OverClocking 101

[Skull One]

Ah yes the good old days prior to Froyo 2.2. The Android OS was too sluggish coming out of standby/sleep mode to justify 125Mhz. That stigma has carried over into 2.2. If the user improperly configures their phone for sleep/standby or have the wrong voltage selected, they will experience the same symptoms as the 2.0, 2.01 and 2.1 days.

So, I sometimes have problems with this. What are the right settings?

Start with a standard voltage kernel to remove the first key variable so you can properly test the others. Set the sleep/standby to 125/400 and let the phone sleep for at least 6 hours. As soon as you wake it up open SetCPU and click on the Info tab. Look for the Load Average. All three numbers should be below two. If they are not, then up the max 1 slot IE 125/550. The reason for this is background apps. As they load up the phone in standby you need to be able to overcome the load average. If you don't have a lot of background apps, 125/300 may be possible, but if you have a ton, then you might need 125/800 or higher.

About now some of you might be going "Well I can run 250/400 and it works, so that should avoid the need for 125/800". You would be correct it works. It also take more battery to run at 250/400 than 125/800 if all the applications you have installed play properly.

Once you have determined the min/max for sleep standby, then you should go back to a low or ultra low voltage kernel for more testing.

 

[aggiechase37]

Just for an update, I moved to a Slayher kernel since the min in 125mhz rather than Chevy's min of 250. I kept everything the same, (except for screen off I went to 125-250) with the conservative setting. So far so good. Only a few minutes in though. I'm expecting and hoping to see some improved battery life out of this move. This was if I decide to go out at night and don't get in till 2am or so I won't have to charge the phone first. I'll report my results. After a couple days of use.

 

[jeffe65]

Start with a standard voltage kernel to remove the first key variable so you can properly test the others. Set the sleep/standby to 125/400 and let the phone sleep for at least 6 hours. As soon as you wake it up open SetCPU and click on the Info tab. Look for the Load Average. All three numbers should be below two. If they are not, then up the max 1 slot IE 125/550. The reason for this is background apps. As they load up the phone in standby you need to be able to overcome the load average. If you don't have a lot of background apps, 125/300 may be possible, but if you have a ton, then you might need 125/800 or higher.

About now some of you might be going "Well I can run 250/400 and it works, so that should avoid the need for 125/800". You would be correct it works. It also take more battery to run at 250/400 than 125/800 if all the applications you have installed play properly.

Once you have determined the min/max for sleep standby, then you should go back to a low or ultra low voltage kernel for more testing.

Now that's some information I needed. I was running the Chevy 1.25 kernel with screen off at 400/800; wake-ups were inconsistent and battery life "okay". I switched to P3Droid because they now have CPU temp readings, 1.25 Ghz SV, and at the same settings wake-ups were still inconsistent. I switched to 125/800, and got better performance, but Load Averages were 2.5 - 2.9. So I upped it to 125/1000 and voila! Load Averages are .8-1.9, response is great, and battery life is actually better. I wouldn't have guessed it. But then, I do have a ton of apps, which is something else I need to address.

Thank-you very much! For that you get a dancing banana! Or three!

 

[Skull One]

Start with a standard voltage kernel to remove the first key variable so you can properly test the others. Set the sleep/standby to 125/400 and let the phone sleep for at least 6 hours. As soon as you wake it up open SetCPU and click on the Info tab. Look for the Load Average. All three numbers should be below two. If they are not, then up the max 1 slot IE 125/550. The reason for this is background apps. As they load up the phone in standby you need to be able to overcome the load average. If you don't have a lot of background apps, 125/300 may be possible, but if you have a ton, then you might need 125/800 or higher.

About now some of you might be going "Well I can run 250/400 and it works, so that should avoid the need for 125/800". You would be correct it works. It also take more battery to run at 250/400 than 125/800 if all the applications you have installed play properly.

Once you have determined the min/max for sleep standby, then you should go back to a low or ultra low voltage kernel for more testing.

Now that's some information I needed. I was running the Chevy 1.25 kernel with screen off at 400/800; wake-ups were inconsistent and battery life "okay". I switched to P3Droid because they now have CPU temp readings, 1.25 Ghz SV, and at the same settings wake-ups were still inconsistent. I switched to 125/800, and got better performance, but Load Averages were 2.5 - 2.9. So I upped it to 125/1000 and voila! Load Averages are .8-1.9, response is great, and battery life is actually better. I wouldn't have guessed it. But then, I do have a ton of apps, which is something else I need to address.

Thank-you very much! For that you get a dancing banana! Or three!

You are welcome.

It only took about 10 hours of research, the second time around, to figure out how to properly test for this condition and how to fix it. It was one of those "I know this should work dang it!" and I didn't stop till I had a reproduce-able answer that could be used as the solution. I was actually grateful when Google update the kernel and multitasking code in Froyo 2.2. It made it much easier to troubleshoot this annoying issue

 

[$mitty]

Haven't been around here for a while, but I just updated my phone to a new build and wanted to see what the ideal settings are.

Now on FRG22D build (stock root with DarkEdge theme applied) and the default SetCPU settings are 30000, 93, 0, 0. Would you recommend changing them to something else? Thanks!

 

[Skull One]

Haven't been around here for a while, but I just updated my phone to a new build and wanted to see what the ideal settings are.

Now on FRG22D build (stock root with DarkEdge theme applied) and the default SetCPU settings are 30000, 93, 0, 0. Would you recommend changing them to something else? Thanks!

I have been running 50000, 65, 0, 0 and 30000, 50, 0, 0 on and off for a month now. My impression of the difference is that 30000, 50, 0, 0 is a TAD bit snappier under certain conditions but I still can go 24 hours between charges with either setting.

 

[$mitty]

Cool. I'll give 30000, 50, 0, 0 a try for a day or 2 and then try the other. Thanks! I knew 30000, 93, 0, 0 didn't look right to me...that 93 was out of place.

 

[Skull One]

A lesson.

I, till today, considered myself a very thorough tester when it came to the Droid 1 and voltage issues. I broke a cardinal rule for the last 3 weeks. And I believe during those 3 weeks that I have in this very thread, no less, told other to test.

Here is my story:

Back in July I found a LV kernel that worked flawlessly on my phone. I was thrilled to finally find one. Not one issue. No strange lag. No overheating. Really good battery life. Every application worked as expected. Basically I struck gold.

Four weeks ago, I upgrade my ROM to its latest version. For a week everything was running perfectly. Until I recorded a video of my youngest granddaughter. I noticed some skipping during playback. I moved the video to my PC and the skipping still occurred. I correctly summarized it was an issue with the recording quality. I confirmed with the ROM maker that the bit rate had been upped. I of course countered that this change created a bug. I was given the diff output of the changes and even I had to agree with the developer that those changes shouldn't have caused a major issue. So I took it upon myself to start learning the insides of the Android OS. I even built a developer machine so I could create my own ROMs and APPs. Last night I built my first working Camera.apk to test. The issue was better but not fixed. That is when my spider senses kicked in. What if the issue wasn't the application but in the ROM itself. Of course my logic kicked in, I got on IRC and did an informal round table on the subject. It seemed it was a 50/50 issue. Well that didn't make sense. Why are half fine and half showing similar issues? I slept on it.

This morning I finally figured out the issue. Every single app on my phone worked save one. And I hadn't followed my own advice for 3 weeks. "If something doesn't work as expected, check your voltage". I switched to a SV kernel. Low and behold the issue went away.


Hopefully someone will learn from my mistake and remember to try a different voltage when something this odd comes up. It might save them a few weeks of work

 

[geocritter]

Don't think that's it (or at least, not all of it)

I installed Sapphire 1.1.1 tonight with the 800-sv kernel, and just ran some video tests in HQ. At first I thought the SV had nailed it, but a second video that I took was as bad as previously, with at least 3 "gaps" or "chops". :-(

Just thought I'd let you know.

 

[Big Cam]

Skull One I want to thank you for this thread, I've been contemplating rooting to overclock adn now I have my researcha head of me, but at least it's all in one place.

 

[hrdnhvy]

Great Info

Sorry if a this question has been already posted:

I was wondering, if a person selects the "on demand" scaling, & in advanced tab then fine tunes some things, for example: setting power save bias at 100, & sampling rate at 35000...and then in profiles enables a screen off profile again selecting the "on demand" scaling....my question is since the main setting & the profile screen off setting both use "on demand" scaling does the profile screen off setting apply those same advanced settings set in the main setting or does it defer to the default advanced settings when the screen is off....I hope that question makes sense...

 

[Skull One]

Sorry if a this question has been already posted:

I was wondering, if a person selects the "on demand" scaling, & in advanced tab then fine tunes some things, for example: setting power save bias at 100, & sampling rate at 35000...and then in profiles enables a screen off profile again selecting the "on demand" scaling....my question is since the main setting & the profile screen off setting both use "on demand" scaling does the profile screen off setting apply those same advanced settings set in the main setting or does it defer to the default advanced settings when the screen is off....I hope that question makes sense...

Makes perfect sense. And yes all profiles set to ondemand will use the advanced setting regardless of the mode.

 

[aggiechase37]

Just an update on me (cause I know everyone is sitting on pins and needles waiting on my updates)

So being a tinkerer, I couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to go play with some different kernels. Specifically because the Chevy LV 1ghz I was on was 250mhz min, and I thought I might be able to get some better batter going to something 125mhz minimum.

I tried Shayher and P3 LV's, both 125mhz to 800mhz, both set to conservative, and both with the only profile was screen off 125-250. In both instance the things were sluggish coming out of sleep, and both made my phone run much hotter than Chevy, constantly around 90 degrees seemingly no matter what. Now I'm back to Chevy, on the same good ol kernel, and the thing is flying around at just a hair over room temperature with normal useage. If I watch flash video or something it will start crawling over a 100, sometimes into 110's, but nothing like the 130+'s I saw with those other two kernels. And the battery seems to last better as well.

Skull, one question, I've seen other people mention some kind of test that can be run to see of the processor is having to deal with errors on top of its load with voltages that aren't sufficient, which will lead to overheating and overworking the phone. What is this test? I'm interested in running it to see if maybe a switch to standard voltage would be warranted. Thanks in advance!

 

[xowktiger]

My phone's been freezing and rebooting quite frequently. Could this be a result of choosing a kernel with too high MHz and too low voltage?

 

[drpaul07]

My phone's been freezing and rebooting quite frequently. Could this be a result of choosing a kernel with too high MHz and too low voltage?

Yes that's most likely exactly the problem. You should try a kernel of a higher voltate (for example, from ULV to LV, or LV to MV) or try a kernel with a lower max speed.

Sent from my Droid