OverClocking 101

[Skull One]

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!

I would love to know about this test as well. Because as far as I know there isn't one available.

 

[moset]

My knowledge is limited but I am trying to understand. It seems that the biggest battery drain is always the display. Is there any connection to display power consumption in the kernel selection or does it relate more to the ROM? seems that any combination nets close to the same. In my case every combination results in about 15% drain per hour of display on time. Does this seem normal? Is there any tweek to improve display power use?

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[Skull One]

My knowledge is limited but I am trying to understand. It seems that the biggest battery drain is always the display. Is there any connection to display power consumption in the kernel selection or does it relate more to the ROM? seems that any combination nets close to the same. In my case every combination results in about 15% drain per hour of display on time. Does this seem normal? Is there any tweek to improve display power use?

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Display power usage is independent of the ROM, Kernel and Voltage. It can only be adjusted by two factors. The display brightness and the backlight brightness. The lower each of them are, the less power you will use.

 

[aggiechase37]

Skull, please answer this question.

When searching for the best kernel for your phone, what would you consider optimal operating temperature? For instance, on the chevy med voltage kernel I'm on now, it seems to operate - while I'm actively using it - at high 90's to low 100's. I typically have it set to 800mhz on setcpu though. Anyway, with standard/active useage, what should be expect to be a good healthy temperature? Thanks in advance!

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[Skull One]

Skull, please answer this question.

When searching for the best kernel for your phone, what would you consider optimal operating temperature? For instance, on the chevy med voltage kernel I'm on now, it seems to operate - while I'm actively using it - at high 90's to low 100's. I typically have it set to 800mhz on setcpu though. Anyway, with standard/active useage, what should be expect to be a good healthy temperature? Thanks in advance!

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Optimal is technically as close to absolute zero as possible.

Now that I got the silly answer out of the way

Heat is a byproduct of friction. Friction in a CPU is caused by the electrons flowing thru the transistors. So if we assume speed and voltage are the two leading causes of this friction than the lower the temperature, the better off we are.

So the reality is what your hand can handle is truly the best benchmark if you aren't worried about battery drain.

If you are worried about battery drain, then the lower your temperature, the better off you are.

Or the technical answer is: There is no optimal temperature for the CPU as long as you are in-between its lower and upper temperature range.

 

[aggiechase37]

So no goldilocks zone? Seems like though maybe I would want to stay right in the middle of 50 and 150? Or perhaps say some set above the temperature that you are in? So for instance if I'm in a room that's 70 degrees F, then as long as the phone is 20 to 30 degrees above that? So in this hypothetical it would be 90 to 100 degrees?

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[moset]

Thanks Skull, I appreciate your thoughts on this and other kernel issues. Your information has been very helpful. I am using adjust brightness to control both. Lots of good information.

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[jrredho]

The screen shots in post #2 is exactly how my phone is setup save for one extra profile to cover CPU Temp at 120F. I consider that my "non testing or everyday" setup. I believe in simple if at all possible.

Gad, I know I'm being quite lame piggybacking off of everyone's hard work that's being demonstrated here, but... I'm going to do it anyway!

I've got a D1, stock ROM, rooted and running Chevy's lv 1.1 kernel (from his 8/1/10 archive). My questions:

(1) Does this kernel support cpu temp monitoring? (Is there a way I could find that out myself?)

(2) Skull One, where exactly do you put the CPU temp profile in your lineup? Before your battery temp one?

Many thanks!

cheers,
john

 

[Skull One]

The screen shots in post #2 is exactly how my phone is setup save for one extra profile to cover CPU Temp at 120F. I consider that my "non testing or everyday" setup. I believe in simple if at all possible.

Gad, I know I'm being quite lame piggybacking off of everyone's hard work that's being demonstrated here, but... I'm going to do it anyway!

I've got a D1, stock ROM, rooted and running Chevy's lv 1.1 kernel (from his 8/1/10 archive). My questions:

(1) Does this kernel support cpu temp monitoring? (Is there a way I could find that out myself?)

(2) Skull One, where exactly do you put the CPU temp profile in your lineup? Before your battery temp one?

Many thanks!

cheers,
john

1) No clue, but you can check it in the "INFO" panel. If it shows OMAP3 Temp Sensor: Detected, the kernel has the support code compiled in.

2) I make it the same priority as the Battery temp one. That allows either one to kick off at the same time.

 

[furbearingmammal]

To answer question 1, yes.

Install temperature monitor from the market (there's a free version) and open it, menu softkey, enable CPU temperature monitoring, back softkey, look and see.

I'm running the ULV kernel at that speed myself.

 

[jrredho]

Hey Skull One and fbm,

Thanks for the prompt response! You guys are both extremely helpful. (One note: the TempMonitor app I found in the Market isn't free anymore...)

cheers,
john

 

[furbearingmammal]

there IS a free version of it. try searching both temperature monitor and tempmon. Also, you can do a search for the developer because I believe they're both by the same Dev.

/hijack

 

[Bilgediver]

Temp + cpu widget does the trick for me, it monitors cpu temp

Droidforums.net appified!

 

[tcyree2202]

Okay, I'm looking for a little clarification. Figured this would be the thread to post in. I know many people don't like the interactive governor, but to tell you the truth, I can't say that I've really noticed that much of difference between it and ondemand. From my understanding, interactive works similar to ondemand, the main difference being that it does not scale back down as quickly, thereby causing more heat and worse battery life. I guess my real question is, though, couldn't you at least partly alleviate some of the issues by lowering the min_sample_time to allow the governor to clock down more quickly? This way, it wouldn't be sitting at higher speeds for longer periods of time?

EDIT: Then again, we are talking about time in ms, so maybe this doesn't make much of a difference.

 

[Skull One]

Okay, I'm looking for a little clarification. Figured this would be the thread to post in. I know many people don't like the interactive governor, but to tell you the truth, I can't say that I've really noticed that much of difference between it and ondemand. From my understanding, interactive works similar to ondemand, the main difference being that it does not scale back down as quickly, thereby causing more heat and worse battery life. I guess my real question is, though, couldn't you at least partly alleviate some of the issues by lowering the min_sample_time to allow the governor to clock down more quickly? This way, it wouldn't be sitting at higher speeds for longer periods of time?

EDIT: Then again, we are talking about time in ms, so maybe this doesn't make much of a difference.

Here is my "looking from 1 mile above" soap box.

There are a LOT of users that follow what their ROM makers say without doing any research. The best example of this would be Bugless Beast and Ultimate Droid ROMs. They are told in the release notes "You do not need to run SetCPU because overclocking is now built in". Well that is just fine and dandy, right up to you kill your phones battery life or worse kill the phones CPU while using the performance, interactive or a very poorly configured ondemand setup.

Now if everyone used SetCPU properly, then this wouldn't be an issue. Because they wouldn't make the mistake of not setting the sleep/standby profile to ondemand, conservative or powersave. But that isn't the case. Hence why this thread actually exists. Because the average person simply doesn't have time to do the research needed to figure out "WHY" you need a sleep/standby profile that isn't set to performance or interactive. Or better yet understand that there are certain governors you should "NEVER" mix because SetCPU doesn't maintain different entries for each of the fields that you can set and will cause issues that look like the phone is lagging out or even overheat.

Interactive is better than the performance governor. No IF, ANDs or BUTs about it. But you have to know WHEN and WHY to use it. And that isn't the average users forte. Hell, lets be realistic, I don't even know how the new conservative governor works yet because I simply don't have time to research it with my current work and home life. And that is with me already investing over 100 hours doing research, testing and code reading. One of these days I hopefully will get to it.

/soap box off


Short answer to your question is: Yes, when properly setup and with correct supporting profiles, the interactive governor is a great asset to the Android OS. But one mistake in the setup and it can eat your battery in less than 5 hours.