You want benchmarks? How does 1600 on Quadrant sound? Not enough? Another one at 1700. And a Linpack result of 16.7. More benchmarks and images below!
Remember, the DX was rooted a week after its July release, and that was only the first step in cracking the phone that Motorola said couldn’t be unlocked. Custom recovery mode, then custom ROMs, and now, the X is going for a wilder ride.
If you have rooted your DROID X, you can speed it up too. AndroidForums member FreeWELL has the recipe and we’re going to pass that along alone with any links you need. But first, the mandatory warning: Do not mess with this unless you understand everything you read here, let alone do. Neither Android Forums or Android Headlines or anyone else is responsible if you brick your X playing the home version. This technique requires changing voltages of your device, this is not just sideloading an app!
Of course, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, read along and learn more about the wonderful world of modding. I do suggest you do a lot of reading before trying any of these tricks, and that you work your way into it slowly.
Ready? Got Froyo? Good. Is your X rooted? Good. If not, take care of those issues first. If you don’t know how to root your X, please take the time to learn before you try overclocking. If you don’t know what Froyo is (it’s Android OS 2.2), please don’t do anything for a while except read, read, read.
Directions:
adb/terminal:
$ su
# cd /sdcard/extracted/droidx_22_oc (or wherever you extracted the files to)
# mount -o rw,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mcblk1p21 /system
# cp overclock.ko /system/lib/modules/overclock.ko
# cp setscaling.sh /system/xbin/setscaling.sh
# chmod 644 /system/lib/modules/overclock.ko
# chmod 755 /system/xbin/setscaling.shDroidX in setscaling.sh)>
# cp install-recovery.sh /system/etc/install-recovery.sh
# chmod 755 /system/etc/install-recovery.sh
</optional># mount -o ro,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mcblk1p21 /system
Run Instructions
adb/terminal:
$ su
# insmod /system/lib/modules/overclock.ko
# setscaling.sh
Files needed for this mod are available here (zip format).
Notes on the mod, from FreeWELL:
I’m trying to keep this as close as possible to the way it was done on 2.1. For me, 2.2 seems to need a little more voltage to be stable than it was under 2.1. I’ve included two versions of setscaling.sh to start from.
setscaling.sh is set to stock voltages/clock speed.
setscaling100.sh is set to stock voltages with 100 MHz bump across the board to 400/700/900/1100. This appears to be stable for me, and is the baseline for my testing/tuning.
Later addition: It will not start up every time, unless you install the optional install-recovery.sh file. Do not do this until you have thoroughly tested out what setting will work for you in the setscaling.sh file.
Credits for the Overclock Mod:
- Tiago Sousa aka Mirage: for The Milestone Overclock Project
- nadlabak for patching in Froyo/2.2 Support
- FreeWELL for finding DroidX 2.2 memory locations/module compilation
Now, if you’re reading this and not understanding how to do much but want to learn, there are several sites where you can spend some time in to start your modding education. xda-developers is a great site, with both articles and very active forums. Here’s the forum for Moto DX development.
You may want to read this entire thread on the DX overclocking, courtesy of AndroidForums, especially noting any questions and the answers they get. And here’s the overclock thread over at XDA (same FreeWELL instructions).
FreeWELL also recommends you read these two AndroidForum threads if you never tried overclocking back in the Android OS 2.1 days. They should get you “up to speed.”
Here’s an early benchmark from the XDA Overclock thread: 16.7 Linpack and 1600 Quadrant, running the processor at 1.19 GHz and 64 vsel. This was posted three hours after the directions appeared. A later benchmark showing 1700 on Quadrant gives us that beautiful image at right.
And here’s some nice numbers from the original thread: 1709 Quadrant and 18.009 Linpack. A run hitting 1.45 GHz seemed unstable but Linpack hit 19.6. Trying 1.5 GHz forced a reboot.
Remember, not everyone is getting instant success. Read the thread, crashes and failures too. This procedure changes your device voltages! Let us know if you try it, and we leave you with one last gorgeous shot for now:
Source: FreeWELL on AndroidForums