Regarding N64 Overclocking

Hey there AssemblerGames members, I wanted to ask some questions regarding overclocking the Nintendo 64 for those who may have done so before and know a fair bit about the process. Been looking into doing this for a spare N64 console I have.

First off, is it able to be done on the older black systems with success? Every guide I have read specifically states that only the somewhat rare transparent consoles can be overclocked successfully but I can't find any in depth reasons as to why outside of hardware revision. Is this revision relating to a possible improvement on the CPU or something else that makes the overclock possible? I really am curious as to why it is suggested if that is the only N64 system to overclock. I could get one to mod but I would much rather try a mod that could go wrong on my end on something that valuable.

Second question, when I do the process, what materials should I look to get aside from the obvious soldering iron and actual solder? I can assume that overclocking the system will make it run warmer than normal so it will need a cooling system installed and would love to know what materials I can use to make such a thing.

Final question, how does the overclock affect games in general if the overclock is successful? The more immediate results from the guides I have read state framerate improvements mainly on Rare titles. The motivation behind this is to make a system that runs Perfect Dark and Goldeneye at a much better framerate than the original hardware. There have been some comments I have seen that also say the mod makes certain games crash and or have abnormalities because of the increased processing power but I can't find anything outside of those claims that suggests why so again, does this happen and if so, is it because of the overclock or the possibility of the mod going wrong?

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text but this is a planned project I want to do and would like to see what others say about it before going through with it. Want to make sure I know as much as I can before jumping in and figured this would be the best place to ask about it. Thanks in advance for any help I received, it is very much appreciated.

 

I found this video on YouTube a while back. I was planning on following it.

From what I've heard, it has many positive effects on games. It increases the frame rate in many games. Apparently, Super Smash Bros. runs noticeably smoother.

I highly recommend installing a 40mm fan as the guy said in the video. It will help with the extra heat.

 

GoldenEye and Perfect Dark use somewhat unusual in-game timing. Those two titles run into issues where some parts of gameplay accelerate and others remain at original speed.

 

Not sure if actual hardware will do this, but I have played those two on a hacked emulator with 60 FPS support and they seem to run just fine in my experience. Faster, but not oddly fast, but it is emulation so I can't say for sure.

 

I saw some videos ages ago, overclocking the N64 certainly with Goldeneye makes the villans and events happen a lot quicker than normal, as mentioned above.

The transparent consoles are the later ones so that might be a reason; however modders in the past were saying the console boards housed in transparent cases tend to be more prone to failure, however I don't know personally as pretty much every N64 console i've opened up/modded (been quite a few) have been the opaque black ones.

I've not overclocked an N64 myself though, only saw some videos a while back on the subject out of curiosity.

 

There's quite a few different console revisions. You probably want to look into which board revision was used in the transparent ones, then track down a similar or identical board revision from a "normal" console to do the overclock on. Instructions could differ, at least a little, depending on the board revision in use.

 

When you mean quick, do you mean oddity quick where it goes TOO fast to be playable (Like unlocking the framerate in some modern 30FPS locked PC games and it causes physics or coding glitches?) or the framerate itself increasing and it seems quicker compared to normal? As mentioned above I have played the games in a hacked emulator to run Goldeneye in 60FPS and if it is like that, it will be quicker but not unplayable. Let's be honest here, the game can get sluggish so increased framerate will seem ungodly fast in comparison.

 

Not a game i've played although have the cartridge. Look on YouTube for videos showing what you get with games with the N64 overclocked, basically the villans in Goldeneye show up far quicker in the game than should do so can be overwhelming - as mentioned though, check out the videos yourself and see what you think.

 

From what I was able to tell from the videos, it is quicker but it doesn't seem to break the game to me. Hard to tell since the videos I found were filmed with a potato and the higher quality ones weren't perfect representations of the actual framerate of the console since they were uploaded before YouTube had the 60FPS feature. Still, from what I can tell it is quicker but not abnormally quicker all things considered.

 

Sorry for the double post but I am posting to say I am abandoning the project idea after finding some more videos, the games speed up but not framerate wise. It still has the lag from what I am seeing so it seems like it doesn't really benefit anything sadly, but thanks for the help though everyone. Really good things to say about the process of overclocking the system.

 

That console looks like a child modded it. Awful stuff.

 

The wires he used to the pins were huge I'd use 28 or 30awg wire looks like he used like 22 or 24 O.O

 

The real gains would be to overclocking the RCP. That's probably going to be the greater of the two bottlenecks.

 

Don't think you can :C

 

Bit off topic:
Has anyone ever upgraded the N64 memory bigger than expansion pack

 

If you mean by adding a bigger memory pack instead of the official expansion pack, then no. There's no point because none of the games that use the expansion pack would be able to use the extra memory you add. Only thing that would benefit from it would be homebrew.. assuming that you'd be able to access the extra memory in the first place.

 

I have messed around with 12 and 16 MB of RAM on an N64 using multiple RDRAM36 NUS chips - the system boots and runs fine, but there is no benefit of the extra RAM if the game/software does not utilize it. Some games like Perfect Dark cannot work with a gameshark in such a setup.

The RCP is overclocked by raising crystal X2, which drives subsequent clocks in different ratios: RDRAM, RCP, CPU, PIF, and CIC. Clocking the RCP above ~64 MHz starts to mess up the video output due to X1 being too slow, a bit technical but raising the X1 does not exactly correct the video. I did however manage to clock the RCP up to 87.5 MHz, there was some modding (NUS-CPU-02: 1.0x CPU ratio, two RDRAM36 NUS, U12 voltage regulator swap, a bunch of proper ceramic caps replaced, standard Nintendo 64 controller). The RDRAM36 NUS can operate stably at +350 MHz (700 MHz DDR) - it can be raised further and possibly have both the RCP and CPU run at 93.75 MHz so game timings don't get thrown off. Games do run more fluid with a faster clocked RCP, but the issue of the video output can make games practically unplayable.


I put up a thread last year on this, I did some more neat things since, and probably should update it:

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads...ved-3-0x-multiplier-but-not-3-0x-speed.51656/

 

Well with all the flash carts about wouldn't it be pretty easy to mod ROMs to take advantage of additional RAM? I'm sure it's not as simple as hex editing one value. I guess all the calls would need to be malloc-ed differently?

 

I can't believe Conkers BFD didn't use the expansion pack. I read somewhere that some games run better with the expansion pack even though it doesn't need it. So it must be implemented inside the games code then? Is it as simple as something like:
if(expansion==8mb)
malloc();
if(expansion==4mb)
malloc();

 

I've done some research into this, and it's actually a bit of an interesting proposition.
In practice, I really doubt you'll see performance improvements in any game. Lack of RAM wasn't the main bottleneck of the N64, if I recall correctly. That is to say, while 4MB is small, 8MB is plenty for most games. Don't quote me on that - I would be interested to see if anyone benchmarks games with 12MB to get real numbers on that sort of thing.

I emailed Zoinkity about this a while back. I was working on (and still am working on) a method for having parallel port comms for the GameShark for ANY N64 title, including classically tricky ones like Perfect Dark (I'll be posting in a few days when the initial version is released). In these emails, I wanted to know if it would be possible to place the GameShark in the higher memory (given by the second expansion pack, the 8MB-12MB range) and have the game function correctly. With that in mind, here are some excerpts...

Hope this helps (and thanks, Zoinkity)!