Any way to overclock new RT-AC68U?

[Fenrir]

Hi all,
I’ve spent hours today searching all over to try to find the answer to this so apologies if I’ve missed something,
But is there any way to OC the current AC68Us or have ASUS successfully locked them down to a point that’s impossible?
Open to options on either stock or 3rd party firmwares.

 

[ColinTaylor]

What is your router's current clock speed?

 

[Fenrir]

What is your router's current clock speed?

It’s the c1 build so 1Ghz

 

[ColinTaylor]

I can overclock my A2 model to 1200MHz using John's fork.

 

[Keith Gorham]

Hi all,
I’ve spent hours today searching all over to try to find the answer to this so apologies if I’ve missed something,
But is there any way to OC the current AC68Us or have ASUS successfully locked them down to a point that’s impossible?
Open to options on either stock or 3rd party firmwares.

What benefit would you get from overclocking the router?

 

[Fenrir]

I can overclock my A2 model to 1200MHz using John's fork.

That looks promising.
How did you overclock? Is it a GUI option or SSH?

 

[Fenrir]

This router is going to be a dedicated openVPN router which is heavily CPU dependent.
Just trying to increase VPN speed without forking out for a ac86u

 

[CaptainSTX]

With an AC1900P which has 1.4 Ghz processor running a VPN client I get around a 60 Mbps download speeds at best.

The key for VPN speeds is more than processor speeds it is if the processor supports AES-NI.

 

[ColinTaylor]

That looks promising.
How did you overclock? Is it a GUI option or SSH?

You have to create a one-line script.

When I tested it the VPN speed scaled fairly linearly with clock speed, so going from 800MHz to 1200MHz was just about worth the effort. The most you can increase the speed to is 1400MHz (assuming it's stable) so not a huge increase.

 

[Fenrir]

With an AC1900P which has 1.4 Ghz processor running a VPN client I get around a 60 Mbps download speeds at best.

The key for VPN speeds is more than processor speeds it is if the processor supports AES-NI.

Yeah that gets expensive though. If I can get the 68 running stable at 1400 with coolers I’d be happy

 

[Fenrir]

You have to create a one-line script.

When I tested it the VPN speed scaled fairly linearly with clock speed, so going from 800MHz to 1200MHz was just about worth the effort. The most you can increase the speed to is 1400MHz (assuming it's stable) so not a huge increase.

Don’t suppose you’d have a link or a copy of that script?

 

[Ronald Schwerer]

To overclock your 68U to 1200,800. This has been posted and verified many times. Works on ASUS and Merlin firmware.

nvram set asuscfeclkfreq=1200,800 && nvram set asuscfecommit=1
nvram set clkfreq=1200,800 && nvram commit && reboot

 

[Fenrir]

To overclock your 68U to 1200,800. This has been posted and verified many times. Works on ASUS and Merlin firmware.

nvram set asuscfeclkfreq=1200,800 && nvram set asuscfecommit=1
nvram set clkfreq=1200,800 && nvram commit && reboot

I tried that already and nearly bricked my router haha
The new firmware has some sort of code that shuts the cpu down to 100Mhz when you try that

 

[Ronald Schwerer]

I tried that already and nearly bricked my router haha
The new firmware has some sort of code that shuts the cpu down to 100Mhz when you try that

I run the latest firmware. Did you install a different CFE?

 

[Fenrir]

I run the latest firmware. Did you install a different CFE?

No I didn’t even know you could!
I gotta crash out for the night but will check in in the morning

 

[ColinTaylor]

I tried that already and nearly bricked my router haha
The new firmware has some sort of code that shuts the cpu down to 100Mhz when you try that

That's why it's better IMHO to use a script with John's fork. If screw up your CFE you can't just factory reset the router.

This doesn't work with stock/Merlin firmware:
/jffs/scripts/services-stop

#!/bin/sh

# nvram set clkfreq=800,666     # boardtype=0x0646 (BCM94708r)
# nvram set clkfreq=1000,800    # boardtype=0x0665 (BCM94709r)
# nvram set clkfreq=1000,666    # OK
# nvram set clkfreq=1400,800    # unstable
# nvram set clkfreq=1400,666    # unstable
nvram set clkfreq=1200,800      # OK

nvram commit

 

[Ronald Schwerer]

No I didn’t even know you could!
I gotta crash out for the night but will check in in the morning

I'm not suggesting that you do that. I just wanted to make sure you weren't running the CFE from a 68P. That has been known to severely cripple 68Us running newer firmware (regardless of clock frequency).
I just recently(a month or so ago) stepped my 68U main router to 1200 from 800 .

nvram get clkfreq
1200,800
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Bogo
BogoMIPS        : 2398.61
BogoMIPS        : 2398.61

 

[Fenrir]

Thanks a lot guys. I’ll give it a shot today and report back

 

[Fenrir]

okay so still having no luck.
i've added the script /jffs/scripts/services-stop:
#!/bin/sh
nvram set clkfreq=1200,800
nvram commit

I also used
chmod a+rx /jffs/scripts/services-stop (not sure if that was needed)

Router is still showing a BogoMIPS : 1998.84

before trying this i tried:
nvram set asuscfeclkfreq=1200,800 && nvram set asuscfecommit=1
nvram set clkfreq=1200,800 && nvram commit && reboot

which throttled the router to 100Mhz.
To solve that i did:
nvram set asuscfeclkfreq=1000,666 && nvram set asuscfecommit=1
nvram set clkfreq=1000,666 && nvram commit && reboot

which got the router running back normal. Would that now be overwritting the script, or should the script take precedence?
If that is causing my issue, any advise on how to set the CFE back to default?

 

[ColinTaylor]

What firmware version are you running?