The Nexus 7 got a slightly weaker version of the Tegra 3 SoC, clocked at 1.2 GHz, compared to say the one in the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, which reaches 1.6 GHz, or the one in the HTC One X, which reaches 1.5 GHz. But that didn’t stop kernel modders from cranking up the CPU of the Nexus 7 up to 1.64 GHz. So now, your Nexus 7 can become the fastest Tegra 3 device on the market, and all you have to do is apply a simple patch.

A developer called Morfic, who made the Trinity Seven kernel for the Nexus 7, has managed to optimize it to a point where the Nexus 7 is achieving 1.64 GHz per core. The souped up Nexus 7 became the undisputed king of the Quadrant benchmark, by passing the 7000 score, a performance that has only been achieved so far by the upcoming S4 Pro. However, that chip won’t be available until months from now, while this works on the Tegra 3 in the Nexus 7 right now.

The reason why manufacturers don’t crank up the speed so much on their Tegra 3 devices, especially when it comes to this lower-end version of Tegra 3, is because doing so would consume significantly more battery life. They need to wait until chips are properly optimized for a certain level of power consumption before they release them on the market.

The overclocked Nexus 7 does use more battery life, but the Trinity Seven Toolbox lets you switch to a high processor frequency (like when playing a game) or lower the CPU clock for everything else, to balance out battery consumption and performance. Obviously, overclocking is not for everyone, but if you are one of those who like to root and tinker with their devices, follow the instructions at Rootzwiki or download the patch here.

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