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Iv'e read many posts throughout these forums about ROMS and/or Kernels being fast. I think my phone is fast enough for me. For others that may not be the case, so...
- to what extent does speed affect stability if any?
- aside from the obvious overclocking what else would one do to speed up their phone?
- what would you use these speeds for?
- then again what is fast, scrolling speed, transitions, streaming, gaming, browsing.....?
- what methods are being used to gauge these speeds, fps, linpack, quadrant.....other, are they acurate?
- its been said that AOSP is faster than Sense if so how?
It would be nice to gain a better understanding of various opinions on speed. Maybe some screenies of your set-up or different processes taken.
- Thanks for the insight
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I would like to know the same thing i see alot of asop roms hitting 2000+ on quadrant i can only get to 1700 .....any help?
If you're getting 1700+ on sense, you don't need help. AOSP will be slightly faster just b/c there's less to it than sense. You're not going to feel a difference between a ROM running 1700 and one running 2000+ as long as you setup is running smoothly. Speed is more about feel than numbers anyway, although the popular tests are linpack and quadrant.
If you just want high scores, run CM6.1 and Snap 7.6 Kernel w/ Turbo activated.
what does set cpu do if anyone uses it?
jalai said:
what does set cpu do if anyone uses it?
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Setcpu is used for over/underclocking your evo, also with screen off profiles, it can help increase you battery life.
Okay, so my question is basically how stable is overclocking your g2? I typically keep it at 800 when I use my phone normally, than 1.5ghz for games. I wante d to keep my g2 at 1.5ghz forever.. is that bad?
My battery obviously increases in temp..
I just use 1GH. It's enough for all game now. and didn't see any bad to battery or phone
I've had my DZ for about three weeks now and all this time I've had it consistently overclocked to 1843MHz. At that high of a speed, I had to let the phone cool down after 20 minutes of use.
Just today I flashed pershoot's 1516MHz kernel and noticed no heat issues after ~45 minutes of consistent use (temps < 40C).
I have had my g2 for.... However long they been out. I have always been overclock to at least 1.5 with zero heat issues. I ran 1.8 and even 1.9 for a good long time as well. Those speeds have heat issues ones that required a battery pull a few times because it started heating up faster then i could shut down the phone. If your going to OC at those speeds makes sure you set temp profiles with alarms.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
ARM processors, like our snapdragons, are a lot more forgiving on the overclocking front than what you might find in your desktop, for instance.
I still treat overclocking on my phone like I do my computers, though... setcpu has a stress test built in that you can use if you're curious how "stable" your overclock is. but in my experience, I've found that you can get away with just playing around with it and using the phone normally and seeing how it reacts to different clockspeeds.
right now, I run it at 1.1ghz (24/7). I have run it at 1.5ghz (24/7) in the past for PSX/N64 emulators, but I've found with my new setup (pretty light; no widgets, very few things going on in the background, stripped as many unnecessary apps as possible, and not using any animations or fancy bits) that 1.1ghz is more than enough to be able to play the games I play on any emulator smoothly.
you should be fine at any speed that is currently available in the overclocking kernels we have with the exception of flippy's 1.9ghz kernel, which does require some monitoring to keep things cool and stable. but it still does vary from phone to phone. if you're running at 1.5ghz and the phone isn't doing anything wonky, then you shouldn't worry about it. if you're running it at 1.5ghz and you're experiencing stability issues, random force closes that aren't fixable through conventional methods, or heat issues, you should probably back off a bit.
some people have problems at 1.2ghz, some people are running at 1.9ghz all the time and never have problems... just find what works best for normal usage with your device and go with it.. it's not like we keep these things for more than a couple of years anyway, and the processor will be capable of handling the [stable] overclock for that period of time.
im always at 1.2ghz. 768 as min, interactive gov (when i use CM7) and battery has been fine, havent noticed any major issues. hard to tell if it was the rom bugs or OC being the issue but from what i read all my issues others have at various speeds so im guessing it was rom related
i think it depends on the rom.
when i use the Pyromod rom i dont need overclock but for other roms like sense roms those I require OC. I always keep it at 1400 when needed.
Goal of this little project is to dispel myths and hearsay and trying to assess the elusive performance of custom kernels for our beloved SGS I9000.
So far this has proven quite challenging as there is no single good benchmark on Android (yet):
a lot of people have been misled by ridiculous Quadrant scores: ridiculous because, with some small tweaks which do not affect real performance in any way, shape or form, it is possible to boost the Quadrant score by factor 3x.
You're free to believe that your SGS I9000 which scores 3000+ on Quadrant is faster than a SGS II, but then please leave this thread and move on.
some kernels may seem smooth with some games, and get high scores on some synthetic benchmark, yet the UI appears "laggy" and stutters a lot in comparison to other kernels which score lower on the same benchmark
some popular benchmarks give results with unacceptably low reproducibility, i.e. if you run them multiple times without changing a thing on your system, you get scores varying by 50% of more, in a completely random fashion
most popular benchmarks do not measure or take into account multitasking and CPU contention with other applications, yet on a typical usage one has background tasks such as the media scanner or synchronization which kick in often and unpredictably
So this will be mostly a work in progress, i'm testing several benchmarks and several kernels in multiple combinations, trying to analyze which benchmarks offer certain criteria which make them useful, namely:
Reproducibility of results: running the same tests multiple times, should result in a very small variance of the final score
Performance separation: benchmarks which are too "synthetic" and show only a dependency on clock speed are not useful to discriminate "fast" kernels from "slow" kernels
Performance representation: we all know when a kernel "looks" or "feels" fast or smooth. If a benchmarks shows you that a "laggy" kernel scores higher than a fast and responsive one, it's likely that the benchmark is not well designed
I'll work more on this thread explaining my (current) choice of tests and what they're good for.
But for now i'll just post a link to the summary table, and give a brief recommendation concerning popular ICS kernels; recommendation which i'll explain in the coming days.
Base ROM:
Slim ICS 2.8
(because is fast, smooth and has the least background stuff of all ICS ROMs which i tested)
Test Conditions:
Whenever possible, i tried to overclock the kernels to 1.2GHz which most / all phones should have no trouble achieving.
In case of Semaphore i had to use the bus / live overclock but it wasn't fully stable at 1.2GHz on my phone so i ran most of the tests at 1.14GHz.
Tested Kernels:
Stock Teamhacksung V17
Devil 1.1.6b BFS
Devil 1.1.6b CFS
Icy Glitch V14 b
Semaphore ICS 0.9.5b
Recommendation:
Devil 1.1.6b CFS, Icy Glitch V14b (with SmartassV2 and FIOPS), and Midnight ICS (with a tweaked Conservative) are trading blows for the fastest kernel.
At the time of testing, Midnight is slightly worse in terms of overclocking though, apparently due to different voltages, also it doesn't allow overclocking beyond 1.2GHz.
But what's interesting is that it achieves great performance while using a tweaked conservative governor.
Devil 1.1.6b BFS is good but obviously inferior to its CFS brother.
Semaphore has the lowest cache and memory latency in the multithreaded test, it also has impressive sd card read speed and in general appears super responsive, but it's a bit worse in 3D gaming and especially it lacks "true" overclocking, "live overclocking" changes the bus clock and is way more unstable, in fact on my phone i couldn't run it stable at 1.2GHz.
All kernels are significantly faster than the stock teamhacksung's kernel, so you have no excuses not to upgrade to one of the popular custom kernels!
ICS 4.0.4
Started testing Android ICS 4.0.4 kernels on Slim ICS 3.2.
All tested kernels are "huge mem" versions with 380+MB of available RAM, without breaking video playback or 720p recording.
Summary:
the stock kernel from Teamhacksung is now a very respectable performer, unless you plan to overclock probably you don't need to install one of the other kernels
Semaphore, Midnight and Devil are all very fast and smooth
Results table:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuBUEB4dGFSSdHIyN2VIeWU4QnhLOFpJejFPWDh5S1E
Res 1
One request for the kernel developers:
could you please post me what are your preferred / recommended settings in terms of Governor and I/O Scheduler?
Only one configuration per kernel please, as running these tests is rather time consuming.
Test Settings
So for anybody who wants to follow the same methodology as I used to test kernels, please pay attention that in some tests i didn't use stock settings, to try to improve the reproducibility of the results.
Before all test, i put the phone in flight mode, and disable all synch services.
Antutu: DB I/O and SD Write and Read have poor reproducibility. So i run these tests separately 5 times, and take the best scores.
RealPi: the number of iterations is increased by factor 10x i.e.: 100000 digits
MPAC: lots of customization here. Also be careful as it's not very stable and some settings will make it crash.
All tests: 8 threads (or 8 producer / consumer pairs)
CPU: 10000000 iterations, use case: integer (i'm considering to add logical too)
Memory: stock apart for nr of threads. Repeat the test 5 times and get best numbers
Cache: 40 iterations
Res 3
With this should be enough.
Judging from those results, CFS Devil looks really promising.
Semaphore live oc stability issues happen only on Slim ICS indeed. On ICSSGS I have perfect stability at 1.2 ghz. And performance is just great, paired with very good battery life.
GT-i9000 / ICSSGS 4.2 / Semaphore 0.9.0
A quick question: did you lock the max freq to eliminate the "governor" variable?
Because each kernel could have governor's tweaks that the other don't.
Based on what you posted here, the differences between Glitch and Devil is practically none.
I tested both and didn't feel any tangible difference, in the end, it comes down to the unique features of each kernel.
Overclocking bus vs adding an extra step aren't even slightly comparable. Maybe do tests not overclocked?
Also there is a new glitch build with 100% working bln.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
+1 for tests without overclock. Majority of us, users do not overclock. Maybe a seperate test for overclocking could be nice , but comparisons should be done with stock speeds imho.
Thanks for the time and effort. We needed this.
Overclocking bus Vs adding an extra step isn't an apple to apple comparison, I agree.
However my goal was to use each kernel in the best possible way, and if some kernels have the possibility to use higher multipliers / extra frequency steps, that is an advantage for the user, compared to the kernels who only offer live overclock.
Don't get me wrong, i love Semaphore and i've been using it for a long time.
And i have no doubt that some users can get it stable with live overclock to 1.2GHz.
But that is the ceiling, while with other kernels even my phone can reach stable overclocks of 1.5GHz, and that is something to consider.
I chose as the basis for my tests an overclock of 1.2GHz because it's something which practically everybody can use, without massive battery drain, overheat or shortening the life of the device.
I'll try to add measurements at stock speeds for those who don't like to overclock.
cba1986 said:
A quick question: did you lock the max freq to eliminate the "governor" variable?
Because each kernel could have governor's tweaks that the other don't.
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I didn't want to take the governor variable out.
Because, as you said, each kernel could use (and often does) governor tweaks which make the kernel "special" or different from the others, and that has to be taken into account in evaluating them.
Because nobody will use the phone locked at the maximum frequency.
So for me the governor and its tweaks is part of the user experience of a certain kernel, and a distinctive factor.
At the end, all kernels are coming from almost the same sources, so it's the little things which make the difference.
phzi said:
Also there is a new glitch build with 100% working bln.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
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That's great!
This test i run is not the "be all end all", it was just a recommendation at the time of writing.
Pipperox said:
Overclocking bus Vs adding an extra step isn't an apple to apple comparison, I agree.
However my goal was to use each kernel in the best possible way, and if some kernels have the possibility to use higher multipliers / extra frequency steps, that is an advantage for the user, compared to the kernels who only offer live overclock.
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Agreed but, then again, benchmarks should be done at original CPU clock IMHO.
Otherwise, results are distorted.
HiKsFiles said:
Agreed but, then again, benchmarks should be done at original CPU clock IMHO.
Otherwise, results are distorted.
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agreed. Especially since stock team hacksung seems to be clocked at 1GHz
what's the point of the comparison? Really?
As expected, there is no noticeable difference between all 1.2 GHz kernels.
It's not as if there was a real difference between them anyway.
zorxd said:
agreed. Especially since stock team hacksung seems to be clocked at 1GHz
what's the point of the comparison? Really?
As expected, there is no noticeable difference between all 1.2 GHz kernels.
It's not as if there was a real difference between them anyway.
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That's not quite true.
If you look closer, you'll see that Devil CFS has quite a distinct advantage over all others in 3D tests.
The point of the comparison between stock hacksung @1.0GHz and the others, who can overclock, is to show what kind of benefit you get from switching to kernels which are overclock friendly.
Especially considering that you can't assume that a 20% clock speed increase will bring a 20% performance speedup across the board.
At last, i'd say that you may have "expected" that the kernels tested at 1.2 GHz don't have such a difference in performance.
But expectations have to be verified.
I tried to answer the questions:
On Devil's kernel, is BFS really better than CFS?
The "popular belief" is that BFS is faster than CFS.
According to my tests, CFS results faster instead.
Another question may be, what kernel gives you the best gaming performance.
If you pay attention to the An3D Bench XL, you'll see that Semaphore 0.9.5b, even overclocked a 1.2GHz, is significantly slower than Devil.
If i recall correctly Semaphore Author claimed that some kernel developers overclock GPU, and he didn't. Idk anything about it, but i recall something about it.
Is it possible to overclock only GPU, without overclocking CPU??
zipgenius said:
so you should benchmark them without setting anything. Average users don't overclock and don't change governor or scheduler: they flash the new kernel and stop.
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I completely agree on benchmarking every kernel at the same frequency (stock 1Ghz max) but I think there are two different options for further benchmarking:
1) Benchmark kernels configured as similar as possible regarding CPU governor, IO scheduler, readahead -> comparable results for all kernels.
2) Benchmark kernels with default settings (only makes sense if all compared kernels are optimized for similar purpose like performance, does not make sense if a kernel does *not* focus on max. performance and uses e.g. Conservative CPU governor as default setting.
@Pipperox: Would it be possible to check my Mindnight-ICS dev version with your benchmark suite? I'd be really interested in the results as you use the same setup for all kernels (1.2Ghz would not be a problem, does not use LiveOC but old school 1/1.128/1.2Ghz OC).
Interesting thread... I never used devil's CFS version, always BFS. Will try CFS out now.
@Mialwe Where can we get your ics kernel?
mialwe said:
I completely agree on benchmarking every kernel at the same frequency (stock 1Ghz max) but I think there are two different options for further benchmarking:
1) Benchmark kernels configured as similar as possible regarding CPU governor, IO scheduler, readahead -> comparable results for all kernels.
2) Benchmark kernels with default settings (only makes sense if all compared kernels are optimized for similar purpose like performance, does not make sense if a kernel does *not* focus on max. performance and uses e.g. Conservative CPU governor as default setting.
@Pipperox: Would it be possible to check my Mindnight-ICS dev version with your benchmark suite? I'd be really interested in the results as you use the same setup for all kernels (1.2Ghz would not be a problem, does not use LiveOC but old school 1/1.128/1.2Ghz OC).
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Sorry guys, i understand your logic but i do not fully agree with it.
I'm not comparing overclocked kernels with heavy tweaking of voltages and special settings with which they only work.
I did the "poor man"'s overclock, setting to 1.2GHz using NSTools, a setting where 95% of phones should have no problem working.
I think that if some kernels offer you this possibility while others do not, it is fair to use this "advantage" that they have over the other kernels.
Because a lot of users will have the possibility to do the same as i do, without esoteric knowledge and with just a couple of clicks in the menus.
That being said, "due to popular demand" i will also try to retest those kernels at 1.0GHz as soon as i get a bit of time.
BUT in my recommendations, i will also consider the overclocking capabilities.
@mialwe: sure, i'll give a run to your kernel as well!
mialwe said:
@Pipperox: Would it be possible to check my Mindnight-ICS dev version with your benchmark suite? I'd be really interested in the results as you use the same setup for all kernels (1.2Ghz would not be a problem, does not use LiveOC but old school 1/1.128/1.2Ghz OC).
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Dude, sorry but i don't seem to find your ICS kernel anywhere.. can you provide a link?
I heard there was a problem with stability issues before. Has it been fixed?
Also, do any of you guys feel the need to OC in the first place?
iArtisan said:
I heard there was a problem with stability issues before. Has it been fixed?
Also, do any of you guys feel the need to OC in the first place?
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I tried OC'ing to 1,4 for a short time, didnt get any instabilities.
Which leads me to question two. No I don't feel the need to OC this phone, it is still good enough to cope with everything i throw at it.
The worst that will happen is that it will run a little hotter than normal. I was running Trinity Kernel on RasCream ROM clocked at 1.5GHz and it was fine, nothing crashed, no reboots, all was well.
Besides; It's a Nexus, it was built for this!
This varies for everyone
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
Meh. It all varies. No 2 chipsets are the same. What may work for someone else may not work for you. Trial and error is the only surefire way to find out.
Hi,
I agree with what has been said above, all the CPU's are not equal but actually the progress made by the kernel devs allows all (or almost) phones to run at 1.3* Ghz (1.34/1.35 Ghz, it depends of the kernel) without any issues.I think it's for all, actually I don't remember a user with issues at 1.3* Ghz...
And for most phones 1.5 Ghz is fine.For some others, above 1.5 Ghz is problematic but it depends also of too many factors.
Now it's not like it when the Genx came out, where 1.3 Ghz was the limit of CPU overclock for all the phones.
And many people can run stable at 1.65 Ghz, also it depends of the kernel.
For me for example my max CPU freq usable each day, so stable is 1.72 Ghz with Glados kernel, above (like 1.8 Ghz) it runs fine for 30 mins, sometimes 1 hour, but after always freeze/reboot... maybe my CPU can't reach this CPU freq or maybe my settings are wrong (voltage) ...
I agree, an extreme overclock like 1.72 Ghz is not really necessary for all day (heat, battery life, etc...) but a little overclock like 1.5/1.53 Ghz and you a difference in certain case (openning some apps, general UI, browsing, etc...).
But if we have the ability to test and play...why not... ,in any case for me it's yes, I like overclock and test the possibilities/limits of my phone, different settings...
Everyone does as he wants and it depends on what you want (battery life,a little more power in some situation like playing or a higher bench score ).
Well considering Texas instruments recommended highest clock speed for this processor is 1.5 ghz I'd say your fine. Anything above that is dependent on how well your chip set will handle it. Besides who honestly has needed to OC for anything other than benchmarks?
Sent From My Sprint Galaxy Nexus
Well i have a phone, and in that forum members says that Overclock the cpu shorts the motherboard life, is that true? and for those who are using Overclock, do u really feel something diferent with the performance of the tablet? or do u see something wrong with Overclock? like random reeboots or makes the tablet hot? Im thinking in OC or not my tab, so i wanna see the experience from other members, thx in advance. :good:
Deshabilitado said:
Well i have a phone, and in that forum members says that Overclock the cpu shorts the motherboard life, is that true? and for those who are using Overclock, do u really feel something diferent with the performance of the tablet? or do u see something wrong with Overclock? like random reeboots or makes the tablet hot? Im thinking in OC or not my tab, so i wanna see the experience from other members, thx in advance. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I cover this in the guide I wrote in general (which has been pushed down quite a ways) but anyways here goes another version.
Overclocking varies from device to device, even of the same model. Variances in tolerance is on a per chip basis, as long as they pass within a certain range they are sent out for production in devices. Overclocking in general is within means of the chip's abilities, if it isn't, you'll know it. Generally speaking, 1.4 GHz is perfectly fine on our devices. 1.5 GHz is also usually ok, but is the upper end of what the Tegra2 can usually tolerate. Few an go past 1.58 GHz, my old G2x's tegra2 could hit 1.7 GHz,but that's well beyond "normal" range.
Overclocking a device is the same as overclocking a PC, you need to be careful with it. Don't just ramp it to 65% overclock and expect it to run fine. Every chip is different. Do it in steps, and test each step before moving on. Test it in normal usage, test it in heavy usage, gaming, etc.
An overclocked device will certainly run hotter then normal, it's running faster, drawing more power, and that creates a hotter running core, no way around it. Keeping in mind there is no airflow in these things, that makes the biggest enemy to CPUs even more dangerous.Does it run so hot that it can shorten component life? Sure it can. Will you still have the device when it happens? I doubt it. Likely, we'll be on Tegra5 before it even begins to show signs of stress.
One of the nice things, though, is our CPUs range so much in speed according to load that just because your Max is 1.5 GHz, it doesn't always run there. Most times, it won't even be in the overclocked speeds. Does it run faster? Sure does. Benchmarks will raise nicely, and games that maybe got choppy before will smooth out, movies that couldn't play well will be fluid, the heavens will align, mankind will discover world peace and I'll win the lottery.
All that being said, I don't usually overclock, in fact I tend to underclock a little to 800MHz. Its usually sufficient to do normal tablet stuff, and I adjust the speed according to what I require. If my movie is lagging, I'll bump it up until it smooths out. Same for a game if it needs it.
In the end, its all personal choice, really. Just because you CAN overclock, doesn't mean you NEED to. IMO a well tuned governor will give as good a result as overclocking in normal usage, and a good I/O Scheduler will also help alot, without adding anymore heat or stress to your device.
TL;DNR:
Overclocking is fun. It causes more heat. It likely won't explode within the time you own it. Or your children. Your battery will suck.
thanks pio for the answer, thats what i needed to read, cuz usually when u talk about OC its like "yeah dude, OC its "tha greeeeeat doi it dude" or something like "dont do it!!! u will decrease your tablet life" and yes, i know that devices are way to diferent even if they are the same model, and also im agree with u, governors and I/O works better than OC but we dont have many for our device, i miss the smartass v2 governor,or the brazzilianwax too, but well, hope someone can port it for us someday.