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I ask because different roms and kernels offer different benefits. Some allow you to overclock. Some allow you to get high Mflops running Linpack.
Mflops is a measure of how fast calculations are being performed (forgive my butchered definition). Mhz is how fast info is being processed. Which is king?
For example, I can underclock my processor to save battery life, but am using a ROM that generates high Mflops in Linpack. OR, I could overclock my processor for performance on a ROM that does not generate high Mflops.
Which would be faster?
My next question is: Do Mflops really matter? From Wikipedia:
"...a hand-held calculator must perform relatively few FLOPS. Each calculation request, such as to add or subtract two numbers, requires only a single operation, so there is rarely any need for its response time to exceed what the operator can physically use. A computer response time below 0.1 second in a calculation context is usually perceived as instantaneous by a human operator,[2] so a simple calculator needs only about 10 FLOPS to be considered functional."
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If once a certain Mflop is reached the calculation seems "instantaneous," then who cares if they are higher than instantaneous? Will we ever really "perceive" the benefit of 50Mflops on our phones?
Anybody that can shed some light on this for me? It would be much appreciated!
For every-day use, you will notice a much larger impact with the higher clock speed.
TheBiles said:
For every-day use, you will notice a much larger impact with the higher clock speed.
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What other use is there? Do you mean that processor speed is more important for speeding up the UI?
I would like to see an intelligent answer to this question with data or at least a solid theory to support it.
i may not be able to provide you with an engineers answer
but imma say... the one that sucks up less battery and provides fast calculations is the winner. so a 500mhz proc running higher flops would be my best decision
heck, i dunno.
That increase in mflops is from jit compiling java apps. The core os and browser are already native as are 3d games. They might speed up some from less java overhead.
MHz is not a measurement of "how fast info is processed", it is the clock speed of the processor. All it signifies is the rate at which the processor performs its operations. 1,000 MHz means the CPU has 1,000,000,000 cycles per second. Some operations will take one cycle to perform, other operations will take several cycles. Most software, unless it is exceptionally well written (in assembly language, which I don't believe can be executed on android) will require millions of CPU operations to perform whatever task it is trying to perform.
Increasing your clock speed while keeping all other things equal will increase all of your computing power and should give a useful gain in performance.
Linpack measures numeric floating point calculations. This is one of many types of tasks that a CPU must perform. Linpack is not an overall measurement of system performance, it's a measure of pure numeric (floating point) processing power. I have no idea how some roms manage to improve Linpack that dramatically, and you'd need to know that in order to truely answer your question. It seems likely to me that it's just a floating point optimization method that gives the higher scores, in this case floating point operations are the only things that would be improved.
The simple answer is that it depends what you want to do with your phone. If you do something with a lot of floating point calculation (3d games are an example, but they would typically use 3d hardware acceleration rather than cpu power, I'm not sure exactly how the snapdragon is designed so I'm not sure that they are not one and the same), you would get more performance out of the system with the higher linpack score. The higher clock speed on the other hand would provide you more overall benefit, it would make everything faster instead of just one area.
mhz doesn't necessarily mean speed. It's a easy, barely valid way to compare speeds to like model and generation processors only.
Platform independent benchmarks are much more important and reliable for judging speed. Therefore, a 500mhz processor that performs 20mflops is faster (at least in floating point operations) than a 1000mhz processor that performs 10 mflops.
Also realize, floating point operations per second are only one small part of a computer's performance. There's Specviewperf for Graphics performance, for instance, or general performance benchmarks like the whetstone or dhrystone.
Lets me see if I can shed some light:
In a basic processor you have 4 general tasks performed: Fetching, Decoding, Execution, and Writeback.
Processor clock rate (despite what people think) is not indicative of speed. It is an indicator of the number of wave cycles per second. Depending on the amount of work per cycle that a processor can do, then determines the "speed" of a processor. For instance an Intel 3ghz processor may be able to execute 100 integer calculations per cycle for a total of 300 billion calculations per second; but an AMD 3ghz processor could be able to do 200 integer calculations per second effectively making it the more efficient and "faster" processor.
A perfect example of this is the Hummingbird vs Snapdragon debate. Two processors at the same speed, yet Samsung claims the Hummingbird is faster due to the higher amount of work per cycle that can be executed.
The next step in the chain then comes when determining the types of calculations performed. An AMD processor may work better with a customized Linux based system that uses a higher level of floating point calculations, while an Intel processor may be better suited to a Windows system that uses a high level non-floating integers.
The next question is this: does your phone, a Linux based system use a high enough level Floating Point operations to make a difference in overall performance?
Google apparently does. However, Floating Point operations are simply a generic benchmark of a single facet of the operating system as a whole. Less wave cycles per second will decrease the overall potential of work, thereby decreasing performance in cases where the work needed to be executed exceeds the number of available waves.
Therefore, I would vote for the higher processor speeds, unless the only programs you execute use Floating Points.
Scientific enough?
Feel free to PM me with questions, or post here...
There are other factors that greatly affect processors as well, such as latency, BUS speed, and RAM available for buffering, but I didn't want to do an information overload.
~Jasecloud4
Sorry, I was assuming we were talking about the same processor (namely, the EVO's) clocked at two different speeds. It would make sense that the slower clock speed vielded more Mflops if it had JIT enabled, but I still think you would find the UI snappier with a higher-clocked ROM without JIT.
I notice a greater speed improvement from jit more than a faster processor speed. Especially with apps that have to load your whole system like autostarts. Battery life however, I'm still learning about. With Damage and being OC'd battery life was great. I'm currently on the latest CM nightly with jit and setcpu. We'll see how that compares.
Sent from my EVO using xda App
Quick off-topic question, then we'll get back on topic. Does the CyanogenMod build have the FPS broken?
TheBiles said:
Sorry, I was assuming we were talking about the same processor (namely, the EVO's) clocked at two different speeds. It would make sense that the slower clock speed vielded more Mflops if it had JIT enabled, but I still think you would find the UI snappier with a higher-clocked ROM without JIT.
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lol you say that as if you dont actually know it...
deep inside we both know it though...
but seriously, both of biles' post on P1 sum up the question from the OP. Trust us
Tilde88 said:
lol you say that as if you dont actually know it...
deep inside we both know it though...
but seriously, both of biles' post on P1 sum up the question from the OP. Trust us
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Click to collapse
I'm a computer engineer, so I at least like to assume that I know what I'm talking about...
This thread is comparing Apples to Oranges. If the number of waves per second on a processor is increased, then the number of floating point calculations will increase, if every other factor remains the same.
It stands to reason that when two systems, one at 500MC/psec is pitted against another at 1000MC/psec with both systems running the same OS and JIT enabled, the one running at 1000MC/psec will have a higher number of floating points calculated.
~Jasecloud4
jasecloud4 said:
This thread is comparing Apples to Oranges. If the number of waves per second on a processor is increased, then the number of floating point calculations will increase, if every other factor remains the same.
It stands to reason that when two systems, one at 500MC/psec is pitted against another at 1000MC/psec with both systems running the same OS and JIT enabled, the one running at 1000MC/psec will have a higher number of floating points calculated.
~Jasecloud4
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True, but I don't think we're talking about identical ROMS, since different ROMS have different abilities to OC and/or run JIT.
dglowe343 said:
I notice a greater speed improvement from jit more than a faster processor speed. Especially with apps that have to load your whole system like autostarts.
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Running the nightly CM Froyo ROM right now and Autostarts is also the only app I have perceived to have a significant speed improvement from JIT. It really is the 2-5x faster that Google claimed JIT would be, but I've yet to see any other apps that benefit as much as Autostarts. Everything else seems the same as a non-JIT 2.1 ROM.
Haven't tried any games since getting the phone though, so can't give any feedback on those.
I think another poster in the CM Nightly rom thread compared his browser to his brothers 2.1 ROM phone, and the browsers were just about the same speed wise as well.
Given that feedback, I'd say for general usage a higher clock speed is better than lower clock speed and higher Mflops.
How has this thread gotten so long without the word "frequency" mentioned once? You guys are making this way too difficult. In 1 GHz, the Hz is the unit for frequency, which just means cycles per second. If you want a simple analogy, imagine a hamster running. His legs are moving up and down and forward at a certain frequency. You're running, too. Let's say that you are running at the same frequency. Who is getting somewhere quicker? Obviously you are because your legs are longer and stronger and you have a better power to weight ratio. Processors can behave the same way. Some simply get more done than others when operating at the same frequency for various reasons. This is why looking at only frequency is useless. Instead, we look at the work that it can do. Flops (floating point operations per second) is one measure of the work that a processor can do. There are many other ways to measure performance. This is just one of them.
Why do we want faster processors? It is partially so that we can be faster, but mostly so that we can do more. If you were to run the OS from phones 10 years ago on the hardware of today, most operations would be essentially instantaneous and with smart power saving features, you wouldn't need to charge it but once a week or less. But today's phones do far more. We need those higher speeds because even when you're sitting there looking at the home screen and "not doing anything", the OS is running dozens of services in the background to keep everything working correctly. Imagine if we were to take a modern engine and put it in an econo car from 30 years ago. It would go like hell and be incredibly efficient but it wouldn't have the safety, comfort, or features that we've come to expect with a modern automobile.
Sprockethead said:
Quick off-topic question, then we'll get back on topic. Does the CyanogenMod build have the FPS broken?
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Yes. I avg 50-55 fps.
Sent from my EVO using xda App
jasecloud4 said:
This thread is comparing Apples to Oranges. If the number of waves per second on a processor is increased, then the number of floating point calculations will increase, if every other factor remains the same.
It stands to reason that when two systems, one at 500MC/psec is pitted against another at 1000MC/psec with both systems running the same OS and JIT enabled, the one running at 1000MC/psec will have a higher number of floating points calculated.
~Jasecloud4
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um yea, but have you ever OC a video card for example?
lets take my old nVidia 8800gtx...
just because I overclock my core speeds doesnt mean that my memory bus will also be up'd, (of course the option is there but for the sake of the thread we'll ignore that)
Sure, now itll be able to process things much faster, but it cannot render as quickly as its ciphering, buffering, processing... etc...
like biles said, up the CPU for snappier user interfacing, up the flops for lets say, vb compiling ...
im not at my most sober points right now, so if you cant comprehend what im saying, think of the 'core' speed as the CPU, and the 'bus' speed as mFLOPS ...
and well gaming and rendering effects can see an improvement through JIT, but only if the said app or whatnot was built with JIT. otherwise it would be like upscaling a standard DVD to 720p. and seeing as how 3d rendering is after all native, how much more gfx tweaks do we need?
Hi I've read some where in this forum that the galaxy S has some I/O problems which are leading to the frequent lags that the phone experiences
Frankly I do not know what I/O is but my question is whether I/O problem is a hardware or software problem. If it is software then fair and well, I'll wait for samsung to ooptimize the software
I have noticed that the benchmark software (Quadrant) runs relatively smoothly all the tests except the I/O test at which it stops for a while before moving to the next test. I dont know if this relates to the I/O problem.
Thanks for your answers
RADLOUNI said:
Hi I've read some where in this forum that the galaxy S has some I/O problems which are leading to the frequent lags that the phone experiences
Frankly I do not know what I/O is but my question is whether I/O problem is a hardware or software problem. If it is software then fair and well, I'll wait for samsung to ooptimize the software
I have noticed that the benchmark software (Quadrant) runs relatively smoothly all the tests except the I/O test at which it stops for a while before moving to the next test. I dont know if this relates to the I/O problem.
Thanks for your answers
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Click to collapse
Theres still no solid proof that its a software issue.
****
EarlZ said:
Theres still no solid proof that its a software issue.
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Click to collapse
****...............then you're saying its hardware ??????
He is not saying its hardware, just that there is no solid proof that its software.
However, based on the amount of working fixes, and reports of great improvements using Froyo I would put money on it being software related.
In fact...I am!
I am ordering a SGS in 3 days when my contract is up for renewal.
Actually, I think everyone's overlooking another obvious possible source of lag: clock-scaling for power conservation. If a phone slows down to 200MHz when it thinks it's inactive, and won't speed up until it sees evidence of activity lasting for 400ms, well... that's 400ms of lag you wouldn't get if the phone were running full-bore 1GHz all the time.
There's even an easy way to test the theory (on a rooted phone, at least) -- take two otherwise-identical phones, fully-charged, root one (while keeping the same rom), then install SetCPU and lock it into 'performance' mode so the phone can't slow down.
If the one locked at 100% CPU speed doesn't lag, and the one that's allowed to slow down to prolong the battery life does... well... there's the answer.
I mention this because I just experienced the night-and-day difference between the CDMA Hero's default power/speed (528MHz max, going down to 250MHz or less when "inactive") and with it locked to 712MHz in performance mode. Pretty much all of my lag problems vanished instantly when I locked it to performance mode. I have a hunch right now that perceived lagginess is almost entirely due to cpu scaling (particularly the time it takes to scale back up, and the criteria used for doing it).
Makes Sense
bitbang3r said:
Actually, I think everyone's overlooking another obvious possible source of lag: clock-scaling for power conservation. If a phone slows down to 200MHz when it thinks it's inactive, and won't speed up until it sees evidence of activity lasting for 400ms, well... that's 400ms of lag you wouldn't get if the phone were running full-bore 1GHz all the time.
There's even an easy way to test the theory (on a rooted phone, at least) -- take two otherwise-identical phones, fully-charged, root one (while keeping the same rom), then install SetCPU and lock it into 'performance' mode so the phone can't slow down.
If the one locked at 100% CPU speed doesn't lag, and the one that's allowed to slow down to prolong the battery life does... well... there's the answer.
I mention this because I just experienced the night-and-day difference between the CDMA Hero's default power/speed (528MHz max, going down to 250MHz or less when "inactive") and with it locked to 712MHz in performance mode. Pretty much all of my lag problems vanished instantly when I locked it to performance mode. I have a hunch right now that perceived lagginess is almost entirely due to cpu scaling (particularly the time it takes to scale back up, and the criteria used for doing it).
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Click to collapse
Very interesting theory, and it makes sense to be frank.
Are there any software out there that would enable me to lock the CPU speed to 1 GHz. I am willing to try this
RADLOUNI said:
Very interesting theory, and it makes sense to be frank.
Are there any software out there that would enable me to lock the CPU speed to 1 GHz. I am willing to try this
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Click to collapse
The guy just told you, root phone and install "Setcpu". That's the only way.
Looking at the benchmarks and the various fixes implemented I tend to lean towards the opinion that it may be hardware related.
hxxp://twitter.com/koush/status/20321413798
I'm not familiar enough with the internals of the phone. If there is faster flash memory located on the phone, then a repartition may be enough to fix the device. If not, then I'm afraid we may be stuck with some lag.
Would anyone be so kind as to explain what I/O is and why the setup in the SGS causes lagging while other android phones with similar specs don't seem to suffer from the same problems?
Thanks in advance
RADLOUNI said:
Very interesting theory, and it makes sense to be frank.
Are there any software out there that would enable me to lock the CPU speed to 1 GHz. I am willing to try this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not very interesting, as it's closer to the truth than you think.
think about it, Android OS is really Linux, the SGS is a miniature PC with phone capability.
everything else aside for the phone part, works just like a PC running Linux.
even on a Windows PC the Duo Core or Quad Core machines that has the Power Saving option enable behaves the same, when they are on iddle mode they run at 50% CPU power or less, and it takes them a fraction of a sec to speed back up, people that don't like that tiny lag, they always set the PC on performance mode, or always on, or simply not install the power saving software that comes with the PC.
we can do the same on the SGS phones, the only downside is that your battery will be out of juice faster than you think.
not to mention the Screen is the most power hungry part in the phone, just like most other phones with large LCD displays
did the install and...
Hi
I just did the install of setcpu and i will monitor the device for sometime before i give some feedback. My initiall impression is that the performance got better.
i set the software to performance mode and kept the limits between 100Mhz and 1000Mhz
i will also try to set the min limit to 800Mhz
Actually, that reminds me... the other thing I've seen cited a lot for causing lag is the way Android manages memory by terminating apps instead of using a swapfile. This can cause lag, because it simply takes time to call onPause()/onStop() and wait for it to finish, compared to unceremoniously just suspending the app and dumping a few megs to the microSD card.
Apparently, manufacturers don't use swapfile because most/all Android phones ship with class 2 microSD flash, in which case it would hurt performance more than it helped.
With that in mind, I'd say the following two things should be tried:
1) Buy a class 6 (or better) microSD card, format a swap partition, and use a rom on a rooted phone that supports it. For the record, swap with class 2 would be detrimental; swap with class 4 would be of minimal benefit; swap with class 6 is a big improvement; class 8 basically doesn't exist, and class 10 in real-world use -- with small, scattered files and random read-writes -- is only a little bit faster than class 6, because at that point the time it takes to deal with protocol matters becomes huge relative to the time it takes to actually DO the flash write (the SD card SPI and 4-bit protocols are *really* ugly, and overwhelmingly optimized for sequential reading and writing of bulk data. The moment you start doing random-access rewrites, their performance -- regardless of class -- goes to hell. That's part of the reason why pro gear still tends to use CompactFlash... it still has to deal with flash a page at a time, but it can access arbitrary tiny chunks of data scattered all over the place a lot faster and with a lot less ceremony than (micro)SD).
2) Install SetCPU and lock the CPU to max speed in "performance" mode.
SetCPU alone seemed to make the biggest difference with regard to keyboard input lag. My guess is that Android (or HTC's modifications for the Hero, Evo, etc... and quite possibly Samsung's too) slow the phone WAY down whenever an input area is displayed, on the theory that "most" apps at that point are just displaying the picture of a keyboard and waiting for the user to mash the screen with his finger. Without SetCPU, Graffiti is almost unusable and makes weird errors. With SetCPU locked to performance mode, Graffiti is almost flawless. It's literally a night-and-day difference.
Kpkpkpkp said:
Would anyone be so kind as to explain what I/O is and why the setup in the SGS causes lagging while other android phones with similar specs don't seem to suffer from the same problems?
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Input/Output -data communication to/from the phone and other devices/networks
It's like when you are writing information to the system that comes from downloads, so whether you are syncing files, downloading from the marketplace or uploading...you are doing I/O....
"In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system (such as a computer), and the outside world possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. "
Wiki
bitbang3r said:
Actually, that reminds me... the other thing I've seen cited a lot for causing lag is the way Android manages memory by terminating apps instead of using a swapfile. This can cause lag, because it simply takes time to call onPause()/onStop() and wait for it to finish, compared to unceremoniously just suspending the app and dumping a few megs to the microSD card.
Apparently, manufacturers don't use swapfile because most/all Android phones ship with class 2 microSD flash, in which case it would hurt performance more than it helped.
With that in mind, I'd say the following two things should be tried:
1) Buy a class 6 (or better) microSD card, format a swap partition, and use a rom on a rooted phone that supports it. For the record, swap with class 2 would be detrimental; swap with class 4 would be of minimal benefit; swap with class 6 is a big improvement; class 8 basically doesn't exist, and class 10 in real-world use -- with small, scattered files and random read-writes -- is only a little bit faster than class 6, because at that point the time it takes to deal with protocol matters becomes huge relative to the time it takes to actually DO the flash write (the SD card SPI and 4-bit protocols are *really* ugly, and overwhelmingly optimized for sequential reading and writing of bulk data. The moment you start doing random-access rewrites, their performance -- regardless of class -- goes to hell. That's part of the reason why pro gear still tends to use CompactFlash... it still has to deal with flash a page at a time, but it can access arbitrary tiny chunks of data scattered all over the place a lot faster and with a lot less ceremony than (micro)SD).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To ask a question and summarize, if you were given a choice of any class card to put in your phone you'd chose a class 6 because of the performance benefit here? Or would you maybe go with a higher class because it'd get greater benefits in other areas? Thanks for the help, again, don't consider money as a factor for the main issue, just trying to learn a bit.
result
bitbang3r said:
Actually, that reminds me... the other thing I've seen cited a lot for causing lag is the way Android manages memory by terminating apps instead of using a swapfile. This can cause lag, because it simply takes time to call onPause()/onStop() and wait for it to finish, compared to unceremoniously just suspending the app and dumping a few megs to the microSD card.
Apparently, manufacturers don't use swapfile because most/all Android phones ship with class 2 microSD flash, in which case it would hurt performance more than it helped.
With that in mind, I'd say the following two things should be tried:
1) Buy a class 6 (or better) microSD card, format a swap partition, and use a rom on a rooted phone that supports it. For the record, swap with class 2 would be detrimental; swap with class 4 would be of minimal benefit; swap with class 6 is a big improvement; class 8 basically doesn't exist, and class 10 in real-world use -- with small, scattered files and random read-writes -- is only a little bit faster than class 6, because at that point the time it takes to deal with protocol matters becomes huge relative to the time it takes to actually DO the flash write (the SD card SPI and 4-bit protocols are *really* ugly, and overwhelmingly optimized for sequential reading and writing of bulk data. The moment you start doing random-access rewrites, their performance -- regardless of class -- goes to hell. That's part of the reason why pro gear still tends to use CompactFlash... it still has to deal with flash a page at a time, but it can access arbitrary tiny chunks of data scattered all over the place a lot faster and with a lot less ceremony than (micro)SD).
2) Install SetCPU and lock the CPU to max speed in "performance" mode.
SetCPU alone seemed to make the biggest difference with regard to keyboard input lag. My guess is that Android (or HTC's modifications for the Hero, Evo, etc... and quite possibly Samsung's too) slow the phone WAY down whenever an input area is displayed, on the theory that "most" apps at that point are just displaying the picture of a keyboard and waiting for the user to mash the screen with his finger. Without SetCPU, Graffiti is almost unusable and makes weird errors. With SetCPU locked to performance mode, Graffiti is almost flawless. It's literally a night-and-day difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HI I tried setCPU at performance mode , and i have to say that it improved the perofrmance A BIT. But i would not say that much has improved.
I guess that the class6 SD card option has more bearing on this issue than CPU speed scaling
RADLOUNI said:
HI I tried setCPU at performance mode , and i have to say that it improved the perofrmance A BIT. But i would not say that much has improved.
I guess that the class6 SD card option has more bearing on this issue than CPU speed scaling
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Click to collapse
Does the SD card lag fix option REQUIRE a class 6 card? That limits the size a bit, doesn't it? What is the biggest class 6 card available?
borchgrevink said:
Does the SD card lag fix option REQUIRE a class 6 card? That limits the size a bit, doesn't it? What is the biggest class 6 card available?
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Click to collapse
16GB
no, it does not need to be Class 6, it depends on the SD card build quality, some Class 2 performs as good as a Class 6
but it's a luck of the draw, if you have a known good Class 2 or Class 4 microSD card, then use it, no need to buy a new one
i suggest you to test the speed of the SD card before you do the mimocan thing
use this app, it's pretty accurate
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=739083
The CPU theory doesn't really explain why symlinking the /dbdata/data folder to /data/data eliminates lag.
hxxp://android.modaco.com/content/samsung-galaxy-s-s-modaco-com/312298/got-the-stalling-problem-rooted-try-this/
It also seems that a 32gb class2 SanDisk card is OK.
http://android.modaco.com/content/s...rt-microsd-cards-that-work-with-mimocans-fix/
borchgrevink said:
It also seems that a 32gb class2 SanDisk card is OK.
http://android.modaco.com/content/s...rt-microsd-cards-that-work-with-mimocans-fix/
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kinda pricey at the moment, aprox $135 for real non fake ones
Do you?
Do you keep it overckocked for a longer period, permanently, or just when/while you need it? How much (exact frequencies would be cool) I'm thinking of OCing mine (both CPU and GPU) since some games like NOVA 3 lag on occasions but not sure how safe/advisable it is.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
I don't think it's needed. I've heard that OC won't help much with gaming, but you can definitely try
I don't yet - I might later. My N7 is still less than a month old.
The device manufacturers (e.g. Asus in this case) have motivations to "not leave anything on the table" when it comes to performance. So, you have to ask yourself - why would they purposely configure things to go slowly?
After all, they need to compete with other handset/tablet manufacturers, who are each in turn free to go out and buy the exact same Tegra SoC (processor) from Nvidia.
At the same time, they know that they will manufacture millions of units, and they want to hold down their product outgoing defect levels and in-the-field product reliability problems to an acceptable level. If they don't keep malfunctions and product infant mortality down to a fraction of a percent, they will suffer huge brand name erosion problems. And that will affect not only sales of the current product, but future products too.
That means that they have to choose a conservative set of operating points which will work for 99+ % of all customer units manufactured across all temperature, voltage, and clock speed ranges. (BTW, Note that Asus didn't write the kernel EDP & thermal protection code - Nvidia did; that suggests that all the device manufacturers take their operating envelope from Nvidia; they really don't even want to know where Nvidia got their numbers)
Some folks take this to mean that the vast majority of units sold can operate safely at higher speeds, higher temperatures, or lower voltages, given that the "as shipped" configuration will allow "weak" or "slow" units to operate correctly.
But look, it's not as if amateurs - hacking kernels in their spare time - have better informed opinions or data about what will work or won't work well across all units. Simply put, they don't know what the statistical test properties of processors coming from the foundry are - and certainly can't tell you what the results will be for an individual unit. They are usually smart folks - but operating completely in the dark in regards to those matters.
About the only thing which can be said in a general way is that as you progressively increase the clock speed, or progressively weaken the thermal regulation, or progressively decrease the cpu core voltage stepping, your chances of having a problem with any given unit (yours) increase. A "problem" might be (1) logic errors which lead to immediate system crashes or hangs, (2) logic errors (in data paths) that lead to data corruption without a crash or (3) permanent hardware failure (usually because of thermal excursions).
Is that "safe"?
Depends on your definition of "safe". If you only use the device for entertainment purposes, "safe" might mean "the hardware won't burn up in the next 2-3 years". Look over in any of the kernel threads - you'll see folks who are not too alarmed about their device freezing or spontaneously rebooting. (They don't like it, but it doesn't stop them from flashing dev kernels).
If you are using the device for work or professional purposes - for instance generating or editing work product - then "safe" might mean "my files on the device or files transiting to and from the cloud won't get corrupted", or "I don't want a spontaneous kernel crash of the device to cascade into a bricked device and unrecoverable files". For this person, the risks are quite a bit higher.
No doubt some tool will come in here and say "I've been overclocking to X Ghz for months now without a problem!" - as if that were somehow a proof of how somebody else's device will behave. It may well be completely true - but a demonstration on a single device says absolutely nothing about how someone else's device will behave. Even Nvidia can't do that.
There's a lot of pretty wild stuff going on in some of the dev kernels. The data that exists as a form of positive validation for these kernels is a handful of people saying "my device didn't crash". That's pretty far removed from the rigorous testing performed by Nvidia (98+% fault path coverage on statistically significant samples of devices over temperature, voltage, and frequency on multi-million dollar test equipment.)
good luck!
PS My phone has it's Fmax OC'ed by 40% from the factory value for more than 2 years. That's not a proof of anything really - just to point out that I'm not anti-OC'ing. Just trying to say - nobody can provide you any assurances that things will go swimmingly on your device at a given operating point. It's up to you to decide whether you should regard it as "risky".
Wow thanks for your educational response, I learned something. Great post! I will see if I will over clock it or not since I can play with no problems at all, it is just that it hics up when there is too much stuff around. Thanks again!
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
With the proper kernel its really not needed. Havent really seen any difference,aside from benchmark scores(which can be achieved without oc'ing)
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium HD app
Yes, I run mine at 1.6 peak.
I've come to the Android world from the iOS world - the world of the iPhone, the iPad, etc.
One thing they're all brilliant at is responsive UI. The UI, when you tap it, responds. Android, prior to 4.1, didn't.
Android, with 4.1 and 4.2, does. Mostly.
You can still do better. I'm running an undervolted, overclocked M-Kernel, with TouchDemand governor, pushing to 2 G-cores on touch events.
It's nice and buttery, and renders complex PDF files far faster than stock when the cores peak at 1.6.
I can't run sustained at 1.6 under full load - it thermal throttles with 4 cores at 100% load. But I can get the peak performance for burst demands like page rendering, and I'm still quite efficient on battery.
There's no downside to running at higher frequencies as long as you're below stock voltages. Less heat, more performance.
If you start pushing the voltages past spec, yeah, you're likely into "shortening the lifespan." But if you can clock it up, and keep the voltages less than the stock kernel, there's really not much downside. And the upside is improved page rendering, improved PDF rendering, etc.
Gaming performance isn't boosted that much as most games aren't CPU bound. That said, I don't game. So... *shrug*.
Bitweasil said:
I can't run sustained at 1.6 under full load - it thermal throttles with 4 cores at 100% load.
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@Bitweasil
Kinda curious about something (OP, allow me a slight thread-jack!).
in an adb shell, run this loop:
# cd /sys/kernel/debug/tegra_thermal
# while [ 1 ] ; do
> sleep 1
> cat temp_tj
> done
and then run your "full load".
What temperature rise and peak temperature do you see? Are you really hitting the 95C throttle, or are you using a kernel where that is altered?
I can generate (w/ a mutli-threaded native proggy, 6 threads running tight integer loops) only about a 25C rise, and since the "TJ" in mine idles around 40C, I get nowhere near the default throttle temp. But I am using a stock kernel, so it immediately backs off to 1.2 Ghz when multicore comes on line.
Same sort of thing with Antutu or OpenGL benchmark suites (the latter of which runs for 12 minutes) - I barely crack 60C with the stock kernel.
?
bftb0
The kernel I'm using throttles around 70C.
I can't hit that at 1200 or 1300 - just above that I can exceed the temps.
I certainly haven't seen 95C.
M-Kernel throttles down to 1400 above 70C, which will occasionally get above 70C at 1400, but not by much.
Bitweasil said:
The kernel I'm using throttles around 70C.
I can't hit that at 1200 or 1300 - just above that I can exceed the temps.
I certainly haven't seen 95C.
M-Kernel throttles down to 1400 above 70C, which will occasionally get above 70C at 1400, but not by much.
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Thanks. Any particular workload that does this, or is the throttle pretty easy to hit with arbitrary long-running loads?
Odp: Do you overclock your N7?
I'll never OC a quadcore phone/tablet, I'm not stupid. This is enough for me.
Sent from my BMW E32 using XDA App
I've over clocked my phone, but not my N7. I've got a Galaxy Ace with a single core 800MHz processor OC'd to 900+. The N7 with its quad core 1.3GHz is more than enough for doing what I need it to do. Using franco.Kernel and everything is smooth and lag-free. No need for me to overclock
Sent From My Awesome AOSPA3.+/franco.Kernel Powered Nexus 7 With XDA Premium
Impossible to do so can't even get root but did manage to unlock the bootloader
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
CuttyCZ said:
I don't think it's needed. I've heard that OC won't help much with gaming, but you can definitely try
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I'm not a big OC'er, but I do see a difference in some games when I OC the GPU. It really depends on the game and what is the performance bottleneck. If the app is not Kernel bound than an OC won't make much difference. Must games are I/O and GPU bound.
Sent from my N7 using XDA Premium
Dirty AOKP 3.5 <&> m-kernel+ a34(t.10)
I've overclocked all of my devices since my first HTC hero. I really don't see a big deal with hardware life.
I know that this n7 runs games better at 1.6ghz than at 1.3ghz.
First thing I do when I get a new device is swap recovery and install aokp with the latest and greatest development kernel. Isn't that why all this great development exists? For us to make our devices better and faster? I think so. I'd recommend aokp and m-kernel to every nexus 7 owner. I wish more people would try non-stock.
scottx . said:
I've overclocked all of my devices since my first HTC hero. I really don't see a big deal with hardware life.
I know that this n7 runs games better at 1.6ghz than at 1.3ghz.
First thing I do when I get a new device is swap recovery and install aokp with the latest and greatest development kernel. Isn't that why all this great development exists? For us to make our devices better and faster? I think so. I'd recommend aokp and m-kernel to every nexus 7 owner. I wish more people would try non-stock.
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Do you mean the pub builds of AOKP? Or Dirty AOKP
Ty
bftb0 said:
Thanks. Any particular workload that does this, or is the throttle pretty easy to hit with arbitrary long-running loads?
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Stability Test will do it reliably. Other workloads don't tend to run long enough to trigger it that I've seen.
And why is a quadcore magically "not to be overclocked"? Single threaded performance is still a major bottleneck.
Bitweasil said:
Stability Test will do it reliably. Other workloads don't tend to run long enough to trigger it that I've seen.
And why is a quadcore magically "not to be overclocked"? Single threaded performance is still a major bottleneck.
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Hi Bitweasil,
I fooled around a little more with my horrid little threaded cpu-blaster code. Combined simultaneously with something gpu-intensive such as the OpenGL ES benchmark (which runs for 10-12 minutes), I observed peak temps (Tj) of about 83C with the stock kernel. That's a ridiculous load, though. I can go back and repeat the test, but from 40C it probably takes several minutes to get there. No complaints about anything in the kernel logs other than the EDP down-clocking, but that happens just as soon as the second cpu comes on line, irrespective of temperature. With either of the CPU-only or GPU-only stressors, the highest I saw was a little over 70C. (But, I don't live in the tropics!)
To your question - I don't think there is much risk of immediate hardware damage, so long as bugs don't creep into throttling code, or kernel bugs don't cause a flaw that prevents the throttling or down-clocking code from being serviced while the device is running in a "performance" condition. And long-term reliability problems will be no worse if the cumulative temperature excursions of the device are not higher than what than what they would be using stock configurations.
The reason that core voltages are stepped up at higher clock rates (& more cores online) is to preserve both logic and timing closure margins across *all possible paths* in the processor. More cores running means that the power rails inside the SoC package are noisier - so logic levels are a bit more uncertain, and faster clocking means there is less time available per clock for logic levels to stabilize before data gets latched.
Well, Nvidia has reasons for setting their envelope the way they do - not because of device damage considerations, but because they expect to have a pretty small fraction of devices that will experience timing faults *anywhere along millions of logic paths* under all reasonable operating conditions. Reducing the margin, whether by undervolting at high frequencies, or increasing max frequencies, or allowing more cores to run at peak frequencies will certainly increase the fraction of devices that experience logic failures along at least one path (out of millions!). Whether or not OC'ing will work correctly on an individual device can not be predicted in advance; the only thing that Nvidia can estimate is a statistical quantity - about what percent of devices will experience logic faults under a given operating conditon.
Different users will have different tolerance for faults. A gamer might have very high tolerance for random reboots, lockups, file system corruption, et cetera. Different story if you are composing a long email to your boss under deadline and your unit suddenly turns upside down.
No doubt there (theoretically) exists an overclocking implementation where 50% of all devices would have a logic failure within (say) 1 day of operation. That kind of situation would be readily detected in a small number of forum reports. But what about if it were a 95%/5% situation? One out of twenty dudes report a problem, and it is dismissed with some crazy recommendation such as "have you tried re-flashing your ROM?". And fault probability accumulates with time, especially when the testing loads have very poor path coverage. 5% failure over one day will be higher over a 30 day period - potentially much higher.
That's the crux of the matter. Processor companies spend as much as 50% of their per-device engineering budgets on test development. In some cases they actually design & build a second companion processor (that rivals the complexity of the first!) whose only function is to act as a test engine for the processor that will be shipped. Achieving decent test coverage is a non-trivial problem, and it is generally attacked with extremely disciplined testing over temperature/voltage/frequency with statistically significant numbers of devices - using test-vector sets (& internal test generators) that are known to provide a high level of path coverage. The data that comes from random ad-hoc reports on forums from dudes running random applications in an undisciplined way on their OC'ed units is simply not comparable. (Even "stressor" apps have very poor path coverage).
But, as I said, different folks have different tolerance for risk. Random data corruption is acceptable if the unit in question has nothing on it of value.
I poked my head in the M-kernel thread the other day; I thought I saw a reference to "two units fried" (possibly even one belonging to the dev?). I assume you are following that thread ... did I misinterpret that?
cheers
I don't disagree.
But, I'd argue that the stock speeds/voltages/etc are designed for the 120% case - they're supposed to work for about 120% of shipped chips. In other words, regardless of conditions, the stock clocks/voltages need to be reliable, with a nice margin on top.
Statistically, most of the chips will be much better than this, and that's the headroom overclocking plays in.
I totally agree that you eventually will get some logic errors, somewhere, at some point. But there's a lot of headroom in most devices/chips before you get to that point.
My use cases are heavily bursty. I'll do complex PDF rendering on the CPU for a second or two, then it goes back to sleep while I read the page. For this type of use, I'm quite comfortable with having pushed clocks hard. For sustained gaming, I'd run it lower, though I don't really game.
With Project Svelte, the immediate successor of Project Butter that came with Jelly Bean with a similar aim, though far less concerned with the performance of truly low-end devices.
But exactly what is Project Svelte? Well, for starters, Google has decoupled the Android core from the so-called Google Experience, and it's made both of these lighter. Android's memory footprint has been slimmed down by removing unessential background services and, simultaneously, the memory consumption of features that you can't really live without has been reduced. Moreover, the wide array of Google services, such as YouTube and Chrome, have also undergone a similar treatment, and should now prove just as powerful, but more slender. Further still, core system processes will now protect system memory from apps far more jealously, especially if those consume large amounts of RAM. And last, but not least, Android will now launch multiple services sequentially, instead of at once, with the aim of trimming peak memory demands, thus improving stability.
Still on the topic of optimizations, it's worth pointing out that Google won't be approaching this rather complex issue on its own, isntead, it's enlisting the help of manufacturers and developers both. To do so, Google has introduced a number of tools that will help the next gen of devices take advantage of optimizations such as zRAM swapping, kernel samepage merging and the ability to tune the cache of the Dalvik JIT code. Other tools include a new API that will allow developers to make their apps really flexible, by letting them tweak or completely disable high memory features, depending on the specific device, and it's relative memory. Additionally, devs will be able to take advantage of the new procstats and meminfo tools, along with a more widely supported RenderScript Compute (GPU accelaration), which has also seen some performance gains with Android 4.4 KitKat.
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http://www.phonearena.com/news/Andr...rtably-on-512MB-RAM-devices-heres-how_id49099
To summarize:
1-Android uses less memory because developers reduced its core memory footprint
2-Android uses less memory because services have been decoupled from the Core thus allowing for lighter "Android"
3-Services are no longer launched in parallel but sequentially thus allowing for less PEAK memory usage
4-Low level tools for developers allowing better handling of cache, RAM memory pages, etc.
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Since android 13 upgrade (wasn't amazing before but certainly was much worse since 13) i've been getting really inconsistent gaming performance.
But not in a way that dipped the FPS -- as system status in games was showing good fps but the game felt jittery / laggy and overall very inconsistent.
Been driving me nuts to the point where i'd almost stopped gaming on it because it was so disappointing. Was going to send my phone into Oppo for warranty claim it was that bad.
Decided to try and be a little more analytical about it and look at the individual element scores on antutu and i saw my RAM performance was pretty bad.
Played with a few settings but nothing seemed to do much until i remember about Ram expansion (using storage as back-fill ram) and tried turning that off (reboot after).
Well, my antutu score has gone from 720k to 806k in normal mode and ~830k in performance mode (since antutu isn't recognised as a game to automatically do that)
Games are now totally smooth again, no lag. It's almost like a new phone.
My thoughts are that the android implementation of this either doesn't properly keep active high-demand stuff from swapping into this expanded ram or that android just doesn't handle the scheduling of this properly.
Either way -- for me its way more valuable turned off for overall performance and stability.
Did the same already some time ago, can not understand why in the first place. that a phone with this huge amount of ram already factory installed, would need another 3 GB of ram.
Mr.Anderson01 said:
Did the same already some time ago, can not understand why in the first place. that a phone with this huge amount of ram already factory installed, would need another 3 GB of ram.
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Technically it doesn't i guess... maybe for a ram constrained phone ... but then if it's costing performance cos of a bad implementation then it's a lose-lose position.
My phone is noticeably more consistent on performance with this feature disabled.