Ok, noob question here. But can someone please explain to me what 2d hardware acceleration is/ why you'd have it enabled/disabled? I'm reading threads about people arguing for/against it, but I'm not really clear on the subject.
Thanks!
also interested in this
Uncle Jame's GPU Breakdown:
lgboy5889 said:
Ok, noob question here. But can someone please explain to me what 2d hardware acceleration is/ why you'd have it enabled/disabled? I'm reading threads about people arguing for/against it, but I'm not really clear on the subject.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WHAT IS 2D ACCELERATION?
2D hardware acceleration basically offloads all the drawing of the UI from the CPU to the GPU, this results in smoother scrolling and less power usage (because the GPU is much more efficient at handling graphical processes).
AN EXAMPLE:
People often complain of android being slow and "stuttery" when scrolling through menu's and when they move to an iphone they just love how smooth everything moves. A lot of this can be attributed to GPU acceleration (it's not the entire reason) but it is a large part. So with GPU acceleration enabled, android devices become buttery smooth. ICS is the first version of android to force GPU acceleration and that's why there was so much fanfair over it's release.
THE DOWN SIDE:
So far in my experience the down side is to do with un supported apps. There is 1 app I have that does not like 2d acceleration (kingston office). It gets transformed from being stuttery to buttery smooth but the text dissapears when you start scrolling.
CONCLUTION:
Enable it
Related
I recently downloaded and installed the Kanged ICS CM9 4.0.3 onto my old Droid 3 and I must say I was extremely pleased. I didn't bother running any benchmarks to compare, as I feel they really don't gauge the devices performance anyways. The hardware specs for the Droid 3 if anyone is not familiar Ti Omap 4430 @ 1ghz power vr sgx 540 512 MB of RAM. I am positive thanks to the refinements along w/ the hardware acceleration all the transitions/scrolling were buttery smooth. I will make a list of the general applications that I've noticed transitional/UI lag in.
Notifications: Sadly this still makes scrolling/transitions lag.
I used the 2 major launchers Go launcher Ex and ADW launcher Ex. The stock launcher was alright, as well as nova but I wasn't too fond of them.
Go launcher: About the same performance as you would have on a GB device. Go launcher is generally smooth, but a few stutters here and there in the app drawer. I don't think it has been designed yet to support HW acceleration.
ADW Launcher EX: Here I was blown away... Easily seemed like 60 + fps at all times for screen switching app drawer with no modifications. I did 4x4, 5x5, 6x6 and it still maintained the same quality of scrolling in the app drawer. All the drawer types even the vertical 4D were silky smooth, and showed no instances of performance degradation. Scrolling wallpapers w/ widgets on the screens no stuttering/lag BUT a slight fps degradation, I'd say it drops to mid 40's to low 50s. BUT if you use the static wallpaper it maintains the 60 fps performance. I know ADW does support HW acceleration, and I'm sure the scrolling wallpaper performance will improve.
Browser: The stock browser does show improvements in the pinch to zoom as well as scrolling on flash intensive sites (i loaded up desktop youtube) while not quite as fluid as iOS it has drastically improved. I'd say it has improved to acceptable levels! I think we can expect to see those same gains even on the modified HTC browser. I went to the martisphography website which was discussed in this forum? Or was it another? It was stated it is a good test to see how smooth scrolling will be with graphically intensive websites since there are tons of high res photos. That or the poster was just trying to promote that website LOL. Pinch to zoom was great on a non flash website. Pinch to zoom exhibited the same performance regardless if i was zooming in on text or pictures. Although when flinging through the pictures it did slow it down and there were stutters. Same thing does occur on the stock GB browser on the Rezound. Only chipset I know that effectively navigated through that site on the stock browser (even on GB) is the exynos. Although on Opera browser the D3 and the Rezound had no issues flinging through the pictures without any lag/stuttering. But it was a bit smoother on the D3 with ICS, perfect I even dare say! Guess both stock HTC and Google browser still have those small kinks they need to work out.
Market: The starting page of the market I noticed does stutter a bit when you scroll through it on most GB devices. But on the ICS D3 that was completely nullified.
Touch Input: Has also greatly improved on ICS.
I really don't know if this post is informative or not. Just thought I would throw something quick together to help ease some peoples minds. I know some are tethering between the Rezound and the Nexus. I can easily say now that ICS is the ONLY advantage that the Nexus has. If the D3 a device with has lesser hardware specs can run the OS, our apps and anything we do with our devices the way it was meant to be... Just imagine how it will be on the Rezound, even a sense based one will drastically improve our user experiences. If there are apps you want me to run or websites, heck anything to see if it runs better on ICS. Just drop a request in this thread if it will help put your mind to ease. Thanks for reading.
My only thought is that this is very promising, especially since it is not official.
That's good to hear. Can't wait for ics on the rezound!
A lot of ROMs are starting to show up for ICS, but curiously, many of them say something like "Hardware Accelerated, but not completely." I'm rather confused by this.
What's happening? For example, I ran a test ROM for the EVO 4G that was really slick (and I could've been convinced was HW accelerated), although the dev indicated that it is not truly 2d hardware accelerated.
Additionally, I've learnt that unless a ROM shows a gradient in menus (for example, see here: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Android-4.0-ICS-11-Data-Usage-Pe1.jpg it isn't truly HW accelerated.)
Can anyone shed some light on the HW acceleration situation and what the story is?
Shidell said:
A lot of ROMs are starting to show up for ICS, but curiously, many of them say something like "Hardware Accelerated, but not completely." I'm rather confused by this.
What's happening? For example, I ran a test ROM for the EVO 4G that was really slick (and I could've been convinced was HW accelerated), although the dev indicated that it is not truly 2d hardware accelerated.
Additionally, I've learnt that unless a ROM shows a gradient in menus (for example, see here: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Android-4.0-ICS-11-Data-Usage-Pe1.jpg it isn't truly HW accelerated.)
Can anyone shed some light on the HW acceleration situation and what the story is?
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Click to collapse
True hardware acceleration was introduced by default in Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich. It may be stated that the rom does not have true hardware acceleration or it's not working 100% yet since it is just being implemented and does not completely work yet. You may soon see ICS roms which say that hardware acceleration is now working properly, etc. It's not that the roms are not using it, it's just that the feature is not completely stable on the rom.
A lot of devices have half asses hardware acceleration with 16 bit looking colors and messed up screens where a webkit scrolling mechanism is used. others have false acceleration (unable to dequeue native buffer errors everywhere) which is like a usable hw acceleration. Others might just have random glitches.
Good replies--thanks guys.
Hi all,
I've been playing with the ICS builds (be it CM9, AOKP, or Butter) and they all suffer from what I refer to as choppiness. This is most easily seen scrolling the homescreens which feels slightly jerky. It can be pinpointed using the program fps2D (you have to get it from another device, doesn't show up on the market with the Touchpad). When you launch fps2D you will see how the ball moves smoothly and every now and then it jerks back and forth.
This creates the really bad score that it receives in the benchmark. 3D performance is also rather bad for some reason.
Why am I starting this topic? No, its not a rant. I'm letting everyone know this same issue was encountered with the T-Mobile Galaxy S2 which is based I believe on the same chipset. Initially, the device had really bad stutter which it seems is very similar to the stutter I am seeing when I run fps2D on the touchpad. After some experienced devs started tracking the issue down, they found it was the 2D GPU drivers causing the issue and they fixed it by using the AT&T Skyrocket 2G GPU drivers. The skyrocket also uses the same chipset. I believe this same bug is currently plagueing the HP Touchpad ICS builds as the choppy performance is stemming from the GPU.
Can a kernel dev look into the issue? The Skyrocket GPU drivers (and now the fixed T-Mobile SGS2) should have the answer.
As far as i can understand, devs can't just take and use any driver, they need this driver to be made for ICS, which is a problem right now, since there are no dual-core Qualcomm devices with official ICS.
I am a programmer but completely new to Android and mobile platforms. My HTC Sensation 4G (and many other devices apparently) suffer from input lag, aka touch lag, aka touchscreen latency.
This video makes it out to be a problem with Android in general, but I have a Galaxy S Blaze with very little input lag.
Decrease the input device latency and reduce the touch lag with a kernel hack?
I am not sure if what you suggested would work though I remember reading this article that kind of explained the lag.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ui_lag_occurs_more_often_in_android_than_ios/
I would think that if what this article states is true then increasing the polling frequency wouldn't really make much of a difference. It would have to be the rendering that would need to be quicker.
The_R said:
I would think that if what this article states is true then increasing the polling frequency wouldn't really make much of a difference. It would have to be the rendering that would need to be quicker.
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I realized this 2 minutes before you posted
Polling frequency is not the problem, it is overall input latency. It is not an inherent problem in Android, as the Galaxy S Blaze I have does a great job tracking my finger. The Sensation, not so much...
If the touchscreen digitizer is the limiting factor, then there is no hope...
I don't really think its the digitizer either. I just think the Blaze does a better(faster) job at rendering the stuff you see on the screen than the Sensation.
If the rendering is happening on the main thread then it would block the main thread from acting on any new inputs till the rendering is over. Hence this causes the lag. Now a phone with better hardware(GPU) would be better at rendering hence reducing the lag.
The_R said:
If the rendering is happening on the main thread then it would block the main thread from acting on any new inputs till the rendering is over. Hence this causes the lag. Now a phone with better hardware(GPU) would be better at rendering hence reducing the lag.
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Eh. Can we make the input thread run on a different core then! What else is it there for?!?!
I am not sure how that can be done. The problem apparently lies in the software design of the Android OS.
Is there a way to increase the input thread priority? Again I have no experience with Android so I don't know what is/isn't possible...
Hello everybody ! Basiclly i want to ask if it would be a good idea to try disabling CPU rendering for a GB rom? Im currently on CM10 but really cant use it too much cause some games like Fruit ninja force close and cant even listen to music whatsoever. But the main thing that i dont like about GB roms is that they are very slow compared to CM9 or CM10. Would disabling CPU rendering make a difference? People say it makes a big difference .
It's probably possible, but I don't have the slightest idea on howto do it.
gskillivenom said:
Hello everybody ! Basiclly i want to ask if it would be a good idea to try disabling CPU rendering for a GB rom? Im currently on CM10 but really cant use it too much cause some games like Fruit ninja force close and cant even listen to music whatsoever. But the main thing that i dont like about GB roms is that they are very slow compared to CM9 or CM10. Would disabling CPU rendering make a difference? People say it makes a big difference .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No 2D GPU rendering is available on GB. All GUI is rendered by CPU. So turning that off would leave you a black screen (except in games).
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
HW acceleration was introduced in Honeycomb. Only the CPU is used for 2D rendering on earlier versions