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Hello,
Why isnt it possible to use SDCRAM as sort of RAM in android? same as VISA/7 Using ReadyBoost to expand the ram with an USB disk on keys?
thanks!
Why would you want that?
since you only use flash based memory anyway: that's called swaping
And is Swap enabled in all froyo roms today?
rommark said:
And is Swap enabled in all froyo roms today?
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But why would you need it? You have 512MB of RAM, with a clean boot you have around 200-220MB of it free for whatever you want to do with it. Not enough for you?
martino2k6 said:
But why would you need it? You have 512MB of RAM, with a clean boot you have around 200-220MB of it free for whatever you want to do with it. Not enough for you?
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won't heavy 3d games eat that?
rommark said:
won't heavy 3d games eat that?
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No. Smartphones =/= PCs. And if you are really out of space for a short amount of time, unneeded processes get killed automatically. Swap was only really needed on the G1 but definitely not on the Desire.
rommark said:
won't heavy 3d games eat that?
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No, that's a bit too much even for a game... unless the code has memory leaks. With so much RAM it'd make more sense to use ramdisk (but who knows for what good use)
martino2k6 said:
No, that's a bit too much even for a game... unless the code has memory leaks. With so much RAM it'd make more sense to use ramdisk (but who knows for what good use)
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RamDisk could be insane for 3d gaming as then the textures would have fast extraction means less delay in rendering....
What Readyboost is NOT
Hey folks. I've only recently discovered Readyboost as I'm primarily a Linux guy. I got all hot and bothered about it immediately as well as it is (despite Microsofts constant onslaught of horrific failures) an absolutely brilliant and elegant technology/idea.
HOWEVER!!!
Nearly everyone is confused about what RB actually does, so I thought I'd take a minute to explain.
ReadyBoost is NOT swap. NOT SWAP!, not swap.
Swap is not something to get excited about, it is a last resort for when you're out of RAM and it's excruciatingly slow. In the land of IT, one of the first things we check for when a server is experiencing horrible performance, is "IS THIS MACHINE SWAPPING". Everyone's gotta learn that swap, while it is more useful than "not enough memory" it is nor more useful than utilizing the memory you already have, and it will always result in poor performance.
ReadyBoost is an additional disc cache for small, non-sequential reads/writes. It works with your existing FS cache but is faster in some cases because FLASH has a much lower seek time. Most FLASH chips have a seek time of <1ms while most rotational discs have a seek time of around 8ms. This adds up on a large number of small non-sequential r/w.
ReadyBoost takes any caching operations which fit it's strength profile (small, non-sequential) and offloads them to your FLASH device. This can increase load speed of some files/application dramatically (2-20x faster).
So, when someone asks you if they can use Readyboost because they don't have enough memory, please, take a moment to explain that RB is not swap, but is in fact a supplementary disc cache for small, non-sequential reads and writes.
That said, I haven't had time to dig into the question of whether or not RB would benefit Linux FS's.
I know this is a really old thread but I just wanted to put my two cents in. Memory boosting apps like ReadyBoost do have a viable purpose. That is keeping older hardware viable as minimum specs increase. There is an Android app that is equivilant to ReadyBoost called Roehsoft RAM Expander. There are mixed reviews for its performance but that is to be expected. If this app helps my aging 8227_Demo head unit work well enough for me to not replace it I will update this post.
I have one of the 2012 Nexus 7s that turned INCREDIBLY sluggish after about 6 months. It is to the point where I don't even use it anymore, my wife uses it to read and I've gone back to my iPad 2 (ugh).
I've read that the problem with the OG Nexus 7 was the flash memory that Asus used, it degraded quickly or caused bottlenecks, or wasn't trimmed properly, etc.
Can someone that is really familiar with this (not just guessing) tell me if the hardware on the Nexus 7 (2013) is built to prevent this? I really want the new N7 because it was the only Android tablet I've bought (also bought XOOM and Transformer) that could replace the iPad 2 for me.
I'm no memory genius, but I did some searching around, followed some blogs and it seems the problem was the actual speed of the memory.
and after seeing comparrison benchmarks, the internal memory on the 2nd Generation was about 2X as fast as the 1st gen. so, while it seems they put in nicer memory, We'll have to wait and find out.
FWIW, i never had a problem with my OG N7, neither did my wife with Her's. both were day 1 purchases.
edit: Source: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...-just-how-much-faster-is-it-a-lot-apparently/
The main problem with the old N7 even the TF700 (both Tegra 3 devices) was the single channel memory, as well the lousy NAND that was put in the devices which really caused it to lag.
The NAND is by far sub-par on the device and that a MicroSD card can typically help increase the performance by placing all the data on it is pretty bad as MicroSD cards in itself are pretty slow as well even for the best ones.
i got the new one. i feel as tho there is still some slight lag in certain programs. even though it has 2gigs of ram, i would have thought it would be flawless and smooth. maybe it's beccause i just turned it on and started using it. but i can tell you that the chrome browser is way faster on 4.3 than 4.2.2.
also the sound is loud and clear! screen resolution is unbelievable. but with 2gigs of ram, i expected it to be much smoother.
mrazndead said:
i got the new one. i feel as tho there is still some slight lag in certain programs. even though it has 2gigs of ram, i would have thought it would be flawless and smooth. maybe it's beccause i just turned it on and started using it. but i can tell you that the chrome browser is way faster on 4.3 than 4.2.2.
also the sound is loud and clear! screen resolution is unbelievable. but with 2gigs of ram, i expected it to be much smoother.
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i just got the new one and it was a bit sluggish until i took the latest OTA. now i'm on JSS15J build it is running really really smooth. love it so far.
Did you run fstrim ("Lagfix.apk") on your original N7?
For what it's worth, Android Police has benchmarked it and said that it's working reasonably well - better than the original. If this is your concern, though, I would wait for Anandtech to review it. They were extremely concerned about flash performance last time around, and I think they'll cover it in their review this time around.
And yes, the JSS15J build does make a hug difference in fluidity. Definitely worth getting it.
I just ran AndroBench not sure how it compared to other current tablets.
Sequential Read 58.8 MB/s
Sequental Write 14.29 MB/s
Random Read 12.01 MB/s 3074 IOPS(4K)
Random Write .84MB/s 216 IOPS(4K)
vnangia said:
Did you run fstrim ("Lagfix.apk") on your original N7?
For what it's worth, Android Police has benchmarked it and said that it's working reasonably well - better than the original. If this is your concern, though, I would wait for Anandtech to review it. They were extremely concerned about flash performance last time around, and I think they'll cover it in their review this time around.
And yes, the JSS15J build does make a hug difference in fluidity. Definitely worth getting it.
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I have been running fstrim on mine, but it still lags horribly. It worked fine for the first few months. I should have known what the quality is like when I had to return my first one because of screen separation issues, then had the same problems with the second one and just kept it.
I am definitely waiting on the anandtech review, because I trust their attention to detail.
I have two "old" N7s. None has any lag !!!!!
Maybe due to constant wipes/flashes ? I kinda leave my daughter's N7 (~14months old) alone and it doesn't have lag that I can notice.
Anyway, Windows lags overtime too. That's why I do an image backup of a fresh installation. Once in awhile, I restore the image to
get a fresh Windows. It helps a lot.
Jrockttu said:
I have been running fstrim on mine, but it still lags horribly. It worked fine for the first few months. I should have known what the quality is like when I had to return my first one because of screen separation issues, then had the same problems with the second one and just kept it.
I am definitely waiting on the anandtech review, because I trust their attention to detail.
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Good news! http://www.anandtech.com/show/7176/nexus-7-2013-mini-review/4 seems to suggest that not only is the eMMC faster out of the box on the N7-2013 (which I've anecdotally observed), but that they've included fstrim in Android 4.3 for the N7-2012. That suggests that at you should at least see more consistent performance over a longer period of time than the N7-2012 on the new one, and that your N7-2012 should speed itself up a little bit...
So promising, definitely, but I'm guessing if you really wanna know before buying, you'd have to give it a good 4-6 months of someone using it before getting the definitive word on it.
vnangia said:
Good news! http://www.anandtech.com/show/7176/nexus-7-2013-mini-review/4 seems to suggest that not only is the eMMC faster out of the box on the N7-2013 (which I've anecdotally observed), but that they've included fstrim in Android 4.3 for the N7-2012. That suggests that at you should at least see more consistent performance over a longer period of time than the N7-2012 on the new one, and that your N7-2012 should speed itself up a little bit...
So promising, definitely, but I'm guessing if you really wanna know before buying, you'd have to give it a good 4-6 months of someone using it before getting the definitive word on it.
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I totally agree it's faster. Just loaded up my tablet... 435 Meg free. Nice and quick still. No issues. Delete the items using the space up and very quick still. Benchmarked nearly identical.
Performance has been top notch. Games are quick, large ones at that, switching between apps have been quick.
Sent from my Nexus 7 (2013) using XDA Premium HD app
Sluggish?? My nexus 7 32gb has 5gb left of storage after putting my movies and shows and it has no sluggish apps or any slowdown problems.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
i noticed immediately how much faster the new n7 is compared to my old one. its like night & day.
I think the real problem with the old Nexus 7 is Android 4.2.
Like many others who remained on or switched back to 4.1, I can tell my device runs as snappy as ever.
Sure, the memory may not be the best / fastest, but these annoying lag problems people report of are most probably simply due to 4.2 or other misconfigurations. People just don't wanna acknowledge it because they think: "Back to 4.1? Never!" or such.
hasenbein1966 said:
I think the real problem with the old Nexus 7 is Android 4.2.
Like many others who remained on or switched back to 4.1, I can tell my device runs as snappy as ever.
Sure, the memory may not be the best / fastest, but these annoying lag problems people report of are most probably simply due to 4.2 or other misconfigurations. People just don't wanna acknowledge it because they think: "Back to 4.1? Never!" or such.
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Why not custom ROMs...?
I got a cheap no-brand Chinese smartphone. We shall gloss over the wisdom of this purchase, but suffice it to say it turns out it isn't the MTK6582 quadcore with a gig of RAM that was promised. A quick peek in the options revealed a Spreadtrum SC8825 dualcore and 512 megs of RAM running 4.0.3 ICS. This was confirmed by other sources. Long story short I got another phone that's now my main one, but the Chinese one was so cheap that I took the loss as a life lesson and didn't even bother sending it back to Hong Kong, figuring a backup crappy phone is better than no backup at all.
I therefore decided to decrapify the cheapie as much as possible. I found a mention in dx's forum of a newer, better ROM for it with less crap, so I downloaded it and flashed it. Proving that I apparently can't make a good decision about this thing at all, what I now have is a phone whose settings show a "MT6582" CPU that reports itself as having four cores, plus a ludicrous 1.5GB of RAM and running Android 4.2.2. Weird thing is, the apps do in fact see this - for instance, Antutu does report four cores and all that RAM, and other benchmark apps do as well - though two of the cores are mysteriously always inactive. I know that the CPU and RAM are wrong, and I suspect the Android version is faked as well. I suspect this is what's causing some apps to misbehave; they expect specs that aren't there, and freak out and crash as a result.
Thing is, because it was showing the correct specs before the ROM flash, I know for a fact that whatever fakery is going on is exclusively at a software level. I don't know if Android does any checking on the hardware or if it just displays what the ROM's reporting, but either the checks are being bypassed or the ROM is simply reporting the wrong data.
Edit: tried cat /proc/cpuinfo in adb and got this, which shows the fakery to extend there as well.
Which brings the question: having rooted the phone and being able to access it via adb, where in the system partition do I go looking for the fakery so as to get rid of it and have, at least, a phone that reports itself as what it actually is?
Bumpy bump.
I guess some OUYA users tried it for games that demanded more memory, but I'm not a OUYA user.
You can probably chalk this up to boredom, but I'm intrigued by the RAM Expander app by ROEHSOFT.
So I'm wondering if anyone's tried it with AFTV? And since I haven't read about it in these forums at all I'm guessing it's either incompatible or useless, since aftv comes with 2 gb and the app says "up to 2.5 gb"
Basically I'm just curious. I've heard it could put unnecessary strain on your device. Of course if it is safe I don't see the harm in using it. I'm just not certain it'll make a noticeable difference...and it is a bit costly but they offer a trial (I think.)
Like I said. It's a slow night. I'm just looking for some info or an opinion if you have it. Thanks.
If your Fire TV is slow something is wrong. Maybe some high quality streams or videos may jitter, but the function should never be slow. I Have yet to get down lower than 680mb of ram. 2gb of ram and four cores is more than enough for any device and should never be slow.
porkenhimer said:
If your Fire TV is slow something is wrong. Maybe some high quality streams or videos may jitter, but the function should never be slow. I Have yet to get down lower than 680mb of ram. 2gb of ram and four cores is more than enough for any device and should never be slow.
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It's not slow. In fact it's very fast. But a wise man said the more ram the better (2 things there--1. I'm paraphrasing horribly
2. I'm NOT the wise man
I do read here that people oc with hard to measure results. So while it was just an--I'm bored and curious type question, I feel like other people have considered possibilities of speeding things up. I've seen some streaming boxes from China with 4 gb yet the processor, I think, was on par or a bit less powerful than aftv.
I have no need to increase ram. Only scenario I think it MIGHT help (and this is through novice eyes) is if you're using the swap data option for games or perhaps storing thumbnails on usb. Maybe you'd get quicker reads??? But I could be way off there.
You did confirm what I thought--it's not necessary, but I'm thinking more along the lines is there any benefit?
Either way. I doubt I'll test it and definitely don't want to encourage any curious novices like myself to try. It's just if someone has tried it I'd be interested in hearing about it.
I've heard that doing so alleviates some lag that people have been complaining about. Any truth to this?
First of all, please note that disabling decryption requires root, which also requires doing a factory reset. While disabling encryption will certainly speed up the phone, Google has improved encryption in Android Marshmallow so that it doesn't decrease performance as much as it did in Lollipop. You may not notice the difference. As for a factory reset, it will certainly get rid of any lag caused by any changes you made to the phone, but not any caused by Android.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Root and decryption are two different things. It seems you can have either or both. I'm curious to know if decryption carries a better experience myself also. I don't really care about benchmarks, mostly if it eliminates lag.
Every post I've read has said that they haven't noticed a difference between decrypted and encrypted with the 5X - though I haven't seen any benchmarks comparing. If it helps, the Ars Technica review shows how the I/O performance compares to previous phones. (3rd graph set in the Performance section)
I'm not sure whether it is actually a Marshmallow specific feature or not, but the 5X and the 6P are using the cryptography extensions that are part of the ARMv8 instruction set to perform encryption and decryption. The performance hit should be negligible.
Everyone clearly remembers the bad rep the N6 has for this, but it just didn't have proper support for this feature, though it apparently got a bit better later on. Right now it seems like jumping at ghosts for the 5X & 6P.
OP, which android build are you on? I'm wondering if the I build makes a difference. At least one person has returned their phone due to the lag, and had a replacement that didn't have that issue.
i was experiencing random lag with my n5x and I ended decrypting the phone and disabling zram and it made a big difference.
Before doing this, my phone was noticeably laggier and slower than my nexus 6 (decrypted). After decrypting and disabling zram, my n5x is now just as fast as my n6.
I did a speed test like those youtube videos, where you open apps at the same time and see which one finishes first, and now the n6 and n5x both finish opening apps almost exactly at the same time.
My build is mda89e. I don't have any noticeable lag, I was just curious if it would change anything.
How would you characterize the lag if it were present?
I decrypted and rooted, did not notice any difference in daily use. (dont care for benchmarks) I did however notice that the phone boots much faster after decryption.
dwang said:
i was experiencing random lag with my n5x and I ended decrypting the phone and disabling zram and it made a big difference.
Before doing this, my phone was noticeably laggier and slower than my nexus 6 (decrypted). After decrypting and disabling zram, my n5x is now just as fast as my n6.
I did a speed test like those youtube videos, where you open apps at the same time and see which one finishes first, and now the n6 and n5x both finish opening apps almost exactly at the same time.
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How'd you disable zram?
lysm bre said:
How'd you disable zram?
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I'd like to know this as well
Use trickster mod or kernel auditor to disable it.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Hi
Disabling ZRAM will wear out your flash memory quicker, the whole point of ZRAM is to speed up the phone and protect flash memory from hundreds or thousands of tiny write operations.
From the Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram)
zram increases performance by avoiding paging to disk and using a compressed block device in RAM instead, inside which paging takes place until it is necessary to use the swap space on a hard disk drive. Since using RAM is an alternative way to provide swapping on RAM, zram allows Linux to make more use of RAM when swapping/paging is required, especially on older computers with less RAM installed.[1][2]
Even when the cost of RAM is low, zram still offers advantages for low-end hardware devices such as embedded devices and netbooks. Such devices usually use flash-based storage that has limited lifespan due to its nature, which is also used to provide swap space. The reduction in swap usage as a result of using zram effectively reduces the amount of wear placed on such flash-based storage, resulting in prolonging its usable life. Also, using zram results in a significantly reduced I/O for Linux systems that require swapping.[3][4]
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Decryption doesn't make much difference (it will speed up boot times if you had a power on password, but that is simply because it is booting twice to offer us a protected Android environment first to get the password, and this was optional anyway, we get the choice during setup). The whole phone isn't encrypted anyway, just user data, hence overall the difference between encrypted and decrypted isn't that wide.
Unless we have some evidence of the speed up, I'm tempted to put down any suggestion of speed up down to the placebo effect :laugh:
If there is an improvement, It might be as simple as a factory reset is good for the phone due to some optimization undertaken with the flash memory at that time, or recompiling apps, that has been skipped when loading the device with an image at the factory. Perhaps that is why some people are seeing no problems with lag because they've played about first and had a mess around, then did a factory reset at some point to set up their device up as a daily driver.
A true test would be to do factory reset with everything at defaults, run a measured test, then decrypt and remove ZRAM and do a second test.
Regards
Phil
This is wrong. Disabling zram doesn't mean u are adding a swap to the flash, so the kernel isn't going to write to the flash.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk