Anthing available or in the works for overclocking the Intel PXA for BlackBerry devices? Something along the lines of PXA Clocker, or warpSpeed for the Palm OS platform...

Is it really necessary?

Nothing that I have heard about. The PXA is an overclock friendly processor if I remember correctly. Don't know if there is any software to bump the clock speed like on Windows Mobile devices.

I agree with sm1th, I don't think there is much need for overclocking a BlackBerry right now. Are there any applications that are processor intensive that would benefit from an overclock? Maybe when newer models come out with more capabilities there would be more of a need.

Overclocking would improve both application response times and network browsing experience. Offline dictionaries (BEIKS, MSDict) and browsers (Internet Browser, Opera Mini) would benefit, as well as applications such as Google Maps.

I beg to differ. You might notice some difference in the offline dictionaries you mention, I've never used those and have no idea of their response times. Internet browsing is overwhelmingly constrained by the network internet bandwidth available to the device, NOT to the CPU speed vis-a-vis the browser app itself. I'd be willing to bet you'd see no noticeable difference in browsing if you could overclock the processor.

What are you guys thinking, water cooled or you gonna put a thermo cool fan on the back?

I beg to differ. Although Internet browsing is indeed constrained by available network bandwith, both application response and perceived display times can be improved by increasing processor clock speeds, or overclocking. Certain applications rely heavily on processor time transferring data within memory and routines are often bound to clock cycles. Drop by the Brighthand forums and ask many of the Palm owners on the PXA architecture who use WiFi who overclock (myself, for example) and the answer is near unanimous: Overclocking does make a perceptible difference in both application response and perceived display times.

I notice that, right at the end, you dropped WiFi into the discussion. Doesn't that point out the difference right there?

I'm not aware of any Blackberry that accesses WiFi. And I suspect that has far more to do with Internet applications being boosted in performance than overclocking would ever accomplish.

I bet you wouldn't see too much difference while browsing the internet by overclocking the processor. That's like putting a 3GHz computer on dial up internet, it's still gonna be damn slow.

As a computer programmer with knowledge in network performance and CPU performance, your statement is totally incorrect for most BlackBerries, even for the 8700 and 7130e.

The transmit arrows stop before the browser finishes rendering. Especially when EVERYTHING is turned on: JavaScript, Tables, Backgrounds. You can even turn off images, the HTML rendering still lags the 300 Mhz CPU in the 8700 on a fast EDGE transfer.

Some sites load as fast as the CPU, but complex ones, such as www.theweathernetwork.com lag by a few seconds.

Older models such as the 7280 could render at only about 10 kilobits per second, even though GPRS could peak at 50 Kbps. As a result, a 100 kilobyte HTML page such as http://news.google.com (tables turned on, JavaScript turned on, but images turned off) finishes downloading in 20 seconds, but takes about 40+ seconds to render (i.e. the transmit arrows are quiet for the last 20 seconds). Sometimes when images are turned on, the time taken to download big images, gives the CPU some time to 'catch' up with HTML rendering, since it's faster to decode and display large images, than to decode and display large HTML files. However, even on some webpages, the lag (between transmit arrow stopping and the rendering stopping) is worse when images are turned on.

Faster CPU devices really help, but good EDGE networks in Canada have been known to hit and exceed 200 kilobits per second. (I can download the 700K+ Asteroids videogame in less than 1 minute), and the web browser on the 8700 can only render complex pages at about 50-100 kilobits per second, which means there is a lag between transmit arrows stopping, and the rendering stopping, on many complex webpages.

Ever tried surfing 56K on an old Pentium MMX 200Mhz system? (which is tends to be slightly faster than a 300 Mhz ARM9 CPU, and 56K Internet is slower than EDGE). Many of us can notice how 56K on a 200Mhz computer 'feels' a lot slower than 56K on a 2Ghz computer; There is a definite and noticeable rendering lag. It's even worse than that, even on a fast BlackBerry 8700r. Also, don't forget about compression overhead that modern BIS and BES servers does -- more opportunity for the BlackBerry to lag.

Therefore, I call your statement into full dispute, in situations when all browser options are turned on, on complex pages, especially those with JavaScript. Especially when logging onto an online banking website.

On the other hand, you're right though, if we're just browsing WAP.

Note: I am not knocking on the BlackBerry's otherwise excellent speed at HTML browsing. It is definitely among the fastest of full-HTML cellphone browsing experience, all things considered.

Still much faster than 56K Internet on a Pentium 200Mhz. When things are slow. There is a rendering overhead that has not yet been completely eliminated.

(Which is about the same speed or faster than a 300 Mhz StrongARM CPU -- This comparision is accurate, due to relative CPU efficiency comparisions. As an example, even when converted to integer math, PocketQuake has lower FPS on some models of 300 Mhz Pocket PC than on a 133 Mhz 486 CPU. -- PocketQuake is a PocketPC port of the 3D Quake videogame by iD software, when the old Quake source code got opensourced and ported to PocketPC.)

Also, ever noticed why people noticed EDGE is faster than EVDO when comparing 8700r to the 7130e? Yep, you got it. The CPU is superior in the 8700r. This conclusively proves that full-HTML web browsing experience (when all options turned on) is still greatly improvable by a faster CPU in the BlackBerry. Clearly, the CPU is the bottleneck.

I should add, overclocking is probably useless on BlackBerry. There's too much timings sensitivities in a BlackBerry -- it would probably screw up too many things such as the cellphone stuff which is very timings sensitive. In fact, overclocking some PocketPC's cause them to lose WiFi/Bluetooth because of clock mismatch. Overclocking won't damage a StrongARM, because they are ultra-low-power CPU's that don't even heat up in normal use, so they tend to have a huge amount of overclock safety margin. However, in the case of a BlackBerry, overclocking probably wouldn't be too useful. Also, the software barriers in the BlackBerry makes it darn near impossible to get low level access to BlackBerry hardware -- you're programming in Java, and you don't get register-level programming abilities.

Gee, calm down a bit, Mark. I'm really not interested in "full dispute"!!

Without getting into a full blown credentials battle, I happen to have been in the computer software AND hardware industry myself, for about the last 28 years after getting my engineering degree.

I'll stand by my statement that in most cases, overclocking the CPU on an 8700 BB would provide very little noticeable difference in browsing most websites. Can you find exceptions to that general rule of thumb? Why sure you can, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. With all due respect, your comparisons of an old 200MHz Pentium vs. a modern 2GHz machine are not very relevant. *IF* an 8700 could be overclocked, we're not talking about a 10:1 processor speed increase, we're talking about nominally 20-30% faster clock speeds in general. Huge difference between 10:1 and 1.25:1, not EVEN taking into account the architectural improvements between that old 200MHz Pentium and modern CPU chips, which means the effective difference is even more dramatic than 10:1.

I note the OP threw in the little fact, previously omitted, that people have seen a noticeable improvement in WiFi connected PDA's, when overclocked. Of course which obviously is a WHOLE different animal than claiming noticeable improvement by overclocking on a typical EDGE connection.

So, I stand by my basic statement, while agreeing with you that you can always find exceptions to the rule. In general, on the large majority of webpages, at typical cellular network datarates, trying to overclock the CPU on a BB8700 by the amounts that folks are typically overclocking their TREOS, etc. would result in negligible improvement to web browsing. OK?

wow u guys r funny..

are you guys gonna start throwing stuff?......

i do agree w/ mark though. lol

In all the catfighting, we got off topic. Is there something available to overclock or what? My Pearl and more so the 8800 could use some juice even for normal daily use.

If you spin your BB in the air the clock might spin faster... *krickets*

I doubt you'll find much. Considering that no one has touched this thread (before you) in 8 months, it seems the demand isn't very high.

As an avid overclocker of desktop processors, you will gain better response time when opening apps as well as running them. As far as the internet......overclocking will do absolutely nothing for it. You have to tweak the software settings like mtu and so forth. If you could tweak the connection settings, I think you would see the most gains there.