And what's crazy is we probably haven't unlocked the PS3's TRUE POWAH with the potential of a Cell overclock.

I think uncapped Uncharted felt weird because a lot of elements like animation or physics might be locked to 30fps or lower, creating discrepancy between them and the actual framerate. Also 40-50 fps will look worse than a capped 30 due to rampant screen-tearing on non-VRR displays/hardware. I still appreciate the extra input responsivemess though. Great video!

That OC saga was glorious, that poor Frankenstein of a PS3 sure took a beating. Even if ps3 voltmods remain an obscure curiosity with little practical effect that was still entertaining as hell, fantastic vid.

this might sound weird, but i cant get tired of watching your videos, and now after a rewatch of the PS3 documentary and the Frankenstein PS3s you upload again? sweet!

Another RIP Felix Video! Your YLOD documentary stopped me from doing the token mod and made me check the SYSCON logs.Thank you for all the work you have done!

RIP Felix making all of us 7th gen soldiers relive our trauma of the warfare that has long since died. Lol

This was a great video. Took us for a wild ride. So many "Oh no. I know where he's going with this" moments. The overclocked firmware is a huge game changer that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. So cool to see you push it this far. This video really has me wondering how far the PS3 can be pushed, and how far people will go to find out, akin to PC overclockers. Jerry-rigged air cooling towers? Retrofitting water cooling loops? Stacking caps of different values/types to reduce ripple further? Custom voltage regulator modules for optimal power delivery? How hard can we redline these systems, even if they are obviously doomed to burn out in the process? Seeing the principles of extreme overclocking applied to the PS3, (and the effects on performance) would be not just entertaining, but utterly fascinating.

Oma god did ma favourite youtuber just upload?

Never seen such a great technical breakdown of overclocking any console. The only thing that comes close is the mod scene for the og xbox. Great work.

Keep in mind people were more used to 60fps games in 6th gen because of the massive jump. What you said about being used to low framerates only really applies to 5th gen and PS2 games

Most people hate sliding back down the slope of enlightenment. Felix throws his arms up and goes WEEEEEEEEEEE!, gets to the end and goes for another round!

Felix buddy, love your work, learnt a lot from your YLOD video but when you tested one game and said "dropping the resolution to 480p makes no difference", I was disappointed and said "he should know better". It's game dependent. Digital Foundry, whom you cited in the video, did an entire PS3 1080p miniseries courtesy of John Linnemann where he shows you a few games that do run differently based on output. One off of the top of my head is _Gran Turismo 6_ which can be run in 1080i instead of the default 720p if you deselect 1080p as an output resolution (1080i has to be the maximum allowed at system setting level). The tradeoff for higher temporal resolution is more variable framerate and screen tearing, slight but noticeable on busier environments like city circuits.

That gen is the one that would really benefit from enhanced consoles with sub-720p res and unstable framerate. PS3 Pro with G94-based GPU could push everything at atleast 720p with stable framerate and if asked nicely, 1080p in some games.

Your video is novel as usual. With proper citations, benchmarks, and jokes, it is the most enjoyable PS3 educational material I can find out there! Please accept my tuition fee!

As someone who's very into overclocking all kinds of pc hardware incl. notebooks and some record hunting, this video really had me hooked these 44 mins felt like 10 mins ngl! Absolutely astounding!

This is the kind of content that can barely find anymore. This channel must be protected at all costs. God save Rip Felix..

I couldn't get better notification as that of a new video of yours. Thank you in advance for your presence in the scene

I hope one day we can see a Cell Processor OC to help out abit on those CPU bound games.

High framerate (no motion blur, actual higher framerates with adapting frequency), isn't just for contest, for many people including myself, the more frames there is the less my eyes and brain need to interpolate between those frames, not counting the huge input lag improvements. I think most people are just not educated enough about the subject. Also let me guess, you made your friend test uncapped on an LCD display right? Try again on a CRT if you can. 30 FPS stable looks great on an LCD because it is slow enough to allow for pixels to switch states, however when you increase the framerate it creates this blurry uncanny effect that people find jarring, which is simply over persistence of sample on hold blur. It doesn't happen at all on CRT, just a little bit on Plasma, and to an acceptable extent I'd say on OLED. There is a fascinating case that would be truly worth a test regarding this, which is the original BioShock, since that game has a 30 FPS cap and an uncapped mode that you can select from the options menu! (as well as 2 FOV settings believe it or not). I remember preferring 30 FPS back in the days because it was more stable and didn't have horrendous tearing with flashing lights, however the input lag was WAY worse.

goat can't stop making bangers

I watched the tutorial first because I thought it was the only video uploaded right now and I thought how long I had to wait until this one would cme out lmao

Just another thing to note right at the end of your video re capacitors and console usage. Using a device less frequently can be paradoxically worse for it. Frequent use helps to keep the dielectric in good shape in electrolytic caps. Although PS3's don't have a ton of them, they do have a few. So the longer it sits on a shelf, the more likely the dielectric breaks down in the electrolytics. Yeah, the filter caps for the RSX/CELL aren't electrolytics but still, others on the board are. So yep, better to have fun with the console whilst you can. Nothing lasts forever!

I'm not sure if you mention it later in the video, but one of the most important things that determines how playable a game is is the framerate and the gameplay logic/inputs being decoupled. When this is done, the game just slows down instead of skipping frames and missing inputs. That's how MGS games on the PS2 and PS3 did it (and countless others), but that's like an integrated slow-mo during heavy scenes, which I actually kind of appreciated. That's completely different from the other way, and, if you have bad frame-time, and errors occur in the rendering-animation pipeline, then a "high" framerate that is unstable and misses button presses can be infinitely worse because it's invisible when it decides to just lose your controller/keyboard/mouse input in between frames. I'm not sure why things changed in the way games are made, but that's the main reason a low framerate was tolerable back then, and why getting proper control input and animations at or well above 60fps is so problematic now.

You know Felix is the only person in the world doing in-depth testing on the ps3 today. Respect. 😁

Bro your an absolute Legend as always... Kudos

Great video ! It should be put forward on the thread, so that it can serve as a reference. You condensed everything perfectly. Risks, benefits, diminishing returns, how to proceed... In short, it will probably be very useful to many people. Congratulations for the work done !

It is weird for someone to say the higher the framerate the worst it is for them. Higher framerate is suppose to help motion sickness. Probably got use to the game fps and no FOV slider wasn't a thing on console. So that makes sense. But higher framerates and FOV slider to something higher is probably the best for him. Lower fov gives motion sickness. Great video though!

I like the idea of your friend staying over and you toping him into this lol

So, in summary, changing voltages is not a worthwhile endeavour? My PS3 is a slim 2501A, and your fat frankenstein seems to obliterate mine in overclocking capabilities. I suppose silicon lottery wasn't on my side. Temps were alright though (changed the thermal paste). Some months ago I saw your comments, when researching to overclock mine, in the forums (I have to admit to be very happy to see you actively researching in real time) and I was expectant and hopeful of this video to be revelatory as I knew you where working on it. I suppose I expected a software voltage tool of some sort to magically change the voltage, and not a realist pragmatic new knowledge of the ps3 overclocking lore. I have to admit I am disappointed in the reality of it, although quite impressed of your thoroughness. Still hopeful of a future 'tool' or collection of 'methods' to reach a stable and interesting performance in the ps3. And thanks to your "style", I am now very interested in the general limits on the possible ps3 non-stock mods. Loved the video. Love your content. Keep it up.

God I love 7th gen. The last generation when consoles were worth buying and actually had games

Lowering voltage would be a better idea than underclock

Insane video, better than most A-titles (Docs) on Discovery Channel 🙏

peak modding right there, love it.

I hope super slim is gonna get an overclock one day

Some games do render at whatever your PS3 resolution was set to. Skyrim ran much better at 720p rather than 1080i for example. It all depends on how the game was made. Tho ever since PS4, all games render at whatever the devs decide regardless of output resolution.

This video was insanely good and I wish I understood more of the specifics. I spent SO MUCH time modding PS3 when I was younger and I miss it!!

Firstly, love the work here, I love seeing the path not taken. Secondly from experience, yeah pushing the VRAM bandwidth higher for the most part will get you the extra performance over a faster core. RSX was incredibly bandwidth starved, especially when you used multiple buffers to combine results. Considering the PC GPU's it was based typically had about double the bandwidth, it was obvious from day 1 that it was going to be a major bottleneck. You could do a LOT of data shuffling of multiple buffers just to end up with the final 27MB buffer displayed on screen (if you are 720p native). If you could eliminate a buffer or reduce the bit depth of one, that would yield decent results every time. Simply put, rendering pixels to RAM was slow. This is the exact same issue with the Switch currently, this is why Botw/TotK have major performance issues. Decent GPU core but you tried to keep it away from writing to VRAM for as long as possible. It meant that there would be a lot of idle time if you are bandwidth bound. Xbox 360 didn't have this issue thanks to the EDRAM - this a big simplification because you have other issues such as a shared memory bus with the PPC and having to tile your input/outputs to fit said EDRAM - but when blasting pixel data to it could do it much more freely. That is not to say that memory bandwidth was the only performance bottleneck, but it was a considerable one. It is impossible to balance a GPU (or any system) perfectly when the kind of work loads it will get will be all over the place. You can go from buffer heavy stuff like Crysis 3, to the elegant artistic driven beauty of Burnout Paradise. There is no winning move just selective compromise. As a bonus, to balance the argument, if you had to do render-to-texture elements RSX was actually kind of decent for this compared with 360, not because it was great at it but because the 360 GPU SUCKED at this stuff as it basically forced it to render directly to RAM. It would be like switching the cache off on your CPU. Once you stepped out of the EDRAM space, you where in a performance glut like nothing else.

I remember back in the 64, PS1 era when a game struggles with framerate me and my friends used to say " oooh wow the game is soooo good it beautiful that it makes the console struggle" 😂 its crazy how back then fps drops for us was a look at in a more positive side where it would prove how the good the game was and how that quickly shifted into the worst thing ever when it happens

Maybe, the best video I seen in months

Felix keeps coming up with the best documentaries and makes things better by explaining things carefully, watch this people.

Outstanding video! I never had a ps3, but I feel like getting one just for the sake of overclocking now 😂

felix...Pros here glad to see you upload again

It seems that overlocking the PS3, makes some change, but the BIOS and the Motherboard is probably soldered on, and it requires advanced skills to upgrade it as well, some games are capped to 30fps, while some games aren’t, and/or it could be a gpu bottleneck, and potentially in the future, there would be a way to overclock the gpu aswell, but it’s kinda unlikely with the skills we have today. Sick Video!

Modified FW is ballsy on a NAND console. SUBSCRIBED!

It is fun to debate which console is better sometimes but not when it comes tearing each other down. The PS3 is stronger but it's so complicated that devs just couldn't fully take advantage of it. Overclocking shouldn't work either because the device already has heating problems. So did the 360 so I can't say much there. Both systems were great

Thanks for a new video. As always, an incredibly interesting stuff to watch.

The 360 architecture is a little weird too being a PowerPC based cpu (as opposed to a x86) paired with an ATI gpu but def not a weird as Sony's more custom PowerPC and RSX GPU setup. Microsoft usually seems to play these things on the safe side, probably because their whole company was built on the x86 and similar architectures. Seems it was the right choice as well.

I'm so proud to be part of psx-place. Thanks Rip-Felix Naxil (user who must necessarily use every mod)

enjoyed the full video. You've really put good effort into making the video.

YESSSSS, THIS IS WHAT I SUBSCRIBED FOR!!!!

For sure the best video of PS3 every made!

A video about overclocking has no business resolving my existential crisis. Yet here we are.

about the resolution thing, PS3 games can be programmed to change the render resolution based on the output resolution selected, so while it doesn't apply to all games, it most certainly isn't misguided advice that applies to 0 games. this is something Digital foundry themselves have found during their 1080p PS3 games videos.

Some games on the ps3 actually renders in lower resolution if you change system resolution

Thanks for the lesson at the end of the video. I will be making the most of my CabbageStation 3 while it lasts!

Another banger🔥

Amazing video! I liked basically everything in it

The grand wizard of PS Thrizle is back.

oh thank you ive been very curious about this subject and not enough has been done about it

The awakening of the man from 2001 a space odyssey reference reminds me of you overclocking the ps3 because i never do an overclocking to my console prior to selling it

"CRTs had better motion handling, contrast and blacks than most TVs today" True! Only QD-OLEDs are now getting in the same range of image fidelity as a CRT.

I gotta say, for me personally, the FPS really matters, it's very interesting to hear that people actually prefer 30fps!

Dude, fps directly corresponds to latency. In games where you need to react as fast as possible, like oh idk, first person shooters, it makes a huge difference. They are just plain easier to play in high fps because your effective reaction time becomes faster. That's why every competitive fps player on the planet lowers settings to the minimum, and plays on a high refresh rate display.

Watercooling next? Come on, 1GHZ ps3 HAS to happen.. X)

games aren't about escape. i always hear that but i never agreed with it. games are about fun and enjoyment. you can have that playing very realistic simulators. now, some devs like to say their games are not meant to be fun or enjoyable (coughtlous2cough) and i think that's them failing at making games, flat out.

ahhhh its good to see felix upload a video :)

Recommend a water cooling mod to help with the sharp increase in temps but the draw back is that I will still climb to those temps, but takes longer, you could also do a power supply mod but not sure what help that could bring if any at all

Bro I spilled my coffee when I saw +0.50V... Then understood it was +50mV :)

I never thought people would unlock these consoles these far, very nice.

5:10-5:24 There was a TV made for the PS3? That's cool! 12:10p.m. 8/8/2024

Increible video, felicidades!!! 😁

Ain't no way I'm watching a video about overclocking a PS3 in this scorching heat.

Locked 60 FPS was supposed to be an industry standard ever since the 6th generation of consoles...

Bae wake up Felix just uploaded

Ive never ever ever ever heard someone dislike games over 45 fps. That's absolutely absurd, literally ridiculous. 60/120 fps gaming is the absolute best thing about the current gen. The decrease in input lag is amazing, and the need for significalty less motion blur to make up for the low frame rate is amazing. There's objectively no benefit to low fps over high fps. Literal none.

The low res fps gain depends on the game, there are a lot of games where the fps go up.

Thank you for all of this top quality content.

Awesome video. Subbed!

If my memory serves, the PS3 spent its life with a larger OS footprint meaning it had less available RAM than 360, 13MB sounds familiar but it may have been larger. The 3MB eDRAM was also an advantage because 720p framebuffers fit in that. The GPU in the 360 was also substantially better, the first to have a unified shader architecture. Both console CPUs were horrible at doing traditional things you expect them to do, but they turned in floating point computations far above what modern CPUs do, turns out you'd rather have the GPU do those, who would have thought?

this is an insane video! keep the good work up!

The voltage mod topic is very interesting. So if I got that right, the core VID is factory set per unit. I assume that means that undervolting won't be that viable. They probably still leaned towards stability over temperature optimization so there might be some oversupply of voltage that could be reduced further, but I'd expect the benefits to be relatively minor.

The 7th generation was supposed to be a push for real time lighting and other things. It was a generation where everyone wanted to make worlds more dynamic from not just a lighting standpoint but from an interaction standpoint too. Yes, performance was terrible but it was necessary as the 7th generation laid many techniques that would later be refined in the 8th generation. The 5th generation was the exact same way with the consoles there were pushing new techniques, namely 3D capabilities that could be done on system and not just with extra hardware inside a cartridge or with other various compromises like untextured polygons or faking 3D with sprite scaling/super scaler games. I don't really hate on the PS3 and 360 for that reason but they were important as many technologies that are still used to this day made their appearance on these consoles or at least were popularized. Shadow maps, screen space reflections, ambient occlusion, and many more techniques. Plus, post processing became very popular around this time too. The 8th gen consoles took all these technologies and refined them to a point where many of their flaws were being fixed. Most 60fps games on the 7th gen consoles tended to look closer in technology to 6th gen games with many refinements to make them look visually superior. They often didn't push for real time lighting or super dynamic worlds

this G making a PS3 Pro making us jealous...

Cool video, good comparisons, love stuff like this, im one of those pc guys and love my games as "fast" as they can be, it just feels better to me, its hard for me playing anything at 30fps anymore, it feels sluggish, and i can notice the frames.

Damn, you are surely a mad man, AND I LOVE IT🎉

Comparing PC and PS3 back then for me was like comparing your regular honda civic with GT track racing cars... sure they happen to have common things like an engine and wheels but its a whole different league that not many people can afford to have so there is no way comparing that

As a proud owner of a first gen 65mm RSX slim I think I am going to pass on this one haha Some of the regulators already are presenting discoloration due to high temps (I’ve only modded last year so the fans weren’t spiking as high as now with webman)…

glad your alive

Your argument about gamers not having HD tvs is nonsensical. If a gamer complained about fps and low resolution they obviously had the hd tv, and cared about how the games ran. I remember websites dunking on rdr on ps3 and how it didn't have the same level of detail as 360. I cared. I had a plasma TV that was 1080i and was pissed that 720 was pretty much the limit. I know, 1080i is interfaces, but I couldn't fathom killzone 2 not running higher than 720.

videos like this make me soo happy ive been a pc gamer exclusively.

Also you have to way to increase the resolution on the ps3 version so that alone would drop it a few more frames

Jeez the new reddit website is so space inefficient lmao

How about relocating a ps3's guts to a pc case and adding a pc power supply for more power when overclocking and water cool it to avoid it reaching high temps. Idk if it's possible for a ps3, but I've seen it done to a ps4 pro

Ps3 simply was too expensive for me in my teens. I wanted one so bad but got an xbox360 arcade which was like half the price of a ps3. Than I saw how much better most games ran. Everyone with rich parents at my Highschool had a ps3 that’s why I started to hate the other side. They mocked me everyday for having a Xbox and not a ps3 so I started to mock them back… that’s how 90% of the war stories began.

Amazing video Felix

By god! two uploads! what's going on? who overclocked RIP Felix?

IDK man, I owned both day one and even on a CRT the 360 fps advantage was pretty noticeable. Plus most people I know were off CRTs years before the end of the generation making the resolution difference obvious. But I was one of the weird ones flipping back and forth between inputs. Only having a PS3 you wouldn't care but that's more along the lines of "ignorance is bliss" than "an unbiased opinion".

For me consoles stopped being a decent gaming experience at this generation (PS3 and Xbox 360) and I switched to PC. Consoles had extremely poor storage and networking quality and you had to go through a lot of steps before playing a game so it wasn't plug and play anymore. You often had to install game assets on local storage and download and install updates for games. I still had PTSD from games like the last of us were certain scene would drop below 20fps.

32Bit console era started with the Fifth Gen consoles on the Sega Saturn/PS1 and ended with Xbox360/PS3. We just barely left the 32Bit era and jumped to TRUE 64bit consoles with the Xbox One and PS4, and even to this day with the Series and PS5. The N64 was mostly 32Bit with some 64bit executions. The jump from 8, 16 and 32Bit was quite fast, but we will be stuck to 64Bit consoles for a good while.

People who use the term "soap opera effect" in relation to games and say "the framerate is too high" or " it's way too smooth" shouldn't be asked any performance research related questions period. I applaud your overall ability to try and stay objective when discussing these topics, but the Uncharted test here is hard to take seriously, it should be done with someone with an actual understanding and a better eye; I'm not saying it wasn't interesting anyway, it's just that I'd rather listen to you trying to point out differences. Other than that, cool video as usual, though none are better than the YLOD one, because it's mostly free of your biases and has exclusively honest mistakes which don't take away from it one bit.