Hey guys, first post on the XDA forums so I'm hoping i don't duck this up or post in the wrong sub-forum.
I'm looking for the best gaming/performance centered ROM available for the Samsung S4 -i9505. I've used THOR for a while, but moved onto WizCyan to test it out and I had the same lingering feeling of a lack of RAM that caused stuttering in-game, especially with WizCyan. I'd like to ask what you guys use for gaming/your daily driver and how good it is performance-wise. The most intensive stuff I do on the phone is usually NFS No Limits on High-Medium graphics settings. I'd love to get some community input on what is valued as a primarily performance centered ROM. If said ROM also had a feature or way to switch to a more battery centered mode,that'd be fantastic too but I understand if such a unicorn does not exist. Any and all input is appreciated, thank you!
Side Note: I have read some of the suggested threads, but they're all quite old and lots of ROMs have been created and updated, so I wanted to see what the scene is like now.
If you're looking for gaming performance, an AOSP-based ROM such as the ROMs from JDCTeam is probably best. The ROMs you've tried, while they all have had much of the annoying software from Samsung stripped out of them, all have the Touchwiz skin still applied, which has been demonstrably proven to have a negative effect on performance.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
If you're looking for gaming performance, an AOSP-based ROM such as the ROMs from JDCTeam is probably best. The ROMs you've tried, while they all have had much of the annoying software from Samsung stripped out of them, all have the Touchwiz skin still applied, which has been demonstrably proven to have a negative effect on performance.
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Thank you for the reply! I'll definitely check out some of the JDC team releases, hopefully Shark Jungle has some reviews on them. Have you tested any? If so, which one did you prefer most? Thanks again for the advice!
Coleh said:
Thank you for the reply! I'll definitely check out some of the JDC team releases, hopefully Shark Jungle has some reviews on them. Have you tested any? If so, which one did you prefer most? Thanks again for the advice!
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Yes, Shark Jungle did test some. But he thinks TouchWiz ROMs have better gaming performance than CM or AOSP ROMs.
I would take that with a grain of salt, but it's up to you to decide.
Anyway, there aren't many JDCTeam ROMs, it's just Android versions that differ. The main branches are Optimized CM and AOSP.
I would recommend the AOSP branch, as it seems generally faster than CM. It may be because AOSP is less cluttered, while CM has lots of CM stuff that may bog down the ROM.
JDCTeam ROMs come bundled with a custom kernel. It has 5 predefined profiles, ranging from extreme battery to extreme performance (that's the profile names). The extreme performance profile is almost the same as setting your CPU Governor to Performance. You get the same speed, but with the advantage of your CPU not being stuck on the max frequency.
And then there's Slim ROMs. Similar to the AOSP described above, minus the custom kernel. But you can use Kernel Adiutor to adjust some of the stock kernel settings and create a performance profile similar to the one found in the JDCTeam kernel.
GDReaper said:
Yes, Shark Jungle did test some. But he thinks TouchWiz ROMs have better gaming performance than CM or AOSP ROMs.
I would take that with a grain of salt, but it's up to you to decide.
Anyway, there aren't many JDCTeam ROMs, it's just Android versions that differ. The main branches are Optimized CM and AOSP.
I would recommend the AOSP branch, as it seems generally faster than CM. It may be because AOSP is less cluttered, while CM has lots of CM stuff that may bog down the ROM.
JDCTeam ROMs come bundled with a custom kernel. It has 5 predefined profiles, ranging from extreme battery to extreme performance (that's the profile names). The extreme performance profile is almost the same as setting your CPU Governor to Performance. You get the same speed, but with the advantage of your CPU not being stuck on the max frequency.
And then there's Slim ROMs. Similar to the AOSP described above, minus the custom kernel. But you can use Kernel Adiutor to adjust some of the stock kernel settings and create a performance profile similar to the one found in the JDCTeam kernel.
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Thank you for your help mate! I went AOSP, the RAM availability is great. After switching to F2FS boot times and game loadup times are also incredibly fast. NFS Gameplay is smooth too. Thanks for everything!
Coleh said:
Thank you for your help mate! I went AOSP, the RAM availability is great. After switching to F2FS boot times and game loadup times are also incredibly fast. NFS Gameplay is smooth too. Thanks for everything!
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I would be careful with F2FS. I had data loss while using that format. And random phone wipes, including internal storage.
This happened only occasionally during a reboot.
If you don't reboot very often, chances are lower of it happening, but there still is a small risk.
Hi guys which Rom is good for gaming Thor or wizcyan? Thx
Neither, as Touchwiz affects gaming performance.
Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Neither, as Touchwiz affects gaming performance.
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Which rom do you prefere for me?
Read the thread.
Related
In terms of stability, built-in features, battery life, performance and anything else important that I might have forgotten, which of the below three ROMs is top dog? Just so you know, I plan on flashing the non-overclocked GPU version of _motley's Linaro kernel regardless of which ROM I choose.
Paranoid Android
Glazed
JR6
krion64 said:
In terms of stability, built-in features, battery life, performance and anything else important that I might have forgotten, which of the below three ROMs is top dog? Just so you know, I plan on flashing the non-overclocked GPU version of _motley's Linaro kernel regardless of which ROM I choose.
Paranoid Android
Glazed
JR6
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I'm running paranoid myself but the best advice I've read when people ask this question is try them all. What's best means to me might not be what it means to you. I've tried all three myself and they were all stable, I like paranoid because of the per app density feature it has. It was just updated again today btw. Motleys kernel is awesome I like the one without gpuoc. Good luck, happy flashing
Thanks for the advice. Also, I have another question for anybody who can answer. These three ROMs seem to be mostly similar in terms of features, so it's actually kind of hard telling the differences. So, what I'm trying to ask is, what sets each ROM apart?
krion64 said:
Paranoid Android
Glazed
JR6
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Does anyone know the answer to this? I used JR5, EOS now PA. They are all very similar, as you would expect. PA has more config options for setting up tablet UI which is key for me and the reason I use it currently (with Nova Launcher).
I liked JRX Roms as they have lots of apps inbuilt that the others dont, ie working Flash, GAPPS etc.
I'm also using Trinity kernel which is working great, again, I have not noticed much difference between them all.
Try them and take your pick
I say EOS with Mortley kernel
I'm on stock 4.2.2 at the minute but I've rooted / unlocked the bootloader. What I want to know is which ROM(s) / kernel(s) would be best to improve battery life but also add additional features? I know everyone will have their preferences but there's quite a few ROMs out there and I don't have lots of time to reflash over and over so I'd like to know which ROMs and kernels are generally considered as the best for additional features and battery life.
Thank you.
FTMDan said:
I'm on stock 4.2.2 at the minute but I've rooted / unlocked the bootloader. What I want to know is which ROM(s) / kernel(s) would be best to improve battery life but also add additional features? I know everyone will have their preferences but there's quite a few ROMs out there and I don't have lots of time to reflash over and over so I'd like to know which ROMs and kernels are generally considered as the best for additional features and battery life.
Thank you.
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Lots of good rom`s and kernels available. You have to try them out yourself and keep the one`s you like most
I was thinking of flashing Franco's kernel and staying on stock. How do you find it?
The best ROM and kernel is what YOU like the best. This will be closed in 3 2......
Sent from my Nexus 4
FTMDan said:
I was thinking of flashing Franco's kernel and staying on stock. How do you find it?
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For me it works great. Good batterylife, color/gamma control and performance :good:
While most people will tell you that ytou have to find out for your own because everyone is diffferent. Thats true, however it looks like your are asking for our personal opinion.
Paranoid Android hands down. The most innovative ROM out right now. Other have now started to inlcude some of their features in their roms, so that tells you a lot.
Cyanogen- This WAS the most innovative ROM before PA, its still however the most stable when it comes to bugs and tweaks.
AOKP or Carbon These 2 roms are awesome however Carbon is made from CM i believe with their own twist and tweaks.
Thats my take on it, howver take a look at this article, its a great read on the top Roms and why.
The kernel matters most for battery life. Franco kernel is the best one I've tried for battery life. Stock rom or cyanogenmod seems to be a tiny bit better for battery life but honestly it might just be a placebo effect. What I do like about cyanogenmod is the fact that you can adjust the auto-brightness levels of the screen. So if you want a dimmer version of auto-brightness you can do it and save battery life.
I have been using custom rom on this device since i bought it and took it out of the box (4-5 months ago).
To be honest and coming from other "superior" device, in terms of performance this device never disappointed me, for me it's like a "diesel car", you'll not have the power that maybe you are able to get whether you have a device powered by a Snapdragon 800-35 series. But this device ever performs very decently in every task, without major troubles.
Today i used my girlfriend's G4 Plus Dual-SIM XT1641 (totally stock, non-rooted, no anything, besides the lot of trash apps/games and Google bloatware that she has installed) and surprisingly i felt it much more "light/fast", for example when scrolling. So, i decided to make comparissions using the so much hated benchmark test (Geekbench 4 specifically, and AnTuTu 3D).
My results were:
Stock Nougat (7.0 June security patch):
Single-core: 742
Multi-Core: 3081
Stock LineageOS 14.1 (without modifications):
Single-Core: 662
Multi-core: 2314
The stock G4 plus did the test 5 minutes more quickly than the other one (mine XT1641 Single-SIM).
Then, i did the same test with AnTuTu, the result was similar, the stock one scored like a 20% better, and ended the test 3-4 minutes first. But the important thing for me was in the graphics test (GPU), honestly the stock one destroyed my device (running 14.1) in terms of graphic smoothness (FPS). The graphics in my device were really slow and i could see this slowdown in real time (running the test in both devices side to side, in the same time) [5/7FPS less than the stock one].
I use LineageOS 14.1 with his stock kernel, as it comes.
The obvious question:
[Question]: Why this happens?
I ask this because in every device that i owned the results were the opposite, i mean: CyanogenMod/LineageOS was pretty superior than the Stock rom (in terms of performance and even in benchmarking tests).
Don't get me wrong and think that i am complaining about the custom rom performance, in fact, i love (and i'm currently using) custom roms. I am just curious about the reasons of these results.
Your opinions are really welcome.
I never use or trust benchmarks. I always go off by what feels better to me.
reCoded said:
I never use or trust benchmarks. I always go off by what feels better to me.
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Definitely that's te way to go. :good:
I can also say that stock is alot smoother than the custom ROMs. Gaming performance is also better and I've even tried asking why custom ROMs gaming performance suffers compared to stock but no one seems to respond
I've tried LOS and ViperOS on my G4 Plus (XT1640 2gb RAM). The performance was much better with both custom ROM's, It was very snappy, held more apps in memory and was a more pleasant experience. Stock ROM perfoemance is not bad, but I see very clearly that the apps won't stay im memory for long and often I have scrolling lag when using facebook on chrome. For gaming I havent noticed any diference whatsoever.
danilomrx said:
I've tried LOS and ViperOS on my G4 Plus (XT1640 2gb RAM). The performance was much better with both custom ROM's, It was very snappy, held more apps in memory and was a more pleasant experience. Stock ROM perfoemance is not bad, but I see very clearly that the apps won't stay im memory for long and often I have scrolling lag when using facebook on chrome. For gaming I havent noticed any diference whatsoever.
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What games have you tried?.
I've tried bleach brave souls and I get seriously bad lag compared to stock.
Although you are right about stock having bad memory management
yes even i feel the same in custom roms while scrolling or even while pulling the quick settings bar there is a lag but stock rom is pretty smooth and even the battery backup on stock is better than many custom roms but for most of the people thats ok and they dont care about these things and they like the customizations and theme support and many other features that are not available in stock
i personally feel like i can literally see the battery percentage going down in custom roms too fast
krishna8691 said:
yes even i feel the same in custom roms while scrolling or even while pulling the quick settings bar there is a lag but stock rom is pretty smooth and even the battery backup on stock is better than many custom roms but for most of the people thats ok and they dont care about these things and they like the customizations and theme support and many other features that are not available in stock
i personally feel like i can literally see the battery percentage going down in custom roms too fast
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Try the aosp one's like omni, aosp extended, ultra-caf, du, cypher (btw official 4.1 is out), pure nexus, cosmic they are smoother than most of the lineage based one's.
In my opinion, I'm thinking that if you root the phone the performance decreases. The more you do, the more the performance decreases. Stock roms all always better for me.
Will you install an stock rom or stay in linage??
andres88_ said:
In my opinion, I'm thinking that if you root the phone the performance decreases. The more you do, the more the performance decreases. Stock roms all always better for me.
Will you install an stock rom or stay in linage??
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I am on stock right now, rooted with EX. I obtained the same results as the post (with Geekbench 4). I know that the score isn't really important, anyway, i will use this rom a couple of days, to take better conclusions.
I notice that on stock, I get 5-7 hours of SoT, but on any ROM, even stock aosp, I get 3-4 hours. Quite strange.
I am by no means an expert on this but maybe the Moto stock rom is just much better than most stock ROMs. Where a custom rom may show performance improvements over other custom ROMs, they aren't an improvement over other stick ROMs? I don't know . I think the developers of ROMs for our device have done a fantastic job and I enjoy the customizations the ROMs offer. After having hard bricked my last phone twice (unable to bring back to life the last time), I am sticking with a locked bootloader and stock for awhile. Don't want to have to replace my phone again.
Multi-core: 2330 with Cypheros 7.1.2
MisterSteve said:
I am by no means an expert on this but maybe the Moto stock rom is just much better than most stock ROMs. Where a custom rom may show performance improvements over other custom ROMs, they aren't an improvement over other stick ROMs? I don't know . I think the developers of ROMs for our device have done a fantastic job and I enjoy the customizations the ROMs offer. After having hard bricked my last phone twice (unable to bring back to life the last time), I am sticking with a locked bootloader and stock for awhile. Don't want to have to replace my phone again.
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Totally agreed, developers like Silesh.Nair, Jleeblanch, vache, and others did amazing jobs here. We are lucky to have devs of that level, because we have ROMs of quality and variety for this device. Thanks for your great opinion.
lCrD512 said:
Try the aosp one's like omni, aosp extended, ultra-caf, du, cypher (btw official 4.1 is out), pure nexus, cosmic they are smoother than most of the lineage based one's.
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I installed OmniROM yesterday, used it for a while, and yes, it runs much more smoother than the LOS based ROMs i've tried, also i did the Geekbench 4 test, the results were: Multi-Core: 3081, Single-Core: 738, hence, the test is not lying (same results as the stock rom).
Still i do not know why the performance of the LOS baseds rom is not like the AOSP ones. I am not saying this only based in the results of a test.
I am currently on RR because i love his customization and features, but i see the difference when i try AOSP in terms of overall performance.
moonlightdrive said:
I installed OmniROM yesterday, used it for a while, and yes, it runs much more smoother than the LOS based ROMs i've tried, also i did the Geekbench 4 test, the results were: Multi-Core: 3081, Single-Core: 738, hence, the test is not lying (same results as the stock rom).
Still i do not know why the performance of the LOS baseds rom is not like the AOSP ones. I am not saying this only based in the results of a test.
I am currently on RR because i love his customization and features, but i see the difference when i try AOSP in terms of overall performance.
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Which ROM did you recommend for more battery and performance? Based on your device and your experience.
champagne66601 said:
Which ROM did you recommend for more battery and performance? Based on your device and your experience.
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OmniROM, without a doubt. I tried plenty of roms, it's seems to be the only purely AOSP based. This rom performs like the stock one but whit the plus of a better battery life.
The only bad thing about Omni could be that is has not all the features that the LOS based ones offers, like Invicta or RR.
well, that's right. for me stock rom also feels a lot smoother faster and battery life is incredible. best stock software i've seen from motorola. i like custom roms and all the possibilities they bring, and we already have some very stable like invicta, or LOS. but i love this phone on stock (and debloated hehehe)
Simple Question. Got Nuclearom on my phone and am quite happy with it. But I am thinking of switching to DarkRom, Candy or AOSPX. What were you experiences, which performed best etc?
For the g model dark ROM does a good job with the Los thread modem, no call bug, viper works and the delta updates are a great feature too. Battery life is good too.
No lags !!!
Oddshotshotbox said:
Simple Question. Got Nuclearom on my phone and am quite happy with it. But I am thinking of switching to DarkRom, Candy or AOSPX. What were you experiences, which performed best etc?
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Nuclea. all of the others had performance problems not even fixable with a custom kernel. Some (Lineage, RR) had terrible GPU handling when I used them, but that was like 5 or 6 months ago, so maybe they ironed that out. Thing is, radioactive kernel has a very nicely tweaked governor (when it doesn't break your touchscreen, that is )
I'd say you should backup your current install on an SD card if you want to try something else, because you might as well want to go back. Most other custom ROMs are carbon copies of each other for some reason. For instance, RR looks like AICP, Nuclea like those but with less tweaks... and the difference is mostly the maintainer and the name (usually even the 'goal' of the ROM is the same, to "provide with the best tweakability and functionality while keeping performance best" or something on the lines).
Choose an username... said:
Nuclea. all of the others had performance problems not even fixable with a custom kernel. Some (Lineage, RR) had terrible GPU handling when I used them, but that was like 5 or 6 months ago, so maybe they ironed that out. Thing is, radioactive kernel has a very nicely tweaked governor (when it doesn't break your touchscreen, that is )
I'd say you should backup your current install on an SD card if you want to try something else, because you might as well want to go back. Most other custom ROMs are carbon copies of each other for some reason. For instance, RR looks like AICP, Nuclea like those but with less tweaks... and the difference is mostly the maintainer and the name (usually even the 'goal' of the ROM is the same, to "provide with the best tweakability and functionality while keeping performance best" or something on the lines).
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Feel you man, Tried Carbon and RR before Nuclea and got disappointed, very slow and buggy in comparison. But DarkPixel looks promising and people are reporting good speeds and more/better features.
Is someone around here who tested DarkPixel with Radioactive Kernel? Or did some other kernel perform better? Or might it even be the best to stick with the Kernel of the ROM? So many options, so few differences :/
coremania said:
For the g model dark ROM does a good job with the Los thread modem, no call bug, viper works and the delta updates are a great feature too. Battery life is good too.
No lags !!!
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Nice to hear that, might try it out. Any Costum Kernel Attempts or nah?
Oddshotshotbox said:
Nice to hear that, might try it out. Any Costum Kernel Attempts or nah?
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No, not necessary, the kernel that comes with rom does perform absolutely fine in my eyes. Only modded a bit with kernel auditor, read ahead, no big changes. Viper aroma 2.94 and lawnchair as launcher, just using the black ui, no substratum. The rom is smooth, lagfree and not overloaded with features. For smooth browsing I use the chromium swe
here from xda. Magisk 14 with unified hosts just work fine.
No saftey pass issue.
This are all personal choices of course, but it gives me a good performance.
Overall I find there's very little differences between all the lineage based roms. I use aokp with llama kernel but I may switch again if I can bothered. I use war mod too.
Used all of those ROMs for some time and finally settled with DarkRom. It is stable, fast, got its own color engine, so I replaced substratum with daily issues and never ending updates. Delta updates is another plus. I "customized" it by adding viper4android, Omniswitch and Phonograph music player and that's it. I play with the kernel, but return to the built in one, which is unbeatable smooth.
Im a tad confused... are there just enough differences between stock and LOS/AOSP roms that it really warrants separate kernels?
Stock seems pretty darn close to LOS to me...
kevp75 said:
Im a tad confused... are there just enough differences between stock and LOS/AOSP roms that it really warrants separate kernels?
Stock seems pretty darn close to LOS to me...
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Far more to it than the differences on the surface that you see. With regards to your concern about kernels. Most of the Pie rom's here use EAS kernels which at this point have made the default HMP kernel on stock fairly meaningless. Performance and battery life has become so much better now that the most used kernel Artemis has matured alot. Alongside Neutrino as well. Either of these kernels offer better performance and battery life over stock. So this won't be a different in features or amount of apps installed but rather almost a very different feel to the phone. Case in point scrolling on large mounds of text or say the Play Store is leaps and bounds smoother on an EAS kernel vs an HMP kernel. Hope this helps
JBlaze05 said:
Far more to it than the differences on the surface that you see. With regards to your concern about kernels. Most of the Pie rom's here use EAS kernels which at this point have made the default HMP kernel on stock fairly meaningless. Performance and battery life has become so much better now that the most used kernel Artemis has matured alot. Alongside Neutrino as well. Either of these kernels offer better performance and battery life over stock. So this won't be a different in features or amount of apps installed but rather almost a very different feel to the phone. Case in point scrolling on large mounds of text or say the Play Store is leaps and bounds smoother on an EAS kernel vs an HMP kernel. Hope this helps
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oh i definately get the benefits
on exkernel atm, and live the differences it made... i just dont understand why we "cant" use the same kernel on a LOS rom.
there only differences i really "see" are some extra framework files
kevp75 said:
oh i definately get the benefits
on exkernel atm, and live the differences it made... i just dont understand why we "cant" use the same kernel on a LOS rom.
there only differences i really "see" are some extra framework files
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Wifi is built as a module on stock... And is kernel integrated on custom...
So if you don't use wifi... Do your thing booboo
rignfool said:
Wifi is built as a module on stock... And is kernel integrated on custom...
So if you don't use wifi... Do your thing booboo
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there we go
exactly the sort of stuff im lookin for
personally... i could live without wifi.... but anything else? ive seen other devices with similar modules for bluetooth, external storage (sdcard), etc....
kevp75 said:
there we go
exactly the sort of stuff im lookin for
personally... i could live without wifi.... but anything else? ive seen other devices with similar modules for bluetooth, external storage (sdcard), etc....
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Afaik... Just WiFi