Develop Bugs

SetCPU saving power potential?

Heya,
I've heard of this SetCPU program, and figured it has some solid potential of saving battery power.
My question is - does it work? I've read several post claiming that SetCPU doesn't work on HTC phones.
If it does - will using the "Mix \ Max frequency" mode will save battery during stand by and normal usage, or just slow down the phone?
Using Rooted Desire, LeeDroid 2.2d.

Its primary use is to overclock the CPU, its secondary use is to create profiles and reduce the clock or change the governor. This will improve battery life slightly but also decrease responsiveness, depending on how far you go.
You'll need root if you want to use it.
To really increase battery life you have to use a custom ROM with an undervolted kernel.

So you're saying that the saving in battery life is insignificant considering the slowdown in performance?

yes, you use LeeDroid which is undervolted, thus perfect conditions.
It also uses a custom governor 'Smartass' which gives you best performance while using it and limits the max. clock while sleeping. That's the most common method to increase battery life with SetCPU while maintaining performance. So no, you don't need SetCPU, LeeDroid handles everything perfectly already.
However, the Desire has a very powerful CPU, compared with other Smartphones. So you can use SetCPU to limit the clock to maybe 700MHz or 800MHz. This will increase the battery life but also reduce the processing power. If you don't play games, don't do a lot of simultaneous things or browsing huge websites, don't use heavy loaded homescreens, it's possible that you don't notice the reduced processing power.

Thanks again
I guess there is no damage to the SnapDragon if I lower clock speeds a bit...
But, if I want to do some overclocking - how far is it safe to go?
When I OC'ed my Q6600 CPU I used the TheremalRight Extreme 120 with two Slip Stream fans to cool it off.. So, will heat damage be a constant threat to an overclocked Desire?
I currently live in Israel, and it's hot as hell even on stock speeds

CoreOxide said:
Thanks again
I guess there is no damage to the SnapDragon if I lower clock speeds a bit...
But, if I want to do some overclocking - how far is it safe to go?
When I OC'ed my Q6600 CPU I used the TheremalRight Extreme 120 with two Slip Stream fans to cool it off.. So, will heat damage be a constant threat to an overclocked Desire?
I currently live in Israel, and it's hot as hell even on stock speeds
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Click to collapse
I for one has chosen to disable the default powersave in Auraxt sense, and then using SetCPU to control it, i get a day of power easily, and still goes to bed wit 50% power, that is with stock clocks on normal usage, but with minimum power (245) on screen off

Re overclocking:
To reach high clock speeds you also increase the voltage on your PC, else you can't increase the frequency that drastically.
Because you can't improve the cooling on the desire you have to keep stock voltages but also can't overclock that much.
The overclocking methods on the desire keep the voltage at stock values or even lower (defrost rom).
I don't know the voltage values for LeeDroid.
I it shouldn't get warmer. In the worst case it will crash and reboot until you reduce the clock speed.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

Setcpu Profiles

Hey guys, I'm just wondering what settings do you have on your setcpu for the best performance and battery life? I'm totally new to this lol
Sanks

kazemagic said:
Hey guys, I'm just wondering what settings do you have on your setcpu for the best performance and battery life? I'm totally new to this lol
Sanks
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i i think that ondemand is the best for daily using... i'm using cm10 rom and i have some music problem so i'm using interactive and it's ok. if you don't use games or heavy apps, you can underclock it to 1ghz or even less and put on powersave.. but you have to try and find the best for you

My setup is a little complicated. I use the ondemand governor, then for the profiles I make it use powersave and under 760mhz between 1am and 8:30am which seems to really help during the night. Also set it to use 760mhz max when the screen is off.
When charging or above 40% battery I allow it to run full speed, but only when the screen is on, therefore helping charge times. On charge or above 80% I set the governor to performance.
In call I set the clock to max 1000mhz and conservative to try and allow calls on low-battery to work properly without lag but also without killing the battery.
I have a couple of other options set for very low battery ( < 12% ) too, but those are only to extend the battery if it's dying.
I wouldn't say all this is necessary... but I need my phone to keep working at all times as I use it for receiving business calls.
It's just a matter of playing around really... depends what you use the phone for. For the most part tell it to use lower clock speeds when you don't need them so much (when phone is off, during the night, during call etc) but you will really notice the speed difference if it's underclocked while you use it, so I tend to allow it to use full whack when screen is on, unless the battery is low.
I also set up profiles to make things like Bloons TD4 run in performance mode and min of 1000mhz, to keep them smooth . Drains the battery though!

lol setcpu does a really good job at battery saving. When using ondemand, my phone can last more than 2 days (if it's on standby)
Have you guys tried under-vaulting? What does it rlly do?

kazemagic said:
lol setcpu does a really good job at battery saving. When using ondemand, my phone can last more than 2 days (if it's on standby)
Have you guys tried under-vaulting? What does it rlly do?
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Click to collapse
If you mean decreasing the voltage on the CPU, no I haven't. From my experience in desktop PCs however, if the CPU voltage is too low it can lead to hardware issues and instability.
If something needs a certain amount of power, and you give it less, it will either try and draw more amps which increases heat and can fry components, or won't work properly. You could probably "under-volt" the CPU at the same time as reducing the clock speed however, but your performance will suffer. When the processor is set to be ondemand it underclocks itself when not in use anyway
The biggest battery drain is screen and radios, concentrate on using them less. Underclocking the CPU will make the phone last longer when in use, but usability will suffer and turn your super fast smart phone into a sluggish one. I only make mine stay underclocked when the screen is off, during a call, or on low battery. During general use I let it do its thing .

UV(Under volt) is actually not to bad. Don't ever set those values at boot, else when they are too low, it will cause BOOTLOOPS. It just reduces the amount of power allowed for the cpu to use, thus it won't use more than required. You can't really ask a person for his/her uv values, as no 2 chips are created equal.
People stating that they UC(underclock) their device is not quite right. We don't have much control over our cpu's to be honest. If you run tegra stats whilst using you're phone, you'll see what I mean. It will sometimes(happens quite often) just bump up to higher frequencies to which you UC them. Also as soon as the screen is locked and unlocked the max cpu frequency set by the governor will just return(for example: say stock is 1500mhz, and you set it to 1400mhz, it will return to 1500mhz after an unlock). Ondemand is very very good for battery and performance. But remember you have to tweak those values individually in order to optain the best possible performace for the given task you want. Whether it is for battery or performance.
It's actually also a lot better to just tweak those values as to TRY and uc. Uv will stick, UC not!
Here is a small example as to battery saving and performance values for ondemand governor:
sampling rate:---------60 000 ----- 30 000
up threshold:--------------95 ----- 60
sampling down factor:-------2 ----- 8
powersave bios: ------------3 ----- 0
ignore nice load:------------0 ----- 0
io is busy:------------------0 ----- 0

[Q] Has anyone ever underclocked One X?

So I tried to underclock my One X to around 640 MHz and it was running VERY smoothly and stable with only 2 cores active. I was using the ViperX 2.2.1 ROM and the Kernel was the no OC NCX 0.99a. The battery life wasn't bad, but has anyone tried underclocking to 1 GHz or lower? If so, how is the battery life and what kernel and ROM did you use?

With SetCPU you can change the max. CPU, but why should you? When the phone doesn't need much processor power, it just scales down by itself.
So, it already has the best underclocker there is.
Mayby you could try undervolting to save even more battery, but that means the CPU can be somewhat less steady.

im trying to get my head around UVing / UCing my HOX. is there any guide around? im trying to search through the forum but still no luck.

ricopoetra said:
im trying to get my head around UVing / UCing my HOX. is there any guide around? im trying to search through the forum but still no luck.
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underclocking means the CPU runs slower so should use less battery but slower CPU speeds also means to takes longer to preform tasks which could use more battery, check on google most places say its not worth it as that battery saved is tiny and not worth the drop in CPU performance.
undervolting however lowers the voltage that CPU uses while working this does save power and also lowers heat (less voltage less heat) but if you lower it to much then the CPU becomes unstable due to lack of power and well crashes and restarts the phone in most cases.
to get the best out of undervolting you need to lock the max CPU speed to each step (CPU speed, 300mhz, 600mhz and so on) and slower the voltage and then run a bench mark (like antutu) and see if its stable, if it is you lower the voltage again and repeat until it crashes at which point you have found the lowest voltage that the clock speed can handle so you jump up a voltage then more on to the next speed.
it takes along time but that would get you the best undervolt your phone and hardware could handle.
or you can just use the global to lower the voltage for every speed, this is much faster and much less time consuming but you don't get the most out of it.
for this you basically drop the voltage then use your phone for different things; browsing, games, benchmark and see if it crashes if not lower again till it does then go back up a step.

thanks for explaining. I'm getting some of the points that I missed Awhile ago. I guess I'm going to try the longer way of doing it.
Sent from my White HOX JB PA 2.10

[Q] Underclocking Query

How much can the phone be underclocked while maintaining the stability of the system?
What would happen if i set Max freq to 600 Mhz?
What is the best thing to do to save up the very last bit of juice in the battery for emergency situations where i would only need the phone and message facility? Besides switching off Bt,wifi,sync.
Im asking because i was wondering if underclocking "too much" saves a substantial amount of battery when my battery is quite low and I am "hours away" from a charging port!
And is there a way to change the carrier name on the notification drop down to whatever we want.
Sorry if i sound noobish or if a similar query has been asked before
Thnx.

Underclocking the CPU dramatically isn't going to gain you a great deal in the way of extra battery life because:
1. Unless you are heavily taxing the CPU (complex 3d games etc), the biggest drains on the battery are the screen and the radio.
2. If the screen is off, the phone will drop the CPU frequency right down anyway.
The best way to get extended battery life is simply to carry spare batteries!
Regards,
Dave
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2

I think 600mhz is way too low and counter productive or for that matter anything less than 1ghz. The phone will lag alot and you'll have freezes. You'll probably end up using up alot of the battery life trying to get tasks completed. You could try leaving the stock clockspeed 1.6ghz, set minimum cores to 2 and slightly undervolt to -25mv, leave the gpu setup to its default 533mhz and also undervolt to -25mv using a kernel that supports stweak app. Then run an app called Stability Test for 10minutes to check for errors.
Also I tried Go Power Master, which can be assigned to disable certain features once your battery hits critical low levels.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

bushako said:
I think 600mhz is way too low and counter productive or for that matter anything less than 1ghz. The phone will lag alot and you'll have freezes. You'll probably end up using up alot of the battery life trying to get tasks completed. You could try leaving the stock clockspeed 1.6ghz, set minimum cores to 2 and slightly undervolt to -25mv, leave the gpu setup to its default 533mhz and also undervolt to -25mv using a kernel that supports stweak app. Then run an app called Stability Test for 10minutes to check for errors.
Also I tried Go Power Master, which can be assigned to disable certain features once your battery hits critical low levels.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium
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Thats quite informative. Thanx!

[Q] something about lowering the voltage

Lowering the coltage can help with heat and battery.I flashed the ElementalX kernel,but flar2 didn't tell much about lowering the voltage.
My PVS number is 3,so how much voltage should be lowerd?Not only the minimum,but also others.
I may lower it too much(-100mv),then I got a reboot while playing videos.
Thank you

a1317931279 said:
Lowering the coltage can help with heat and battery.I flashed the ElementalX kernel,but flar2 didn't tell much about lowering the voltage.
My PVS number is 3,so how much voltage should be lowerd?Not only the minimum,but also others.
I may lower it too much(-100mv),then I got a reboot while playing videos.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check this guide
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2469261

a1317931279 said:
Lowering the coltage can help with heat and battery.I flashed the ElementalX kernel,but flar2 didn't tell much about lowering the voltage.
My PVS number is 3,so how much voltage should be lowerd?Not only the minimum,but also others.
I may lower it too much(-100mv),then I got a reboot while playing videos.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Overclocking will effect the heat too. The Voltage can be adjusted but most of the time don't need to be fooled with.
Sent from my Nexus 7 Flo running CM 11 4.4.2 with ElementalX Kernel using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

There is very little effect on battery by lowering the CPU voltage. There is a thread somewhere here on XDA where they do out the math and the energy savings from reducing CPU voltage are like 1% or something super low like that. The CPU uses very little power when you compare it to everything else in the tablet, like the 1080p screen, wireless, etc etc etc. Additionally, the overall power used by the CPU is based on both the clock speed and voltage, with high clock speeds being the major contributor to power consumption. Using a power scheme which does not ramp the CPU frequency as quickly or even underclocking the cpu will yield much greater power savings and heat reduction than voltage reduction ever will.

Hnk1 said:
Check this guide
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2469261
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well,I mean,the volatage of CPU,not the battery...
anyway,thank you

LinearEquation said:
Overclocking will effect the heat too. The Voltage can be adjusted but most of the time don't need to be fooled with.
Sent from my Nexus 7 Flo running CM 11 4.4.2 with ElementalX Kernel using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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I just use the stock frequency.I like reading,high performance isn't needed,so I just want to increase some battery life,some people in tieba told me that lowering cpu voltage can make some great help...

skrypj said:
There is very little effect on battery by lowering the CPU voltage. There is a thread somewhere here on XDA where they do out the math and the energy savings from reducing CPU voltage are like 1% or something super low like that. The CPU uses very little power when you compare it to everything else in the tablet, like the 1080p screen, wireless, etc etc etc. Additionally, the overall power used by the CPU is based on both the clock speed and voltage, with high clock speeds being the major contributor to power consumption. Using a power scheme which does not ramp the CPU frequency as quickly or even underclocking the cpu will yield much greater power savings and heat reduction than voltage reduction ever will.
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Click to collapse
oh,it make sense,some people in tieba told me that lowering cpu voltage can make some great help with heat and battry life,look like they misled me,I have nerver noticed the diffrences in heat and battery, only the unstability is obvious...
thank you

skrypj said:
There is very little effect on battery by lowering the CPU voltage. There is a thread somewhere here on XDA where they do out the math and the energy savings from reducing CPU voltage are like 1% or something super low like that. The CPU uses very little power when you compare it to everything else in the tablet, like the 1080p screen, wireless, etc etc etc. Additionally, the overall power used by the CPU is based on both the clock speed and voltage, with high clock speeds being the major contributor to power consumption. Using a power scheme which does not ramp the CPU frequency as quickly or even underclocking the cpu will yield much greater power savings and heat reduction than voltage reduction ever will.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Especially with all things considered, the CPU is mostly loafing along. It doesn't start drawing power until it's being asked to work. Lowering the voltage is asking for a laggy device when the chips are down.

I highly suggest lowering the Cpu clock speeds if you want to affect the heat and battery. Lowering the cap speed for the device doesn't allow it to work hard enough to reach speeds to really make it toasty. Same goes with battery life. For example, I'm sure that you can walk much farther than you can run.
Changing the voltage is the equivalent of running down a new street...you have to test and test before you find a good voltage. Every device is different. Someone else's device might do great with the exact same settings that are making your device reboot. Do a lot of reading if you are certain that you want to change the voltages.