Overclocking AC68U Rev. E1 to 1.4Ghz

[Derpcrawler]

Hello, is there a way to overclock CPU to 1.4Ghz on newer version of FW?

Whenever I overclock it to anything above default 1000Mhz it actually throttles down.

BogoMIPS goes down to 199 (vs ~1999 at default settings with no overclock), even though router reports it's running at 1200 or 1400Mhz.

And it's not even reported MIPS, my CPU is at 100% usage with speedtest.net running at 60-90Mbps with very unstable download/upload. When I revert back to 1Ghz speeds, I have stable 910Mbps speeds with CPU at 100%.

I tried both 666Mhz and 800Mhz RAM - no difference, I read on the forum, that some RAM isn't overclockable.

From what I understand Rev. E1 is exactly the same hardware wise as 1900P? So it theory there shouldn't be any issues with overcloking it to 1400Mhz. Did Asus and/or Merlin changed in later FW versions to prevent overclocking?

I wanted to overclock CPU on router to juice some extra speeds from my 1Gbps fiber and from my USB3 storage.

 

[doczenith1]

Search "overclocking" and you will get your answer.

 

[Derpcrawler]

Search "overclocking" and you will get your answer. If fact, scroll down about 18 posts below yours and you will find your answer.

Mate, that's not helpful reply, there are dozens of threads that move around, pointless to say that specific thread is 15 rows down, same with searching by "overclocking". Instead of being a smart butt you could link to the specific thread.

But going by the latest threads by this search term, people have problems with overclock settings not sticking. That's not a problem for me, router reports 1400Mhz. It's that at this clock or anything above 1000Mhz it actually is very slow with 199BogoMIPS and constantly at 100% CPU usage. From what I can tell, E1 is the newest revision and people in those threads are using more common older ones.

 

[john9527]

But going by the latest threads by this search term, people have problems with overclock settings not sticking. That's not a problem for me, router reports 1400Mhz. It's that at this clock or anything above 1000Mhz it actually is very slow with 199BogoMIPS and constantly at 100% CPU usage. From what I can tell, E1 is the newest revision and people in those threads are using more common older ones.

You can no longer overclock on the latest rev routers. Asus locked it down, and as you found actually 'cripples' the router by underclocking it if you try.

 

[Derpcrawler]

You can no longer overclock on the latest rev routers. Asus locked it down, and as you found actually 'cripples' the router by underclocking it if you try.

Thanks, that's actually helpful. Am I able to overclock by editing my CFE to new clocks? Or will it still gimp the performance?

 

[john9527]

Thanks, that's actually helpful. Am I able to overclock by editing my CFE to new clocks? Or will it still gimp the performance?

Sorry, but don't know the status of CFE modding on the latest AC68Us.

Another consideration is that ASUS has also been encrypting the CFE's on the later rev routers to prevent tampering. I also don't know if that's made it to the AC68U.

 

[Derpcrawler]

Sorry, but don't know the status of CFE modding on the latest AC68Us.

Another consideration is that ASUS has also been encrypting the CFE's on the later rev routers to prevent tampering. I also don't know if that's made it to the AC68U.

I dumped my CFE - no encryption, changed clock speeds to 1400,666. Flashed that new CFE, after reboot router reported 1400Mhz, but yet again BogoMIPS count was down to 199.9 and everything was extremely slow. Just sitting in UI would give 40-60% CPU usage spikes. I guess Asus really doesn't want anyone to overclock routers even though it's exactly same SoC/HW.

 

[john9527]

@Derpcrawler
Did you do a factory reset after modding the CFE?

I worked with one person who 'got stuck' in the underclocked state, and the only way out was a factory reset.

 

[Derpcrawler]

@Derpcrawler
Did you do a factory reset after modding the CFE?

I worked with one person who 'got stuck' in the underclocked state, and the only way out was a factory reset.

I didn't. Although after reboot, my BogoMIPS were at ~1998, as if I was still at 1Ghz. After I did reboot one more time, I got throttled down to 199. When I flashed back to original CFE I still had 199BogoMIPS after flashing, 1 reboot fixed it.

I need to go soon, so don't have time to test it. I will in the evening though, I wonder if erasing nvram/factory resetting will change anything on 1.4Ghz CFE.

 

[Shonk]

take an nvram backup
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/user-nvram-save-restore-utility-r24a.19521/

flash cfe
reboot
factory reset
restore nvram backup
speed will stick

 

[Rango]

You can try. 68u i think it was working with that speed. 87u did as well but after like 10 days it would slow down to crawl, every time. You will need a script as well that you can search for.
So for me it worked temporarily. That was same case with 1200 speed. After few times i gave up and reset to defaults. Only way to know is to try. You won't brick it. It may freez on your and you may have to do recovery tool to re-flesh with firmware with default settings. That i also had to do once. Try it if you want but be ready with asus recovery tool also be copy down procedure to the word documents to you have it on hand.

The only benefit of doing this is to increase vpn speeds. I'm not aware any other benefits you can gain so unless you have a reason to do it i would not unless you like to play with it.

 

[DmitryAE]

Hello guys,

Have same revision of router and the issue. Any overclock makes router very slow, 199 in bogomips.

Does anyone have solution for overclocking?

Thanks.

 

[Makaveli]

After reading this thread there doesn't look to be any solution.

Asus had modified the firmware to prevent it.

This isn't issue isn't present on the R7000 running merlin as I'm at 1.2ghz right now

ASUSWRT-Merlin R7000 380.69-0 Tue Dec 12 05:17:43 UTC 2017
Makaveli@R7000-D601:/tmp/home/root# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
processor : 0
BogoMIPS : 2398.61

processor : 1
BogoMIPS : 2398.61

Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x3
CPU part : 0xc09
CPU revision : 0

Hardware : Northstar Prototype
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000
Makaveli@R7000-D601:/tmp/home/root# nvram show | grep clk
size: 52972 bytes (12564 left)
clkfreq=1200,800
Makaveli@R7000-D601:/tmp/home/root#