Database Users

Overclocking in Android - some questions and thoughts sharing

Hi all guys! I have a couple of questions and would like to hear some experiences and thoughts in general about overclocking in Android.
First a couple of more specific questions which I would like to have answered, if possible. If it's not possible, please give me your general thoughts anyway about overclock instead of moving to the next thread, please.
- Are there any kernels which allow overclocking beyond 1536 MHz?
- If so, did anybody try those frequencies? What was the result?
- Are there any people who for some reasons did NOT manage to have stable 1536 MHz?
- Are there any reliable reports of people frying their phones due to overclocking?
- Are there any easy ways to undervolt the CPU (at standard frequencies, not overclocked) in order to save some battery charge?
My very little OC experience is based on this: I have been running for some days a ROM based on a kernel which allowed OC up to 1536 MHz. I installed CPU Master Free, did some tests and found out, to my surprise, that the phone will run @1536 MHz without any noticeable issues. I never kept it at that frequency for more than 5 minutes I think, because I was afraid of excessive heat, but the phone never got really hot, just a bit warm. I ran some system benchmarks (Quadrant and another one which I can't recall right now) which stressed a bit the CPU and did not encounter any crashes. I also did this with performance governor which keeps the CPU constantly to the max frequency I think, and still no probs. Since everything works so fine and was that easy, I was wondering why don't everybody always run with the HD2 @1536 MHz. Is it only for battery issues? Please share your ideas about this and OC on the HD2 under Android in general.
Thanks.

The problem with overclocking isn't just overheating or too much power. With overclocking you are also increasing the say, amount of data being passed through the cpu. If the cpu's bus size isn't fast or big enough to handle it, it will ultimately slow down or malfunction.
So you should get the picture of overclocking now. Note however there are some safe speeds for overclocking.
Onto your next question as to why everyone doesn't overclock to the max speed. The reasons are: paranoia and safety of device
You have to know that not every chip is made exactly the same, they are modeled after the same design but are never made the same. So that mean whilst some people's phones may be able to handle extreme overclocking, like yours, others may not be able to, and malfunction/overheat. Malfunctioning like, cannot make phone calls, wifi/GPS doesn't work, etc.
So I hope this was informative.

Not everything you have said was new to me, but you were informative.
...although I would really be surprised to have issues with phone calls for instance caused by excessive overclocking...
Do you personally keep the HD2 overclocked?
Anybody else?

When I had my HD2, I rarely did so. Reason being is that I found no need to. The only times I did do so was to see if the phone actually was faster. In my results however I found no big difference so I didn't bother.

Well, the phone is indeed fast without OC, but you can feel the difference if you are performing some CPU intensive tasks. For example, unzipping a 200 MB ROM archive, or importing 1300 SMS from a backup. A temporary OC can save you maybe 1 minute or 30 secs, which aren't absolutely worth the time you spend learning to overclock the device, but never mind, even if you only saved 5 secs it's worth it for the satisfaction.

Ah I see your point. I was only looking in the perspective of simply tasks such as browsing internet/market, games, gallery.

Figure it this way. When you overclock a pc, (and if you're doing it safely/correctly) you have usually spent extra money on liquid cooling systems. Or at the very least, bigger fans, bigger heatsyncs, etc. Even with all that, you could very easily blow out a cpu or other component when you overclock.
Now, on a cell phone, you're running a MUCH higher risk. First off, there is NO extra cooling, and considering the size of our phones, and how thing they are, there's really no room for airflow. So while yes, it may work for you, in general I always say getting those couple extra frames per second out of your game are not worth the potential damage to the device.
Overclocking on actual computers has gotten much safer in the last few years, because the chip designers are putting more effort into keeping the chip cooler under load. Cell phones are not designed to overclock (even one as sweet as the hd2.)
Lastly, when overclocking a system (desktop), you usually change more than just the cpu clock speed. You'll usually have to adjust the voltage to compensate, and in some cases adjust memory timing as well as bus speed. None of this happens when you overclock on the hd2, all you do is change the clock speed.
It's not set in stone, but there's a very real possibility that you can do permanent damage to your device when overclocking. And, you may not notice the damage right away. Also keep in mind, these are mass produced cpu's, and there are slight variations in each chip. (Hence why some people can overclock higher and keep stability, while some phones with the same chip get picky if you even overclock 10mhz )
I've never seen the point in overclocking the hd2, you really don't get any real world speed out of it, it's a placebo at best. (And please don't start showing me or quoting benchmarks, they're useless, and extremely easy to make little changes in the roms to artificially boost benchmark scores.)
Edit: For more info, because I'm tired of typing, check these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/2005/overclocking.asp

Great info mstrk242,
Thank you!

All benchmark info is skewed. Tried 1500mhz and the only app I noticed a difference on was gun bros. A new more efficient version of rom made it run fine at 998mhz. Not worth the extra wear and tear on your device. Simply changing things like your launcher can have larger effects.
Sent from my HyperDroid powered HD2!

Do you overclock your N7?

Do you?
Do you keep it overckocked for a longer period, permanently, or just when/while you need it? How much (exact frequencies would be cool) I'm thinking of OCing mine (both CPU and GPU) since some games like NOVA 3 lag on occasions but not sure how safe/advisable it is.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

I don't think it's needed. I've heard that OC won't help much with gaming, but you can definitely try

I don't yet - I might later. My N7 is still less than a month old.
The device manufacturers (e.g. Asus in this case) have motivations to "not leave anything on the table" when it comes to performance. So, you have to ask yourself - why would they purposely configure things to go slowly?
After all, they need to compete with other handset/tablet manufacturers, who are each in turn free to go out and buy the exact same Tegra SoC (processor) from Nvidia.
At the same time, they know that they will manufacture millions of units, and they want to hold down their product outgoing defect levels and in-the-field product reliability problems to an acceptable level. If they don't keep malfunctions and product infant mortality down to a fraction of a percent, they will suffer huge brand name erosion problems. And that will affect not only sales of the current product, but future products too.
That means that they have to choose a conservative set of operating points which will work for 99+ % of all customer units manufactured across all temperature, voltage, and clock speed ranges. (BTW, Note that Asus didn't write the kernel EDP & thermal protection code - Nvidia did; that suggests that all the device manufacturers take their operating envelope from Nvidia; they really don't even want to know where Nvidia got their numbers)
Some folks take this to mean that the vast majority of units sold can operate safely at higher speeds, higher temperatures, or lower voltages, given that the "as shipped" configuration will allow "weak" or "slow" units to operate correctly.
But look, it's not as if amateurs - hacking kernels in their spare time - have better informed opinions or data about what will work or won't work well across all units. Simply put, they don't know what the statistical test properties of processors coming from the foundry are - and certainly can't tell you what the results will be for an individual unit. They are usually smart folks - but operating completely in the dark in regards to those matters.
About the only thing which can be said in a general way is that as you progressively increase the clock speed, or progressively weaken the thermal regulation, or progressively decrease the cpu core voltage stepping, your chances of having a problem with any given unit (yours) increase. A "problem" might be (1) logic errors which lead to immediate system crashes or hangs, (2) logic errors (in data paths) that lead to data corruption without a crash or (3) permanent hardware failure (usually because of thermal excursions).
Is that "safe"?
Depends on your definition of "safe". If you only use the device for entertainment purposes, "safe" might mean "the hardware won't burn up in the next 2-3 years". Look over in any of the kernel threads - you'll see folks who are not too alarmed about their device freezing or spontaneously rebooting. (They don't like it, but it doesn't stop them from flashing dev kernels).
If you are using the device for work or professional purposes - for instance generating or editing work product - then "safe" might mean "my files on the device or files transiting to and from the cloud won't get corrupted", or "I don't want a spontaneous kernel crash of the device to cascade into a bricked device and unrecoverable files". For this person, the risks are quite a bit higher.
No doubt some tool will come in here and say "I've been overclocking to X Ghz for months now without a problem!" - as if that were somehow a proof of how somebody else's device will behave. It may well be completely true - but a demonstration on a single device says absolutely nothing about how someone else's device will behave. Even Nvidia can't do that.
There's a lot of pretty wild stuff going on in some of the dev kernels. The data that exists as a form of positive validation for these kernels is a handful of people saying "my device didn't crash". That's pretty far removed from the rigorous testing performed by Nvidia (98+% fault path coverage on statistically significant samples of devices over temperature, voltage, and frequency on multi-million dollar test equipment.)
good luck!
PS My phone has it's Fmax OC'ed by 40% from the factory value for more than 2 years. That's not a proof of anything really - just to point out that I'm not anti-OC'ing. Just trying to say - nobody can provide you any assurances that things will go swimmingly on your device at a given operating point. It's up to you to decide whether you should regard it as "risky".

Wow thanks for your educational response, I learned something. Great post! I will see if I will over clock it or not since I can play with no problems at all, it is just that it hics up when there is too much stuff around. Thanks again!
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

With the proper kernel its really not needed. Havent really seen any difference,aside from benchmark scores(which can be achieved without oc'ing)
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium HD app

Yes, I run mine at 1.6 peak.
I've come to the Android world from the iOS world - the world of the iPhone, the iPad, etc.
One thing they're all brilliant at is responsive UI. The UI, when you tap it, responds. Android, prior to 4.1, didn't.
Android, with 4.1 and 4.2, does. Mostly.
You can still do better. I'm running an undervolted, overclocked M-Kernel, with TouchDemand governor, pushing to 2 G-cores on touch events.
It's nice and buttery, and renders complex PDF files far faster than stock when the cores peak at 1.6.
I can't run sustained at 1.6 under full load - it thermal throttles with 4 cores at 100% load. But I can get the peak performance for burst demands like page rendering, and I'm still quite efficient on battery.
There's no downside to running at higher frequencies as long as you're below stock voltages. Less heat, more performance.
If you start pushing the voltages past spec, yeah, you're likely into "shortening the lifespan." But if you can clock it up, and keep the voltages less than the stock kernel, there's really not much downside. And the upside is improved page rendering, improved PDF rendering, etc.
Gaming performance isn't boosted that much as most games aren't CPU bound. That said, I don't game. So... *shrug*.

Bitweasil said:
I can't run sustained at 1.6 under full load - it thermal throttles with 4 cores at 100% load.
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@Bitweasil
Kinda curious about something (OP, allow me a slight thread-jack!).
in an adb shell, run this loop:
# cd /sys/kernel/debug/tegra_thermal
# while [ 1 ] ; do
> sleep 1
> cat temp_tj
> done
and then run your "full load".
What temperature rise and peak temperature do you see? Are you really hitting the 95C throttle, or are you using a kernel where that is altered?
I can generate (w/ a mutli-threaded native proggy, 6 threads running tight integer loops) only about a 25C rise, and since the "TJ" in mine idles around 40C, I get nowhere near the default throttle temp. But I am using a stock kernel, so it immediately backs off to 1.2 Ghz when multicore comes on line.
Same sort of thing with Antutu or OpenGL benchmark suites (the latter of which runs for 12 minutes) - I barely crack 60C with the stock kernel.
?
bftb0

The kernel I'm using throttles around 70C.
I can't hit that at 1200 or 1300 - just above that I can exceed the temps.
I certainly haven't seen 95C.
M-Kernel throttles down to 1400 above 70C, which will occasionally get above 70C at 1400, but not by much.

Bitweasil said:
The kernel I'm using throttles around 70C.
I can't hit that at 1200 or 1300 - just above that I can exceed the temps.
I certainly haven't seen 95C.
M-Kernel throttles down to 1400 above 70C, which will occasionally get above 70C at 1400, but not by much.
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Thanks. Any particular workload that does this, or is the throttle pretty easy to hit with arbitrary long-running loads?

Odp: Do you overclock your N7?
I'll never OC a quadcore phone/tablet, I'm not stupid. This is enough for me.
Sent from my BMW E32 using XDA App

I've over clocked my phone, but not my N7. I've got a Galaxy Ace with a single core 800MHz processor OC'd to 900+. The N7 with its quad core 1.3GHz is more than enough for doing what I need it to do. Using franco.Kernel and everything is smooth and lag-free. No need for me to overclock
Sent From My Awesome AOSPA3.+/franco.Kernel Powered Nexus 7 With XDA Premium

Impossible to do so can't even get root but did manage to unlock the bootloader
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app

CuttyCZ said:
I don't think it's needed. I've heard that OC won't help much with gaming, but you can definitely try
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I'm not a big OC'er, but I do see a difference in some games when I OC the GPU. It really depends on the game and what is the performance bottleneck. If the app is not Kernel bound than an OC won't make much difference. Must games are I/O and GPU bound.
Sent from my N7 using XDA Premium
Dirty AOKP 3.5 <&> m-kernel+ a34(t.10)

I've overclocked all of my devices since my first HTC hero. I really don't see a big deal with hardware life.
I know that this n7 runs games better at 1.6ghz than at 1.3ghz.
First thing I do when I get a new device is swap recovery and install aokp with the latest and greatest development kernel. Isn't that why all this great development exists? For us to make our devices better and faster? I think so. I'd recommend aokp and m-kernel to every nexus 7 owner. I wish more people would try non-stock.

scottx . said:
I've overclocked all of my devices since my first HTC hero. I really don't see a big deal with hardware life.
I know that this n7 runs games better at 1.6ghz than at 1.3ghz.
First thing I do when I get a new device is swap recovery and install aokp with the latest and greatest development kernel. Isn't that why all this great development exists? For us to make our devices better and faster? I think so. I'd recommend aokp and m-kernel to every nexus 7 owner. I wish more people would try non-stock.
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Click to collapse
Do you mean the pub builds of AOKP? Or Dirty AOKP
Ty

bftb0 said:
Thanks. Any particular workload that does this, or is the throttle pretty easy to hit with arbitrary long-running loads?
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Stability Test will do it reliably. Other workloads don't tend to run long enough to trigger it that I've seen.
And why is a quadcore magically "not to be overclocked"? Single threaded performance is still a major bottleneck.

Bitweasil said:
Stability Test will do it reliably. Other workloads don't tend to run long enough to trigger it that I've seen.
And why is a quadcore magically "not to be overclocked"? Single threaded performance is still a major bottleneck.
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Hi Bitweasil,
I fooled around a little more with my horrid little threaded cpu-blaster code. Combined simultaneously with something gpu-intensive such as the OpenGL ES benchmark (which runs for 10-12 minutes), I observed peak temps (Tj) of about 83C with the stock kernel. That's a ridiculous load, though. I can go back and repeat the test, but from 40C it probably takes several minutes to get there. No complaints about anything in the kernel logs other than the EDP down-clocking, but that happens just as soon as the second cpu comes on line, irrespective of temperature. With either of the CPU-only or GPU-only stressors, the highest I saw was a little over 70C. (But, I don't live in the tropics!)
To your question - I don't think there is much risk of immediate hardware damage, so long as bugs don't creep into throttling code, or kernel bugs don't cause a flaw that prevents the throttling or down-clocking code from being serviced while the device is running in a "performance" condition. And long-term reliability problems will be no worse if the cumulative temperature excursions of the device are not higher than what than what they would be using stock configurations.
The reason that core voltages are stepped up at higher clock rates (& more cores online) is to preserve both logic and timing closure margins across *all possible paths* in the processor. More cores running means that the power rails inside the SoC package are noisier - so logic levels are a bit more uncertain, and faster clocking means there is less time available per clock for logic levels to stabilize before data gets latched.
Well, Nvidia has reasons for setting their envelope the way they do - not because of device damage considerations, but because they expect to have a pretty small fraction of devices that will experience timing faults *anywhere along millions of logic paths* under all reasonable operating conditions. Reducing the margin, whether by undervolting at high frequencies, or increasing max frequencies, or allowing more cores to run at peak frequencies will certainly increase the fraction of devices that experience logic failures along at least one path (out of millions!). Whether or not OC'ing will work correctly on an individual device can not be predicted in advance; the only thing that Nvidia can estimate is a statistical quantity - about what percent of devices will experience logic faults under a given operating conditon.
Different users will have different tolerance for faults. A gamer might have very high tolerance for random reboots, lockups, file system corruption, et cetera. Different story if you are composing a long email to your boss under deadline and your unit suddenly turns upside down.
No doubt there (theoretically) exists an overclocking implementation where 50% of all devices would have a logic failure within (say) 1 day of operation. That kind of situation would be readily detected in a small number of forum reports. But what about if it were a 95%/5% situation? One out of twenty dudes report a problem, and it is dismissed with some crazy recommendation such as "have you tried re-flashing your ROM?". And fault probability accumulates with time, especially when the testing loads have very poor path coverage. 5% failure over one day will be higher over a 30 day period - potentially much higher.
That's the crux of the matter. Processor companies spend as much as 50% of their per-device engineering budgets on test development. In some cases they actually design & build a second companion processor (that rivals the complexity of the first!) whose only function is to act as a test engine for the processor that will be shipped. Achieving decent test coverage is a non-trivial problem, and it is generally attacked with extremely disciplined testing over temperature/voltage/frequency with statistically significant numbers of devices - using test-vector sets (& internal test generators) that are known to provide a high level of path coverage. The data that comes from random ad-hoc reports on forums from dudes running random applications in an undisciplined way on their OC'ed units is simply not comparable. (Even "stressor" apps have very poor path coverage).
But, as I said, different folks have different tolerance for risk. Random data corruption is acceptable if the unit in question has nothing on it of value.
I poked my head in the M-kernel thread the other day; I thought I saw a reference to "two units fried" (possibly even one belonging to the dev?). I assume you are following that thread ... did I misinterpret that?
cheers

I don't disagree.
But, I'd argue that the stock speeds/voltages/etc are designed for the 120% case - they're supposed to work for about 120% of shipped chips. In other words, regardless of conditions, the stock clocks/voltages need to be reliable, with a nice margin on top.
Statistically, most of the chips will be much better than this, and that's the headroom overclocking plays in.
I totally agree that you eventually will get some logic errors, somewhere, at some point. But there's a lot of headroom in most devices/chips before you get to that point.
My use cases are heavily bursty. I'll do complex PDF rendering on the CPU for a second or two, then it goes back to sleep while I read the page. For this type of use, I'm quite comfortable with having pushed clocks hard. For sustained gaming, I'd run it lower, though I don't really game.

Need buying advice - N910C of N910F ?

Which one should I buy if I'm after longer battery life / performance / XDA support?
I'm not a gamer.
Thanks in advance

search...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/general/to-snapdragon-805-to-exynos-5433-t2868247

Doesn't really matter. The N910F apparently gives better battery life, but some try dispute that. If LTE Cat.6 is implemented in your country then get the N910F as it supports LTE Cat.6. With latest Android 5.1.1 now out for the USA Snapdragons and Exynos Polish, apparently both no longer have Recent Apps lag and they perform much better than before.
Either way youre getting a beastly device.

go for 910c and dont even think about it unless you are cm user.

tmac31 said:
go for 910c and dont even think about it unless you are cm user.
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and why is that? it's simple, both run and will run 32bit, and if you want more processing power, then the C if you want graphics power, then the F.. simple as that, nothing more nothing less..

thejunkie said:
and why is that? it's simple, both run and will run 32bit, and if you want more processing power, then the C if you want graphics power, then the F.. simple as that, nothing more nothing less..
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910f barelys has any more graphics power. not a single game runs better on s805 version(atleast the ones i tried) benchmarks almost same aswell. but on the other hand cpu difference is big. when you use them side by side speed difference is very noticable.
and whatever they are on 32 or 64 bit doesnt mean anything.

I got a N910C, because I never did like Quadcomm SOCs. They tend to run a little hotter than other SOCs. I barely felt any heat of my N910C even when playing Asphalt 8 or Street Fighter IV HD. The only time I felt any heat from my N910C was when it had developed a hardware fault and I had to send it back to the retailer for repairs. Which I'm still waiting for them to finish the repairs.
Other than that I had a great experience with my N910C.

The N910F doesn't run hot, the Snapdragon 805 CPU has to be the coolest of the Qualcomm chips. The only time the phone got hot for me is when upgrading to Lollipop, it got very hot while optimising apps, then calmed down after the update was all done.
As for performance, on 5.1.1 both the C and USA Snapdragons that are basically US N910Fs are running with no Recent Apps lag, so one can't really say there is much of a difference, both run much better than they did on 5.0.1.
Get the variant that has warranty in your country, and if both do, then get the one that best suits your network e.g. if the network supports the newer and faster LTE Cat.6 then get the F, also for slightly better battery life get the F, as well as if you plan on getting the GearVR by Oculus, get the F.
If you want the Exynos CPU and Wolfson DAC, get the C.

I've just sold my 910f and bought the 910c. Two reasons first I just prefer exynos maybe because my last device was exynos. Second the snapdragon does run fairly hot and tended to overheat when using gear vr
Sent from my SM-N910C using Tapatalk

Dont do that mistake and buy note 4 it's crap

Exynos 5433 is around ~30% faster at the CPU department, while it has a weaker GPU.
Honestly, it doesn't make much of a difference. But if you can choose, the 910C has better performance.
Weaker GPU matter less than weaker CPU because both are going to run any game exceptionally regardless.
Edit: Exynos 5433 is apparently ~50% ahead of the SD805 at geekbench, difference is bigger than I thought.

Go for C and don't look back.

910C.

I've just got the C & I have noticed it runs smoother than my F & also when I play music via Bluetooth it don't get ant skips, blips etc like i did with the F.
I dunno if it's the 5.1.1 update that has fixed that or its a Snapdragon fault.
So far I'm really happy with the C & just looking at the F & wonder if I should sell it.

The 5.1.1 update seems to have done wonders for both N910F and N910C.
Sent from my Note 4 +64GB MicroSDXC via Tapatalk

Get the C

Hehehe again a 910C/910F thread, let's see how quickly this one gets closed due to members fighting (cause that's where thread like these are always bound to end up in).
Anyway my personal opinion: if you want to stay stock, then go for the 910C. If you want AOSP then 910F. Yes, CM is currently also available for 910C but they're about 8-12 months behind. Realistically the Note 6 will be out before a 'perfect' stable version will be available for the 910C. These things just take a lot of time to develop.
Quick pro's and cons of stock vs AOSP:
Pro stock:
* Everything just works.
Pro AOSP:
* Quick updates, no need to wait till august 2016 for Android M, you will have it 2 weeks after google releases it
* Blazing fast GUI, everything just works so much smoother.
* Additional features and control over your phone.
Con AOSP:
* Not everything works as of yet, I think currently still missing (although will be worked upon) are AudioFX, MMS, Compass in google maps. And then there's of course the fingerprint scanner but that should be coming with Android M. And then if you flash nightlies every time, you will run into some problems every now and then of course.
Previously camera quality was also a factor but that's solved now, photo quality is now equal.
All in all a personal choice, but I think this is what it boils down to.

Poor performance on the 5X when the CPU gets WARM!

Hey guys,
Was playing something a few days ago and i noticed it worked like utter crap and today i ran Geekbench 3 a few times and i got results for single core between 472 and 670 and i saw most people are getting 900+. What can affect the phone in such a horrible way? Any ideeas? This is not acceptable.
EDIT: I just noticed the following when comparing the benchmarks (mine is the lower one)
https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/4255827?baseline=4255794
The processor IDs differ:
ARM implementer 65 architecture 8 variant 0 part 3331 revision 3 (crap one)
ARM implementer 65 architecture 8 variant 1 part 3335 revision 2 (good one)
Anything to comment on this? Should i return the device?
UPDATE: The Processor IDs differ based on the which cores are running so variant 1 p3335 r2 are all hexa cores running while the other variant has only the quad cores running at max speed or throttled down to avoid overheating.
Bottom line is the fact that as soon as the processor starts to overheat then the CPU throttling kicks and performance of the handset goes to hell. It heats after 5 minutes if you use CPU intensive apps so beware. The single core performance halves after a maximum of 10 minutes while the multi core performance will drop as well but by a 40% amount, that's why you will see bad results in Antutu Benchmark and Geekbench after your CPU is already hot or you run a lot of tests.

I have the same revision as yours as roughly the same score as the other processor Id.

are you rooted? stock rom? Any application issues? Assuming you have a titanium backup or similar of your applications, have you tried redownloading the factory image from google?I have the 335 processor id and score1301

I have the 2nd variant
I just installed GeekBench 3 and tested the phone. The score I got is: 1221 and 3506

Seriously weird, now it's showing up as variant 1. First 1-2 tests score above 1.2k the subsequent ones score below 800...
Can you guys run the test 3-4 times to see if the results change?
PS: Stock rom, no root, fresh format.
Question: what's the difference between MDB08L MDB08M MDB08I and MDA89E. I assume they're the builds in order of release with MDB08M being the latest?

MrHollow said:
Seriously weird, now it's showing up as variant 1. First 1-2 tests score above 1.2k the subsequent ones score below 800...
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The phone throttles pretty hard when it gets hot, check out the anandtech review the big cores throttle after less than 2 minutes constant load and shut down completely after 12 minutes.
I have a case on mine and the first 3 runs were around 1200, more runs after that were in the 800s including one that was 664.
It's kind of lame, makes me wish I'd waited for 16nm because i think these 64-bit stock ARM cores in 28nm might actually be worse than the custom 32-bit ones from previous years (RAM usage is lower too with 32-bit as well for some reason). The only advantage I can think of is that 32-bit support will be dropped at some point but that's a long way off.

@haloimplant thanks for the info... So basically my phone ain't crap, it's the QC SD 808 which is complete garbage -_-
C:\Users\adrag>adb shell cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : AArch64 Processor rev 3 (aarch64)
processor : 0
processor : 1
processor : 2
processor : 3
processor : 4
processor : 5
Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0xd03
CPU revision : 3
Hardware : Qualcomm Technologies, Inc MSM8992
Well it can be seen from the above info that my revision is older....

Yeah this generation of SoCs just isn't very good...first cut of 64-bit cores on an almost 4-year old process node... Oh well I'm still happy with the fingerprint scanner and camera and performance is good enough for my usage (reddit and email mostly). Games I tried slowed down pretty horrifically though, they are probably the only use case that really drives a heavy constant load.

haloimplant said:
Yeah this generation of SoCs just isn't very good...first cut of 64-bit cores on an almost 4-year old process node... Oh well I'm still happy with the fingerprint scanner and camera and performance is good enough for my usage (reddit and email mostly). Games I tried slowed down pretty horrifically though, they are probably the only use case that really drives a heavy constant load.
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I would say the camera and constant updates are the only thing that keeps this phone together... Coming from an OnePlus ONE to this and i am mostly appalled by the horrific performance of the 5X and from all t he reviews that I read nothing mentioned a horrible throttling. That anandtech article is good though, thanks for the tip!

Charkatak said:
I just installed GeekBench 3 and tested the phone. The score I got is: 1221 and 3506
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My details say variant 1 part 3335 revision 2 and I'm getting almost exactly the same scores as you: 1227 and 3506.

jimv1983 said:
My details say variant 1 part 3335 revision 2 and I'm getting almost exactly the same scores as you: 1227 and 3506.
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Same variant and nearly same scores 1263 and 3439.

Done some more tests today to make sure i'm not completely drunk:
Played a bit with the phone (settings menu) and ran a GB3 test
Results: single 770 multi 2931
Let the phone cool down for 5 minutes and ran another GB3 test:
Results: single 1230 multi 3447
Processor ID: ARM implementer 65 arhitecture 8 variant 1 part 3335 revision 2
What i don't understand is why if i look into cpuinfo i get the other variant info.

Hi
haloimplant said:
The phone throttles pretty hard when it gets hot, check out the anandtech review the big cores throttle after less than 2 minutes constant load and shut down completely after 12 minutes.
I have a case on mine and the first 3 runs were around 1200, more runs after that were in the 800s including one that was 664.
It's kind of lame, makes me wish I'd waited for 16nm because i think these 64-bit stock ARM cores in 28nm might actually be worse than the custom 32-bit ones from previous years (RAM usage is lower too with 32-bit as well for some reason). The only advantage I can think of is that 32-bit support will be dropped at some point but that's a long way off.
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This is how they are designed to work, they can not really work any other way, and after a short time of being pushed hard the SoC has no option but to throttle down the CPU. Cooling can be active or passive, active cooling requires a heat-sink and fan, passive cooling works by reducing CPU speed until temperatures reduce to normal levels, you can also have a combination of the two like most laptops and even desktop PCs. When you have a smart phone, active cooling isn't possible, so how else can the SoC be cooled down?
The 16nm will be just the same, because marketing will dictate selling the CPU at higher clock rates, so pushing a bench-marking program will give you higher numbers due to the faster CPU speed, but then will quickly throttle back, so you will still get the difference between fast and slow due to passive cooling, just the slow might not be as slow, but then again it could be worse. The problem is that the smaller the SoC the harder it is to remove the heat as it has a smaller surface area, so I wouldn't expect much improvement overall, just the max and mins should be higher then previous generations but the performance drop will still be evident.
If you want to play the latest demanding games for more than a few minutes, a smart phone isn't the device to do it on, it just isn't designed for it.
Regards
Phil

@PhilipL I'm sorry but i just cannot agree with you on this. On my old OnePlus One i could play Dominations without any problems and the throttling was almost non existent (QC Snapdragon 801) but on the 5X it's sluggish as soon as i enter it so yeah... I don't think this kind of garbage is acceptable on a newer generation of processors, i've had a friend do the same test on his HTC One M7 and the results after 5-6 runs were of about 650 on single core and about 2100 on multicore which was just a tiny bit slower than my Nexus 5X after 3-4 runs.
How is ANY of this even close to being normal on newer phones? How and WHY is the Snapdragon 801 faster and better than my Snapdragon 808. Can someone explain who had this garbage idea of throttling the processor that hard to bring the speeds down to something worse the last year's processor? If this is how they solve processor overheating on the Snapdragon 820 as well then they might as well throw it in the garbage can.
Furthermore why doesn't the Exynos 7420 on the S6 behave in the same why? Why does it throttle only so slightly that it almost unnoticeable ?

Swappa.com

What are you guys using your phone for? Running benchmarks the whole day? I can't see any performance issue in real life.

No, but i had the 5X for a few days, sent it back because of a dead pixel and now i'm thinking about getting a new one or if i should wait. The touchscreen of my N4 stopped working properly a week ago, which makes it even harder to wait.
But to get on the topic: I had the 5X and the Moto X Pure/Style to see which one i like more, ultimately it was the 5X because of the better camera in normal/low light and the size.
I played around with Geekbench and Riptide 2 (after reading the Anandtech review) and can confirm the throttling on the 5X. The thing is, this wasn't the case on the Moto X, i could play a round of Riptide and run Geekbench a few times or run 4-5 Geekbench passes and the score didn't go to hell like on the 5X.
This also translates into real life usage, if you take more than a few HDR+ images, for example, which makes it a bit of a problem. ;(
I don't know if the throttling on the 5X is just really conservative (altough the phone got quite warm) or if the cooling on the Moto X just works better because of the aluminum body.

ph0b0z said:
No, but i had the 5X for a few days, sent it back because of a dead pixel and now i'm thinking about getting a new one or if i should wait. The touchscreen of my N4 stopped working properly a week ago, which makes it even harder to wait.
But to get on the topic: I had the 5X and the Moto X Pure/Style to see which one i like more, ultimately it was the 5X because of the better camera in normal/low light and the size.
I played around with Geekbench and Riptide 2 (after reading the Anandtech review) and can confirm the throttling on the 5X. The thing is, this wasn't the case on the Moto X, i could play a round of Riptide and run Geekbench a few times or run 4-5 Geekbench passes and the score didn't go to hell like on the 5X.
This also translates into real life usage, if you take more than a few HDR+ images, for example, which makes it a bit of a problem. ;(
I don't know if the throttling on the 5X is just really conservative (altough the phone got quite warm) or if the cooling on the Moto X just works better because of the aluminum body.
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I have both phones right now, and i disagree. I can see no difference in every day preformance.
Sendt fra min Nexus 5X med Tapatalk

Well, it's already snowing in denmark!
But about general usage and every day performance, i think you're absolutely right. Some "problems" due to the thermal throttling should only apply to "corner cases".
Rogoshin said:
I have both phones right now, and i disagree. I can see no difference in every day preformance.
Sendt fra min Nexus 5X med Tapatalk
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cidefix said:
What are you guys using your phone for? Running benchmarks the whole day? I can't see any performance issue in real life.
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Pretty much nothing and still it's laggy. Starting apps is slow, installation of new apps is slow and slows the device down to a crawl as well. I see many blaming encryption as LG G4 has the same NAND and it's 30% faster.

CPU Throttling - warranty?

Hello !
After long weeks of searching the answer and solution to my problem, I am exhausted. So I would like to ask the biggest Android community for help
Well, I know it's not new, but I have problem with my S7 Edge (Exynos) performance
I experience FPS drops in almost every game I play. As for games it's not that irritating, but recently I have bought Gear VR and while having this thing so close to your eyes, you see every frame skipping.
Apps for checking the CPU throttling shows that after 5-10 minutes the 4 bigger cores slow down to about 50% of their full speed. It leads to ~30% performance slow down.
I tried every solution that doesn't require root access and warranty void. For example: disabling certain packages and services (Game Launcher, Game optimization service); different settings in Game Tuner; performance mode; factory reset etc. Nothing works.
Does this kind of problems can be repaired on warranty? I know that in order to fix this you can change kernel setting, cpu governor etc but ofc they don't do that in Samsung Service Center. Is it possible for them to replace the main board and cpu with Snapdragon one?
I would not like to root my device because I didn't want to lose my 3 years warranty and I am using a lot of applications that may not work with a root.
Thank you in advance for all your replies

Did you try the game performance mode? As the "performance mode" is just screen resolution and brightness. The game mode is the real performance mode where the temps throttling is relaxed and higher clock speeds allowed(you can also edit the profile to set the resolution manually to wqhd). You can also try to set the resolution to full hd and see how it goes (tho for VR it won't be cool, but for the test it won't hurt). Also if the phone is new, it will need atleast 10 days to settle and become faster, smoother, better. Apply updates if they are pending too.
Otherwise you can't do much without root, but even then you are limited to what you can achieve so be careful + samsung have a fuse into the chip that burns out when you root the phone, it's not possible to hide the intervention and they can deny warranty for that reason (and often do so).

high_voltage said:
Did you try the game performance mode? As the "performance mode" is just screen resolution and brightness. The game mode is the real performance mode where the temps throttling is relaxed and higher clock speeds allowed(you can also edit the profile to set the resolution manually to wqhd). You can also try to set the resolution to full hd and see how it goes (tho for VR it won't be cool, but for the test it won't hurt). Also if the phone is new, it will need atleast 10 days to settle and become faster, smoother, better. Apply updates if they are pending too.
Otherwise you can't do much without root, but even then you are limited to what you can achieve so be careful + samsung have a fuse into the chip that burns out when you root the phone, it's not possible to hide the intervention and they can deny warranty for that reason (and often do so).
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Thank you for your reply
Yes, I've tried "game mode" but there is no difference. Changing resolution to Full HD helps for a while, but the Gear VR software doesn't work properly on anything other than WQHD. It just doesn't scale properly and you are unable to see whole content.
I'm just wondering whether every S7 Edge has problems like mine. I understand throttling after 20-30 minutes of intensive gameplay, but ~40% slow down after 3-5 minutes seems strange, especially because phone doesn't even get warm.

emsitek said:
Thank you for your reply
Yes, I've tried "game mode" but there is no difference. Changing resolution to Full HD helps for a while, but the Gear VR software doesn't work properly on anything other than WQHD. It just doesn't scale properly and you are unable to see whole content.
I'm just wondering whether every S7 Edge has problems like mine. I understand throttling after 20-30 minutes of intensive gameplay, but ~40% slow down after 3-5 minutes seems strange, especially because phone doesn't even get warm.
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Hard to tell, got the phone, but no vr... :/
Otherwise I don't have problems with gaming, the game mode smooths a little the already fluid gaming(but then again, the game I play mostly is vainglory and that game runs great on htc m8 that is almost 4 years old). You are talking about some more massive performance drop. Many phones start to throttle early and throttle hard, samsung is one of them for sure (they want the phone cold).
@hamdir can you lend a hand on that one? You are tons more experience with VR than me.

high_voltage said:
Hard to tell, got the phone, but no vr... :/
Otherwise I don't have problems with gaming, the game mode smooths a little the already fluid gaming(but then again, the game I play mostly is vainglory and that game runs great on htc m8 that is almost 4 years old). You are talking about some more massive performance drop. Many phones start to throttle early and throttle hard, samsung is one of them for sure (they want the phone cold).
@hamdir can you lend a hand on that one? You are tons more experience with VR than me.
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Well, there is an app called CPU Throttling Test on Google Play. I would be really thankful if you give me information how your phone behave in this app. Mine throttles hard after 3-8 minutes. Clock speed of the better cores goes down to about 1.6GHz each. Sometimes even below 1.5GHz.

emsitek said:
Well, there is an app called CPU Throttling Test on Google Play. I would be really thankful if you give me information how your phone behave in this app. Mine throttles hard after 3-8 minutes. Clock speed of the better cores goes down to about 1.6GHz each. Sometimes even below 1.5GHz.
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From a cold phone, 1.9GHz almost right away(I guess the highest freq is only for burst load, like app launching) and kept for 8 minutes then drop to 1.57GHz on the big cores. So I think it's in line with your result.

high_voltage said:
From a cold phone, 1.9GHz almost right away(I guess the highest freq is only for burst load, like app launching) and kept for 8 minutes then drop to 1.57GHz on the big cores. So I think it's in line with your result.
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Yeah, that would be it. Thank you for your time. So it seems to be normal, I hope I'll get used to it somehow
I also wrote an email to Oculus, maybe they heard sth about this issue and know a fix for frames skipping.

The notorious feature known as DVFS is the likely culprit. Some forum members suggest it throttles the GPU and CPU to improve benchmark results or otherwise to protect the device. I've noticed it can lock-up and end up overheating the device but that's just an anecdote.
You can try forcing the app to run at a lower resolution which Samsung's Game Tuner does for some games, or find other solutions for unrooted devices like capping CPU frequency for a smoother experience.

nexidus said:
The notorious feature known as DVFS is the likely culprit. Some forum members suggest it throttles the GPU and CPU to improve benchmark results or otherwise to protect the device. I've noticed it can lock-up and end up overheating the device but that's just an anecdote.
You can try forcing the app to run at a lower resolution which Samsung's Game Tuner does for some games, or find other solutions for unrooted devices like capping CPU frequency for a smoother experience.
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Click to collapse
Almost all the phones are tweaked to use max freq only on single core load and app startup (burst). If their power management detect heavy load on all cores, it will automatically scale down to lower freq state to prevent heat building up fast. In reality in our case this is 1.87GHz for all big cores + the small ones (higher if only the big cluster is used, leaving the small cores off). The first actual thermal throttling level is 1.56-1.57GHz at around 8 minutes mark. Games would take a lot longer and in my observation as the phone is big and none will use 8 cores at the same time - there will be no throttling, just power management and stable fps. His case is different tho, VR is really a heavy one on the CPU.
As for DVFS (and extended to samsung power management, every manufacturer has it's own management) - it's there for a reason, to use your phone without major slowdowns due to heat and to be cold in touch, i.e. better for use. You can always change the behaviour via custom kernel, but you can't get more performance without heating the phone to the point of hardware throttling or uncomfortable to hold. Actually as you said - the right way if modify is to cap to lower freq and try to command the phone to keep them. This would still lead to a lot of heat, but will take some time to build up (and it will look smoother, tho with lower fps). OC is pointless for speed gains, will work only for burst loads. UV is not effective too as nowdays the SOC's are heavily binned for optimal settings from the factory.

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