Disclaimer: I realize overclocking and tweaking is very much device specific and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. That said, I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject but need some clarification on the finer points, along with some opinions on what's working for other people. Most of my questions pertain to the Devil kernel, as most of the settings aren't very well explained. I'm running AOKP M6 with Devil kernel and I've set a modest overclock with 200 minimum and 1200 max, which seems to be pretty smooth and stable. I haven't really felt the need to push it yet
1) What governor do you prefer? From what I read in this thread, SmartassV2 sounds the best and so far it seems to be working okay for me. Also, do the profiles matter (smooth, normal, powersave)?
2) Is it wise to mess with the memory settings in the Devil kernel (zRAM, etc) or should I just leave it alone? What about swap files? Worth the hassle or not?
3) What's the difference between using Live OC and the ROM settings to OC? I've left Live OC alone, and just used the AOKP overclocker to set my values.
4) I know that I've read Deep Idle doesn't work for our phones, but what's the Devil idle setting do?
5) Right now the Screen Off- Min/Max Freq setting is off, but should I set the values for that or does the SmartassV2 governor automatically handle it?
6) Any thoughts on I/O Schedulers? From what I was reading, SIO seems to be the best choice, but then again it seems to be all a matter of opinion.
Thanks for any input you might have on the subject
Alright well I think I'm getting a better handle on this since I've had a few days to mess around, and I'll post some of my thoughts in hopes it might help someone else who's trying to mess with OCing. Problem is that AOKP ICS is already so buttery smooth that overclocking really isn't that noticeable of a gain (at least for me).
As far as clock speeds I've been sticking with 200MHz min 1.2GHz max but might just drop back down to 1.0GHz to save some battery life (I don't really run cpu intense apps that often so I don't really see a huge need). I'm not really going to mess with Live OC now that I understand that it overclocks the bus too... I've screwed around enough with PC overclocking to know that it's going to seriously compromise stability which is a risk I'm not willing to take right now (not to mention it'll probably drain the battery a lot more than 'standard' OCing). I've also found that screen off 400MHz min and 800MHz max works well for me, because although 200MHz min will work too, it lags far too much coming back from standby for my liking.
2 things I still haven't messed with are the RAM settings and devil idle (which I assume doesn't work anyway). As far as the RAM I've never once ran into a low memory issue so I don't really think it's worth the trouble (due to reading this forum post I found).
I changed to SIO for the I/O scheduler but really can't notice any difference from just the default, but I'll keep it set there for good measure I guess.
Well that's it for now, if I notice anything else that might be helpful I'll post again, and if anyone wants to jump in with their experience or settings feel free.
Thanks
Related
Hi everyone,
Like most people I've been trying to find that optimum balance between performance and battery life in my Aria. I'm running CM7.0.3 and the latest version of drowningchild's kernel. With that kernel I switched setCPU from ondemand to smartass, and I can already see the CPU spending most of it's time in either 400 or 480 MHz, but when playing a graphic intensive game it'll go up to 806 MHz and run great.
But, here's the problem. With things like less graphic intensive games, or playing videos, smartass doesn't want to scale up to a useful clock speed, and things get choppy. I switch back to ondemand and everything smoothes out again. I don't want to keep it in ondemand all the time though, because then it's spending half the time in 806 MHz and eating up battery unnecessarily.
So, is there a better governor option for me? Or maybe a way to "whitelist" apps within setCPU, to designate apps that always get the max clock speed?
tl;dr: smartass isn't that smart in certain situations. Is there a better way?
Check out the app "Tasker" in the market. It will allow you to reconfig the governors automatically based on a slew of complex conditions.
If you want smartass roll back to 7-5 of my kernel and it should be fixed as I tweaked it to jump around less in newer versions
I'm still messing around with the new kernel released & will add smartass very soon & hopefully optimized
drowningchild said:
If you want smartass roll back to 7-5 of my kernel and it should be fixed as I tweaked it to jump around less in newer versions
I'm still messing around with the new kernel released & will add smartass very soon & hopefully optimized
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey yea you're right, I didn't notice you had a new kernel out. I'm running 7-5 still but I'll upgrade once smartass is working in the new version.
I've been using "conservative" setting. Although when it initial opens a resource intensive app, its stutters a little, and then compensates by clocking up. I haven't had an issue where a game didnt want to run smooth (also at 806mhz).
I run on demand at 320/768. This to me seems to be a very good combo. The 320 min makes a noticeable difference in responsiveness without much sacrifice to battery. I've found the Max cpu setting doesn't make too much of a difference in most situations.
Sent from my cm7 Aria.
So I'm interested in undervolting using the stock CPU freq's, and I'm going to be using setCPU (obvi).
So, first question: Even if I want to use the stock frequencies, do I have to be using the OC kernel (0.2.1/1.45ghz at the time)? And then adjust the max to 1000mhz?
Second, I started up SetCPU and whenever I go to the voltage tab it forcecloses. This happens with both the stock enhanced & OC kernel, and I've tried fixing permissions to no avail.
All I really understand so far is that the end result is a table of CPU frequencies and linked voltages. I've OCed the hell out of desktops, but I'm lost here.
I'd just like to know how to get from starting up setcpu to ultimately popping out that new voltage/freq table.
I do apologize if this seems kinda stupid, I'm just trying to exercise caution lest I demolish my phone's innards. I've done it with many an intel.
If you just want stock frequencies, then there's no need for a custom kernel. I guess in that case, you could just use SetCPU for undervolting & profiles.
However, if you want overclock, you'll need a custom kernel.
If you're going to be using a overclocked kernel (i.e. the new Faux 1.45 GHz), then you will need to set the max to 1.45 GHz, and make sure SetCPU is set to start on boot; other wise it will stay at the stock clock speed of 1 GHz... So i guess if you only wanted the OC at certain times, you could set the max speed manually, only when you want to, and not select to start on boot.
I haven't really had any success with undervolting yet... always crashes on me & reboots. The best thing to do is make sure "set to boot" is not selected, when testing your undervolting, other wise you could get stuck in a loop, with the phone crashing every time it boots and tries to apply you undervolting values. I'd start at -25 for each and work from there... stress testing each choice with a benchmark app to make sure you wont reboot... if it reboots, then you know your undervolt was to much. Also remember that you can not undervolt more than -100 between each frequency, otherwise the undervolting will not make any difference.
I really like the profile options in SetCPU... you can set the screen off frequencies to the lowest two, that way for whatever reason your phone isn't running at full strength while your not using it. Also, you can set frequency speeds at custom defined battery levels.
Hope this helps somewhat.
It's unclear to me why it force closes. This may be a rom incompatibility or a SuperUser issue? I assume you've tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it? Updating your SU app? Try flashing to the latest Aura rom?
A few quick words about SetCPU:
1. When you first get started, do not set to "Set on Boot" in case you've undervolted too much and it crashes when applied. You can always check it later once you know the voltages are stable.
2. Between each frequency step there is a maximum of 100mV step off. Anything greater than that it defaults to native voltage. I think this is a Tegra2 issue.
With that said, undervolting is simple: simply slide the little slider on SetCPU to negative values. How much you can under-volt largely depends on your particular hardware and it is inconsistent across all Atrix's. My voltage table is as belows:
1000mhz: -50
912: -50
750: -50
608: -75
456: -75
312: -100
216: -100
I, however, did not test the limits of my phone. Many people will slowly increment the voltage lower until they start to get resets, and then they'll move it back to find the lowest stable point.
It has, however, been well established that minor undervolting improves battery life and diminishes heat generation. Excessive undervolting may actually hurt battery life. You can look around on this forum regarding the data. However, reasonable undervolting will improve battery life.
Thanks fellas, this helps A LOT.
I was so afraid I'd get 17 responses of "You're such a noob. Stop cluttering the forums" etc etc
At this point, I think that the problem is, for whatever reason, the FC when I tap the voltages tab.
I'm on the newest Aura (1.2.2.1) newest enhanced stock kernel from Faux123 (0.2.1) and the newest SetCPU (2.4). I'll try updating my SU (though I believe I did that right after I flashed.
I'll reintall SetCPU and report back.
Until then, THANKS BUCKETS fellas. I really appreciate the info and advice.
UPDATE: May have found the problem. When it first boots up it prompts to autodetect freq's or choose them manually (or something like that). I was afraid this would actually alter my CPU clocks right then and there and so I hit manual detect, saw something that said Tegra2 etc and clicked it. I just now hit 'menu' and set it to autodetect, tried the voltages tab, and no FC, so I think that's solved.
Thanks again for all the info guys! I'll start experimenting and let you know HOW LOW I CAN GO (ha).
You guys get force closes due to kernel problems. You have to ask your developments. There might be something wrong with some of your cpu voltage drivers. So yeah that's why just a tip. Only overclock when you're playing some high end game. If not stick to normal. If not your phone might get overheated and damaged
Accidentally sent from my Ultra-speedy SG3 using Tapatalk
AdiNova said:
You guys get force closes due to kernel problems. You have to ask your developments. There might be something wrong with some of your cpu voltage drivers. So yeah that's why just a tip. Only overclock when you're playing some high end game. If not stick to normal. If not your phone might get overheated and damaged
Accidentally sent from my Ultra-speedy SG3 using Tapatalk
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It's cool bro the problem was totally a user goof by me. I kind of agree with your OC philosophy though, primarily because 1ghz with this proc an RAM seems ample and I don't do much gaming.
Real quick:
When undervolting, should I do it one freq step at a time? Or can I do ALL of them at say -25, stress test, then adjust? Also, what's a good stress test that'll force the proc to hit all the different freqs instead of just the max clock and then the minimum when it's idling/the screen is off?
xyrovice said:
It's cool bro the problem was totally a user goof by me. I kind of agree with your OC philosophy though, primarily because 1ghz with this proc an RAM seems ample and I don't do much gaming.
Real quick:
When undervolting, should I do it one freq step at a time? Or can I do ALL of them at say -25, stress test, then adjust? Also, what's a good stress test that'll force the proc to hit all the different freqs instead of just the max clock and then the minimum when it's idling/the screen is off?
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Click to collapse
Id start at -25 for all. Setcpu has a built in stress test under info, I think. Could also try a benchmark to test it. As general rule if thumb, then lower frequencies can be undervolted more, while the higher ones take some tweaking... I can't even do -25 on my 1000, b/c ill eventually get a reboot, maybe not right away, but eventually. Every device is unique when it comes to undervolting.... just remember to not set the undervolt part to auto on boot, until you get it somewhat stable.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
Swiftks said:
Id start at -25 for all. Setcpu has a built in stress test under info, I think. Could also try a benchmark to test it. As general rule if thumb, then lower frequencies can be undervolted more, while the higher ones take some tweaking... I can't even do -25 on my 1000, b/c ill eventually get a reboot, maybe not right away, but eventually. Every device is unique when it comes to undervolting.... just remember to not set the undervolt part to auto on boot, until you get it somewhat stable.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
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Got it. I figure that 'set on boot' checkbox is basically a wedding ring ha. Thanks for the advice and insight my friend.
Also (as I run my first stress test with -25 across the board) if I get reboots early on, should I assume it's the higher voltages and that I should back off on the fast end of the clocks?
xyrovice said:
Got it. I figure that 'set on boot' checkbox is basically a wedding ring ha. Thanks for the advice and insight my friend.
Also (as I run my first stress test with -25 across the board) if I get reboots early on, should I assume it's the higher voltages and that I should back off on the fast end of the clocks?
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Click to collapse
When testing each frequency just set your min/max mHz to the level your testing i.e. min/max=1000. UV and stress test at that frequency and if it's stable, move to min/max=912 and so on.
FYI, my MHz might be different than yours, I'm on the stock enhanced.
ghost_og said:
When testing each frequency just set your min/max mHz to the level your testing i.e. min/max=1000. UV and stress test at that frequency and if it's stable, move to min/max=912 and so on.
FYI, my MHz might be different than yours, I'm on the stock enhanced.
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That makes perfect sense- limiting the max during the stress test. Thanks for the tip bro I really appreciate it.
can some one recomend me some volts settings and gpu setting.. after i put on the overclocking kernel my galaxy is getting hot... know i got litening rom and still getting hot... i need some setting?? the battery drain fast..???
everything is not easy there r plenty of posts on ov/oc tweaks search or find in general section....
rocky23 said:
everything is not easy there r plenty of posts on ov/oc tweaks search or find in general section....
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OP - ^^ this. Good advice. Start with stock voltages & gradually decrease until you get to the lowest possible whilst remaining stable. As Rocky has said, there's no shortcuts (apart from the the posts on this subject on here), it's trial & error.
And the other thing, don't expect to see massive increases in battery life with undervolting. Yes, you'll get some increase over the life of a whole charge, but it won't double your battery life or anything like that. So far as the heat issue is concerned, of course your phone is going to get hot if you overclock.
The phone is only made to go to 1200mhz out of the box. If you want to overclock, heat is something you're going to have to learn to live with; tho undervolting might reduce the heat produced by overclocking a little bit.
Overclocking is the same as undervolting in that some CPU's can handle more or less than others. Your phone might be able to handle 1600mhz just fine whereas the CPU in mine might only be able to handle 1400mhz. Same with undervolting, stable values for me might cause your phone to crash.
adding to the above you could also check this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1572538
made by ArchenzeEL
Its an EXCELLENT thread to start with as there is quite some information as well as sample values for you to play with. Keep in mind that those values might not work with you but you can experiment a bit in order to find the values most suited to your phone.
Also i think you should take a look in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1369817
its a LONG LONG read but it will help you in the end understand how overclocking/undervolting works in general...
alright. ive been playing around and cant find some good governors for what i want.
for hardcore gaming, what governor have you found that works the best
for best batter saving, but still be able to watch videos, surf web, email and just general navigating without it being too slow.
which governors do you guys use for both of those? thanks
Quadrider10 said:
alright. ive been playing around and cant find some good governors for what i want.
for hardcore gaming, what governor have you found that works the best
for best batter saving, but still be able to watch videos, surf web, email and just general navigating without it being too slow.
which governors do you guys use for both of those? thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
anyone?
Use the smartassV2 governor. It regulates the CPU frequency according to load (sorta like ondemand except it works better).
darkghost568 said:
Use the smartassV2 governor. It regulates the CPU frequency according to load (sorta like ondemand except it works better).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i tried and i liked it, but it like locked my cpu at 1.24ghz (thats the max i have it set to) and even if i changed it, it would lock to the max frequency????
Quadrider10 said:
i tried and i liked it, but it like locked my cpu at 1.24ghz (thats the max i have it set to) and even if i changed it, it would lock to the max frequency????
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I'll have v1 of Funky kernel out soon if you want to try out wheatley.
I've been a fan of smartassV2 since the first time I used it on the Thunderbolt. It is as close to an ideal governor as I've ever used. SmartassV2, with a complete sysfs implementation, can be tweaked very nicely. It is a governor that you can really tune so that most of the time it's not running balls out, but it's not loafing along either, which is how a governor SHOULD function. (I like to see a nice bell curve peaking at an ideal frequency, and spiked way out at the bottom frequencies when I look at a bar chart of my time-in-state's.) From what I can tell, few if any devs tune their governors to their kernels. I'm thinking that's how we ended up with a dozen or so governors that are rather similar, yet rarely ideal.
Snuzzo said:
I'll have v1 of Funky kernel out soon if you want to try out wheatley.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wheatley is epic.
Sent from my Rezound using Tapatalk 2
loonatik78 said:
I've been a fan of smartassV2 since the first time I used it on the Thunderbolt. It is as close to an ideal governor as I've ever used. SmartassV2, with a complete sysfs implementation, can be tweaked very nicely. It is a governor that you can really tune so that most of the time it's not running balls out, but it's not loafing along either, which is how a governor SHOULD function. (I like to see a nice bell curve peaking at an ideal frequency, and spiked way out at the bottom frequencies when I look at a bar chart of my time-in-state's.) From what I can tell, few if any devs tune their governors to their kernels. I'm thinking that's how we ended up with a dozen or so governors that are rather similar, yet rarely ideal.
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Click to collapse
Alright now my problem is that I set my CPU to 192mhz lowest and 1.24 max. And that's for normal use. I'm running smart ass2 Nd it's not licking my CPU at max anymore, but it keeps.moving the max to 1.51ghz.
any ideas on how to fix tht?
Quadrider10 said:
any ideas on how to fix tht?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No frills CPU in play store
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2
Quadrider10 said:
Alright now my problem is that I set my CPU to 192mhz lowest and 1.24 max. And that's for normal use. I'm running smart ass2 Nd it's not licking my CPU at max anymore, but it keeps.moving the max to 1.51ghz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Quadrider10 said:
any ideas on how to fix tht?
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Click to collapse
Yeah. Don't use DSB's kernel. I spent DAYS trying to figure out what his kernel is trying to do as far as governors. I'm not going to talk smack about the guy's work, but I will tell you what I know.
I doesn't appear any of the governors have been tweaked for his kernel. It looks like code was just tossed in there and left however someone else wrote it. For instance, smartassV2 has a sleep_wakup_freq of .998GHz, which is much slower than it should be. It SHOULD be near or equal to scaling_max_freq. Likewise, the max_cpu_load (which determines when the cpu should scale up) is 70, a fairly aggressive number, while the awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq are pointlessly high. If I had to guess, these look like parameters for a Snapdragon S1 SoC, not the dual core S3 the Rezound has. No matter what governor you choose, it's only active on "cpu0". "cpu1" runs ondemand no matter what. The reason you have trouble making settings for the governor stick is because the sysfs location disappears and reappears for no obvious reason. It appears when things pop in and out (presumably when cpu1 goes on and off line), things are reset.
Cold hard reality is this: You're NEVER going to optimize any kernel out there to it's fullest potential. Either the options aren't there to tweak, or they behave in inexplicable ways. I can't tell you why DSB's kernel (not to single out a dev or his work, but I'm certain that's the kernel you're talking about) does what it does, but it's so far divorced from optimized on such basic levels you're better off not wasting your time.
As an aside:
After getting a rough feel for what some of these kernels are doing, I'm not at all surprised some kernels have had significant heat and battery drain issues. There are things that simply do not work right or work consistently. The devs shouldn't be blamed for this. These are probably the issues they're trying to work around that they inherited from the sources they're starting from and what makes tweaking them so difficult.
I acutely got everything to work. I'm just trying to overclock the GPU.
Hello. I have been running CyanogenMod 10.1-10.2 since I got my device back in July, everything has been working great. Bugfixes have been lovely and all that good stuff; however one thing continues to annoy me. I cannot underclock my device properly. Let's say I go into the normal CyanogenMod Performance settings. Then I put my CPU to something like 1024MHz, then I see how the results went over with PerfMon from Chainfire, it will underclock only on Core 0, the rest of the cores still run up to the standard limit, 1890MHz. The only way I can somewhat successfully underclock is by setting my CPU to 594MHz or lower, at which point it will disable all cores except Core 0.
This has been annoying me for a while, I am running the standard CyanogenMod kernel, and recently I tried the Elite Kernel. The only thing the Elite Kernel did was remove the ability to disable the other 3 cores when below 594MHz. (And add the ability to go up to 2.2GHz, but who wants to overclock the Galaxy S4 yet?)
It may be worth mentioning if I try to tweak individual core settings with Tasker, on Core 0 it will let me set a CPU frequency, then if I go in and try to set something on Core 1, it won't have any of the default values for anything, and I enter them manually, then it will give me some errors about not finding the governor I said and stuff like that.
Anyone who knows any way to fix this (Custom kernels, different ROMs (Only for curiosity, I would stick to CyanogenMod anyway), etc) would be greatly appreciated.
Anyone who questions my motives for underclocking, question away. I don't like how my battery life is next to junk when I'm not even touching my phone all day, and the GS4 hardly needs the CPU it has, so I plan to use Tasker to set up a bunch of power saving mechanisms.
I suppose I do have one other question. Will underclocking even benefit me if I can't modify the voltage settings? Are they modified automatically when you're running at lower frequencies? (You would hope so, considering it's kinda a mobile device with a power source that isn't infinite). But if it won't help me without lowering my voltage (and if it isn't modified automatically) is there any good way to do that with a Tasker based setup, so it can be switched instantly whenever I do something? For example, launching a music player. All 4 cores shoot up to 1890MHz (I know they eventually settle down to lower frequencies, but for example's sake), I would rather have it so when I launched the app, Tasker would come in and set my CPU to ~800MHz with only a single core. Everything might slightly lag, but it would work and I would potentially get better battery life while listening to music.
Also, I never tested this on TouchWiz, as I didn't stay on it for more than 30 minutes after I got my device.
I am running the latest CyanogenMod nightly in case it matters (20131002, and it'll be 20131003 tomorrow unless it breaks something)
Thanks in advance to anyone who can possibly help with this. I'm sorry if the post is unorganized, but I hope it's understandable.
[bump]
Forgive me for my ignorance since I'm on ME7 and unable to flash CM10.x yet, but couldn't you just try different governors instead? On my old phone I was using lulzactive and it gave me great battery life, and you could tweak all the values any way you want for more performance or battery life.
I also remember when I experimented with undervolting and much to my dismay it turns out it made my battery life WORSE because of all the error correcting it was doing.
I get at least a days worth of moderate/heavy use on mine and with how fast it charges I don't really care about battery life but I'm curious how much actual gain you'll get for your efforts