What is your take on hardware acceleration? From what I know, using GPU muscle should drain less battery and it would be a win-win situation. I used void on my OO with and without hwacc and I don't really see no difference in UI performance or battery use (I did not do any conclusive battery test). Do you thing hw acc for our devices has any issues (poor drivers maybe?) as other users reported higher battery usage using it?? It is not a life and death issue for me, just to feed my curiosity. Could a better implementation for hwacc give us more battery juice with the same (or better) performance? Other devices with Adreno GPU benefit more from enabling GPU rendering, so..
I test OO without hw the battery life is longer but i took some more lag in the menu and in games
i tried my best to test it (performance wise) and I see no improvements. I might say it got a little worse (skipping some frames now and then when scrolling) but that might be just me. Maybe I'm not looking where I should..For now I am enclined to disable hw acc. How can I know if it is even working?
Related
I know everyone is excited about overclocking their primes, but has anyone thought about underclocking it? I would love to hear the capabilities of that on battery life. Also, will we be able to use setCPU to control our speeds on the prime?
Already can be done, in a sense on stock prime. JUST KEEP it in powersavings mode. You will get the most/longest battery life out of it. Plus you can still play movies or games in that mode just fine.
NOW IF YOURE rooted, I'd say get System Tuner Pro app. IMO its alot better than set CPU. It does all the same things and alot more. From there you can manually lower the maximum frequency range and there goes underclocking Or you could try out one of system Turner's preset modes. I believe they have a power saving one also.
Really though stock powersavings mode is good enough for long battery life. ITS optimized for everything to still work pretty well or fast. Manually lowering the Max speed too low might cause it too lag really bad or maybe even instability. It would be about finding that sweet spot to where everything still runs good.
ONE THING TO think about though is no matter how much you underclock, the display brightness will be the biggest battery drainer. SO underclocking with Max brightness or something won't make sense.Plus be on the lookout for undervolting once bootloader is unlocked.
Came here to say exactly this ^^^
I think demandarin's comment pretty much sums up the best/latest approaches to underclocking available for the Prime. As noted, it makes the *most* sense with the LCD brightness completely down.
However, the only *real* way to qualitatively discover how much savings a strong underclocking scheme would have is to test it. When the time allows (testing battery life on these things takes a LONG time!! ) I'll end up doing this...
Now, I have a decent background with computers but im not sure how that compress with phone hardware. These phones are essentially mini computers with extra hardware specifically geared towards making phone calls on certain networks. With computers, to set the GPU to run and handle more of the "mundane" tasks is normally fine adds long as the gfx card or onboard/combined CPU/GPU is capable of handling the extra load. While running graphic intensive programs this is preferred.
To the question:
This thread is claiming that it is beneficial to enable GPU Rendering at all times to gain performance while not sacrificing battery. For our device, is this true? (Essentially you're trading power consumption at the CPU for consumption at the GPU so I don't see battery life being negatively affected on paper)
Clay
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
Forcing another processor to stay online? I would assume there would be more battery drain.
Anyone else have an opinion, or even better, facts as to why you should/should not try out?
Clay
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
I'd like to hear from those who have under clocked their S3. How is performance, is there a big difference? How much better has battery been?
Battery save mode on Sammy roms underclocks the phone. I believe down to 1GHz but I may be wrong.. Severely hinders any CPU-intensive activities such as gaming but no noticeable battery life improvement as most of the other times my phone is in sleep anyway.
Hello Axon 7 users, I just picked up one a couple of days ago. After finally figuring out the bootloader, bootstack and general stock experience I tested a little bit of gaming. I found that a basic game like Clash Royale heats the battery up to around 42°C already with low brightness and slow charging. A more intensive game like the new Knives Out runs only slightly hotter but it becomes apparent that CPU gets throttled soon after loading to 1036MHz across all cores causing lag.
It's disappointing so I tried to find how to modify the throttling. Using ZTE's Power Manager setting on performance or balanced doesn't seem to have a noticeable difference.I tried the only stock custom kernel AX7 but it's outdated on B32 and I find it randomly reboots regularly. The stock kernel itself allows some configuration, but the thermal settings in Kernel Adiutor don't reflect any charge.
A quick Google search brings up how LG V20 Snapdragon 820 users edit /system/etc/thermal-engine.conf to tweak the throttling levels. Their config is quite different but they mod big to 1824Mhz and let little scale itself.
I couldn't get thermal-engine.conf to use the thermal-engine-8996-perf.conf values by copying the values to it as it suggests inside. I tried renaming it with the -zte.conf ending as it suggests as well but that didn't work. After just renaming both the normal and perf conf files with a .bak ending, I've found better throttling performance. Big now throttles to 1632Mhz and little to 1324Mhz. As far as I can understand the files don't have charging rates inside, just GPU and CPU throttling.
However as expected the device heats up a few degrees more now. This now puts my battery up to 47°C in Knives Out under the same conditions. Charging is stopped at 45°C by the system so as previously mentioned it's unmodified.
I just wanted to check since I couldn't find it mentioned. Is everyone ok with gaming performance limited to 1036Mhz with the normal throttle? Also are my temperatures normal? I guess CPU doesn't seem that high reaching around 65°C, it's just that the battery has less than 20°C difference in intensive performance. I suppose it's a quirk of the heat pipe to battery as heatsink design. I just expected more from a metal unibody chassis and at least normal CPU gaming performance. I thought my Sony Z3 Compact design was bad for battery thermals, with the battery stacked behind the CPU board, sandwiched in insulating glass. But I didn't expect to see a phone to route a heatpipe directly to it's battery.
Anyway it is what it is. Follow this information if you want some better gaming performance at the cost of your battery cycle life. In my case I bought the Axon7 just as a separate media consumption device rather than a phone so I can live with the tradeoff. If battery gets bad enough before 2 years I'll consider using warranty at the loss of receiving their refurbished replacement. Manufacturer warranty's in fact cover batteries for 80% depletion.
I recommend the app DevCheck Pro for being able to monitor CPU, GPU, temperatures and other things overlayed. I think some others may do similar but they may not be updated for Big Little and are more instrusively overlayed.
Infy_AsiX said:
A quick Google search brings up how LG V20 Snapdragon 820 users edit /system/etc/thermal-engine.conf to tweak the throttling levels. Their config is quite different but they mod big to 1824Mhz and let little scale itself.
I couldn't get thermal-engine.conf to use the thermal-engine-8996-perf.conf values by copying the values to it as it suggests inside. I tried renaming it with the -zte.conf ending as it suggests as well but that didn't work. After just renaming both the normal and perf conf files with a .bak ending, I've found better throttling performance. Big now throttles to 1632Mhz and little to 1324Mhz. As far as I can understand the files don't have charging rates inside, just GPU and CPU throttling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I read half of that to be honest, but just one thing: To make things harder, ZTE added added a write protection on the system. To disable it you have to use a computer and connect your phone with ADB, then issue "adb reboot disemmcwp" (like DISable EMMC Write Protection). Otherwise all the changes that you made get undone after a reboot, and obviously you'd have to reboot after modifying that file
On LOS you can use BeastMode (even if your phone isn't an A2017U) which for me is the best friggin kernel I've used in performance terms. There you can change thermal limits
Infy_AsiX said:
Hello Axon 7 users, I just picked up one a couple of days ago. After finally figuring out the bootloader, bootstack and general stock experience I tested a little bit of gaming. I found that a basic game like Clash Royale heats the battery up to around 42°C already with low brightness and slow charging. A more intensive game like the new Knives Out runs only slightly hotter but it becomes apparent that CPU gets throttled soon after loading to 1036MHz across all cores causing lag.
It's disappointing so I tried to find how to modify the throttling. Using ZTE's Power Manager setting on performance or balanced doesn't seem to have a noticeable difference.I tried the only stock custom kernel AX7 but it's outdated on B32 and I find it randomly reboots regularly. The stock kernel itself allows some configuration, but the thermal settings in Kernel Adiutor don't reflect any charge.
A quick Google search brings up how LG V20 Snapdragon 820 users edit /system/etc/thermal-engine.conf to tweak the throttling levels. Their config is quite different but they mod big to 1824Mhz and let little scale itself.
I couldn't get thermal-engine.conf to use the thermal-engine-8996-perf.conf values by copying the values to it as it suggests inside. I tried renaming it with the -zte.conf ending as it suggests as well but that didn't work. After just renaming both the normal and perf conf files with a .bak ending, I've found better throttling performance. Big now throttles to 1632Mhz and little to 1324Mhz. As far as I can understand the files don't have charging rates inside, just GPU and CPU throttling.
However as expected the device heats up a few degrees more now. This now puts my battery up to 47°C in Knives Out under the same conditions. Charging is stopped at 45°C by the system so as previously mentioned it's unmodified.
I just wanted to check since I couldn't find it mentioned. Is everyone ok with gaming performance limited to 1036Mhz with the normal throttle? Also are my temperatures normal? I guess CPU doesn't seem that high reaching around 65°C, it's just that the battery has less than 20°C difference in intensive performance. I suppose it's a quirk of the heat pipe to battery as heatsink design. I just expected more from a metal unibody chassis and at least normal CPU gaming performance. I thought my Sony Z3 Compact design was bad for battery thermals, with the battery stacked behind the CPU board, sandwiched in insulating glass. But I didn't expect to see a phone to route a heatpipe directly to it's battery.
Anyway it is what it is. Follow this information if you want some better gaming performance at the cost of your battery cycle life. In my case I bought the Axon7 just as a separate media consumption device rather than a phone so I can live with the tradeoff. If battery gets bad enough before 2 years I'll consider using warranty at the loss of receiving their refurbished replacement. Manufacturer warranty's in fact cover batteries for 80% depletion.
I recommend the app DevCheck Pro for being able to monitor CPU, GPU, temperatures and other things overlayed. I think some others may do similar but they may not be updated for Big Little and are more instrusively overlayed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have noticed the same performance many months ago.
I tried changing the thermal values with both ways through the conf file or a custom kernel but all implementations seem to be faulty as nothing changed.
In the end I gave up because I couldn't find a solution for this.
But I figured because my games clash of clans, ppsspp, gba emulators don't lag I din't care much.
If you find a solution let me/us know.
Or post the modded confs you're using as well if you can.
That's all from me.
I just renamed both the thermal-engine files with a .bak extension. I've also got ZTE's Power Manager frozen as the performance profiles there don't seem to do anything and I don't use it's other features. There's some kind of CPU GPU throttle still in place but it's much higher as previously mentioned,. After searching further I saw your discussion about /vendor/bin related throttle, maybe that's the fallback it's now on.
The device does get uncomfortably hot with a new demanding game at maximum settings. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you want to maintain your battery. However if you're interested I discovered the Ax7 allows defining a lower maximum battery voltage in another TL/DR post https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74746734&postcount=1353. To explain simply, it's possible to limit the voltage low for health and safety while keeping the device almost primarily powered by mains. Effectively the battery is at an optimum low voltage, practically idle but very hot. A little complicated sure, but worth it. Getting a Daydream V1 tomorrow to play with, this stuff will help with heat and performance a lot. If anyone wants my long winded explanation, give me a shout.
The CPU temp does jump around higher than 70. I'm tending to think that current powerful mobile processors aren't efficient enough for the physical body constraints of phones. Let alone poorly designed ones. The 820 is meant to be an improvement over the 810, wouldn't believe it by the throttle required and performance lost. The 835 is efficient enough apparently. From experience though I have my doubts on reviews and benchmarks to reflect real usage stress.
edit: Oh and disable VDD restriction in your kernel setting if you've set it to auto enable. That seems to be a switch for the aggressive throttle still available after mod.
Sent from my ZTE Axon 7 using XDA Labs
Infy_AsiX said:
I just renamed both the thermal-engine files with a .bak extension. I've also got ZTE's Power Manager frozen as the performance profiles there don't seem to do anything and I don't use it's other features. There's some kind of CPU GPU throttle still in place but it's much higher as previously mentioned,. After searching further I saw your discussion about /vendor/bin related throttle, maybe that's the fallback it's now on.
The device does get uncomfortably hot with a new demanding game at maximum settings. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you want to maintain your battery. However if you're interested I discovered the Ax7 allows defining a lower maximum battery voltage in another TL/DR post https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74746734&postcount=1353. To explain simply, it's possible to limit the voltage low for health and safety while keeping the device almost primarily powered by mains. Effectively the battery is at an optimum low voltage, practically idle but very hot. A little complicated sure, but worth it. Getting a Daydream V1 tomorrow to play with, this stuff will help with heat and performance a lot. If anyone wants my long winded explanation, give me a shout.
The CPU temp does jump around higher than 70. I'm tending to think that current powerful mobile processors aren't efficient enough for the physical body constraints of phones. Let alone poorly designed ones. The 820 is meant to be an improvement over the 810, wouldn't believe it by the throttle required and performance lost. The 835 is efficient enough apparently. From experience though I have my doubts on reviews and benchmarks to reflect real usage stress.
edit: Oh and disable VDD restriction in your kernel setting if you've set it to auto enable. That seems to be a switch for the aggressive throttle still available after mod.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's weird... what are the ambient temps where you live? Here it's anything between 20 and 30 degrees and mine never gets that hot, and it barely throttles. Of course you shouldn't game while charging, that WILL throttle the phone.
I have a big old CPU heatsink without a fan, and when I charge the phone at night I just put it upon the heatsink. It keeps the battery around the ambient temp, which I guess helps with battery degradation.
A nice app for monitoring the CPU is Trepn profiler, you can program it to show you anything like frequencies and temps on 2 separate graphs for example
What does Chrysalis Thermals do? Cause I always see this.
Does this boost performance? battery?
it adjust the phone throttle to a bit higher,,,
i mean,, normally,, without one,, when you're doing something on your phone,,, and it hits about,, lets say 40 deg C,, then it will slow down so as to prevent it from heating too much,, but doing so,, sacrifices performances and you may easily notice a bit lags and slower framerates..
now,, with that thermal module script,, it allows your phone to perform at its maximum capability for a longer period of time even if it hits a certain higher value of TEMPERATURE,,, at the expense of heating,,
santiagoruel13 said:
it adjust the phone throttle to a bit higher,,,
i mean,, normally,, without one,, when you're doing something on your phone,,, and it hits about,, lets say 40 deg C,, then it will slow down so as to prevent it from heating too much,, but doing so,, sacrifices performances and you may easily notice a bit lags and slower framerates..
now,, with that thermal module script,, it allows your phone to perform at its maximum capability for a longer period of time even if it hits a certain higher value of TEMPERATURE,,, at the expense of heating,,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, how about this?
It removes ALL thermal-engine related files in your ROM, thus removing almost all of the thermal restrictions put on CPU, resulting in less thermal throttling, performance is better as well. The phone would got warmer and batterylife would suffer if you have too much running all the time, of course
The GPU rendering module just disable software rendering the UI via the CPU, nothing major