Database Develop

[Q] What factors determine benchmark speed differences in identical roms?

To try to make sense of my title, say we have 2 Hero cdma running the same rom. In linpack one scores 2.9 and one 4.9. Obviously hardware should be the same other than SD card. Can a fast SD card make that kind of a difference? What else can and is there a guide for optimizing our systems?
I get very confused as I switch between roms. Some roms won't run A2SD for me at all (while working great for other people) and some I have no problem with, so I'm kind of confused what I can get away with as I switch around.
Thanks,
Mike

I don't think SD card or a2sd should matter for linpack scores. What predominantly matters is CPU speed, JIT, VM heap size, how many widgets you have on your home screens, etc., and it might sound obvious but things that affect the overall "smoothness" of your phone.
Also, are you wiping ext before flashing a new ROM?

c00ller said:
I don't think SD card or a2sd should matter for linpack scores. What predominantly matters is CPU speed, JIT, VM heap size, how many widgets you have on your home screens, etc., and it might sound obvious but things that affect the overall "smoothness" of your phone.
Also, are you wiping ext before flashing a new ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I've been wiping everything. Haven't used JIT because I'm not sure what I need to use it properly. I've always been of the impression that it was dependent on A2SD which I can only ever get to work on Cyanogen roms. Also ignorant regarding VM settings and use.
Thanks for answering.

G1 ROM with JIT simple interface?

I'm looking for a fast ROM, battery is not so important, with JIT compiling that's stable....anything anyone can suggest?
Currently using Super AOSP (using it now, some apps don't run, otherwise stable). Radio=27.08, Haykuro SPL....
Most of the loads I've tried are either buggy or I can't load them for one reason or another (A lot of roms fail during load - is that my phone?)
I don't need a lot of bells and whistles, I do EMAIL, I do Web Surf and play an occasional game, but I don't really need lots of other things, I would gladly give up visuals for some increased speed - currently 2.6 MFLOPS (Linpack free).
Thanks.

best I can do for now....4 MFLOPS on G1
I think I found the best for me right now, Ginger Yoshi gives me 4 MFLOPS, which is not as good as I wanted, but I've set my sites lower.
It is very smooth - it does not feel refined, don't need it, everything works.
I can recommend SuperAosp, it is very refined, everything looks finished. It is not nearly as fast as Ginger Yoshi, but it is pretty and stable.
I did try several other loads, and I'm thankful that there are developers out ther, so I won't mention names, but at least one of these loads gets a lot of press on here and on my phone, I'd call it buggy.
Super Aosp and Ginger Yoshi are both stable.

It sounds funny, but try turning off JIT. It seems to make roms a lot more stable; I'd guess the G1 just isn't up to snuff for JIT. It makes benchmarks lower, but in practice it works much smoother.

Thanks for the reply!
I am turning off JIT...Then let the phone sit for a couple of mins to finish any housekeeping.
Ginger-Yoshi
JIT = Yes, Speed = 4.1 MFLOPS
JIT = No, Speed = 2.45 MFLOPS
Odd note, one of my non JIT runs ran at 1.6 MFLOPS, I didn't count it since it was so far out, not sure if there was housekeeping going on or what.
Second note, disabling JIT did make installations more stable - I was unable to install and sometimes download a specific application, disabling JIT allowed it to D/L and install.
Super-AOSP
JIT = Yes, Speed = 2.6 MFLOPS
1.6 Google - Rooted, speed to 528 MHz
2.4 MFLOPS
1.6 Google stock
1.4 MFLOPS
I've never run 2.0 or 2.1 so I don't know how they stack up, they do not have JIT, so maybe they are more efficient.
What I really wanted was a 1.6 OS with everything moved to the SD card AND JIT and CPU set to 528 MHz otherwise stock, I expect that is about as fast as this phone can go.
My limited experience:
I can't speak for anyone else but Super-Aosp and Ginger-Yoshi are very stable.
I tried several others that were not so stable, though they have lots of loyal fans, maybe their phones are better than mine.
I agree that we should be able to build a tight system without JIT that is faster, efficiency is the key.
A buddy of mine, has a very fast Android LG Optimus phone - it fly's he can run all sorts of animation, applications etc. and it doesn't seem to affect the speed of the phone...He runs 9 MFLOPS which is WAY above what everyone else with the same phone has...he told me that he isn't modifying the subroutines/calls, he's sort of linking scripts to make things run more efficiently. He's a physicist not a programmer.
He just constantly tinkers with it though - some bits are buggy, it's just a hobby for him, he has development tools right on the phone
My current Ginger-Yoshi runs just over 4 MFLOPS, which is less than I wanted but all I can find so far.

JIT is NOT a good match for this hardware, for the simple reason that JIT consumes more RAM.
What you have is a piece of hardware that is SEVERELY RAM LIMITED. Eating up even more of it causes necessary components to be booted out of memory, which ends up causing long periods of WAITING while those components RELOAD. It can also lead to instability, since the available memory will IN MANY CASES, be insufficient for loading even a single program into memory.
Counting FLOPS is a very poor measure of overall system performance. I would bet you that in terms of overall usability and wasted user time waiting, your phone will actually be FASTER with JIT DISABLED.
Ignore FLOPS. It is irrelevant.

dhkr234 said:
Ignore FLOPS. It is irrelevant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate your argument and I 100% agree that the phone is ram limited, can you suggest another build that does not use JIT?
My current Ginger-Yoshi is faster and smoother than any 1.6 I've run (I have not run Super D, that was going to be my next target if G-Y was buggy).
That goes back to my original reason for this post...fast enough to play angry birds or whatever I'm doing.
You say to ignore FLOPS, that is the fairest test That I know for different phones,<Millions of> Floating Point Operations Per Second..that bypasses graphics co-processors and gets down the the meat of what's going on inside.
If you can suggest a ROM that runs better than G-Y I am very willing to try it, but right now the very best ROM I've tried is G-Y (not perfect but better than Anything I've run on this phone).

GolfnWrx said:
I appreciate your argument and I 100% agree that the phone is ram limited, can you suggest another build that does not use JIT?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would expect that you can switch on/off JIT in your settings, so you can try if for you JIT helps or not. G-Y doesn't provide this? (Sorry for the question, but I've never tried it ...)
If there is no option within the ROM, you could add
Code:
dalvik.vm.execution-mode=int:fast
to you /system/build.prop to disable JIT, or
Code:
dalvik.vm.execution-mode=int:jit
to enable JIT.
Sent from my Gingerbread on Dream using XDA App

haha, sorry I guess I was not clear
yes, i can enable/disable JIT....what I was asking for though was a stable build that is faster than 2.5 MFLOPS.
There were some people last year that found a way to script one of the roms to be more efficient....IIRC they were able to get up to 3.7 MFLOPS....but I don't see them around any more....no JIT it was a rebuild of 1.6 I think..maybe 2.1, I just don't recall.
That might be the best way to go, or they might have hit an error...I didn't keep up with it.
Thanks for the reply though

So you want a script to spoof Linpack?
Sent from my Gingerbread on Dream using XDA App

dhkr234 said:
JIT is NOT a good match for this hardware, for the simple reason that JIT consumes more RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Overall my opinion on JIT (vs. android version)
1.6 - caused some apps problems otherwise seemed the same w/ or w/o jit.. maybe more ram and slower
2.1 - extra ram caused problems with services and slow load times.. improvement at run time minimal.
2.2 - improvement at runtime noticeable but still high memory use and very slow load times
2.3 - incrreased memory use and loadtimes; but more minimal than earlier versions; with screen andimations off/fast perfomance may be acceptibal to many given the better performance of the browser and other higher processing tasks. [at least in a light weight rom]
(Of course this is my opinion durring use .. not a linpack score)

[Q] whgat are the best settings for cyanogen7 on a htc hero CDMA??

any one got the best way to setup a hero with cyanogen7?
looking to get the best of every thing from this rom!!

weirdfate said:
any one got the best way to setup a hero with cyanogen7?
looking to get the best of every thing from this rom!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately there is no definitive standard answer because everyone's phone's run a little differently. What works for me, may not work for you and vice versa....but here's some info to get you going. These options are under Cyanogenmod Settings.....
Overclocking...best max cpu settings will probably be somewhere between 691 & 748
Underclocking...can go as low as 19 mhz, but that may cause sluggishness when you wake your phone up, and also may give you problems with screen off music player, camera, & navigation problems. I usually have my min set around 264 (going from memory here..the Hero is home & I'm at work).
Governor....On Demand or Interactive seem to be the post popular governors....I use On Demand.
Compcache....mine's set at 18% per someone elses reccomendations after having some nav problems.
Enable JIT....Seems to be personal preference, try it both ways.
Surface Dithering....off
Allow purging of assets....Personal preference, try it both ways.

hockeyfamily737 said:
Unfortunately there is no definitive standard answer because everyone's phone's run a little differently. What works for me, may not work for you and vice versa....but here's some info to get you going. These options are under Cyanogenmod Settings.....
Overclocking...best max cpu settings will probably be somewhere between 691 & 748
Underclocking...can go as low as 19 mhz, but that may cause sluggishness when you wake your phone up, and also may give you problems with screen off music player, camera, & navigation problems. I usually have my min set around 264 (going from memory here..the Hero is home & I'm at work).
Governor....On Demand or Interactive seem to be the post popular governors....I use On Demand.
Compcache....mine's set at 18% per someone elses reccomendations after having some nav problems.
Enable JIT....Seems to be personal preference, try it both ways.
Surface Dithering....off
Allow purging of assets....Personal preference, try it both ways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Id disable compcache. Read up on it. And keep jit off. Just makes system unstable with no performance gain.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.

youdug said:
Id disable compcache. Read up on it. And keep jit off. Just makes system unstable with no performance gain.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ya and the scren on/off animations dont like to work for me with jit.
do you know how to convert the file system and the other 2 to sae ext4?

weirdfate said:
ya and the scren on/off animations dont like to work for me with jit.
do you know how to convert the file system and the other 2 to sae ext4?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why would you want to use ext 4???
Locked & Loaded

I say enable jit and enable surface dithering. Also enable compcache to 24. Try it for a day or two and see how it works.
Locked & Loaded

laie1472 said:
I say enable jit and enable surface dithering. Also enable compcache to 24. Try it for a day or two and see how it works.
Locked & Loaded
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is compcache?
Compcache (compressed caching) is , in short , virtual swap , setting aside a certain percentage (usually 25% ) of your RAM as 'compressed' swap. Compcache compresses the data that would normally go to swap, then moves it back into RAM, and reverses the process when moving it out of the 'compressed' swap. However, this is a classic space-time tradeoff . You effectively get more RAM from the compression , but it is slower than 'normal' RAM due to the CPU time required to compress and decompress the swapped pages.
wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Swap_and_Compcache
Surface dithering improves the quality of images but takes away from performance.
Try jit if u want. Some people say games run better but other than that theres no difference. All i had was instability when i just tried it again.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.

youdug said:
What is compcache?
Compcache (compressed caching) is , in short , virtual swap , setting aside a certain percentage (usually 25% ) of your RAM as 'compressed' swap. Compcache compresses the data that would normally go to swap, then moves it back into RAM, and reverses the process when moving it out of the 'compressed' swap. However, this is a classic space-time tradeoff . You effectively get more RAM from the compression , but it is slower than 'normal' RAM due to the CPU time required to compress and decompress the swapped pages.
wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Swap_and_Compcache
Surface dithering improves the quality of images but takes away from performance.
Try jit if u want. Some people say games run better but other than that theres no difference. All i had was instability when i just tried it again.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ummm very aware of what compcache is and what it does. That's why I suggested he enable it. And jit has given me not one issue. Only improved my hero when I had it.
Locked & Loaded

laie1472 said:
Ummm very aware of what compcache is and what it does. That's why I suggested he enable it. And jit has given me not one issue. Only improved my hero when I had it.
Locked & Loaded
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess its all in what u do wit ur phone. Wasnt saying u dont know what it is but disabling it would give u the best performance. But if u need the extra bit of ram it creates then go for it. Did you actually see a gain with jit tho? Ive used it bunch of times for days at a time and seen no gain. Just random reboots n lag that i never had a problem with before or after i enabled it.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.

youdug said:
Guess its all in what u do wit ur phone. Wasnt saying u dont know what it is but disabling it would give u the best performance. But if u need the extra bit of ram it creates then go for it. Did you actually see a gain with jit tho? Ive used it bunch of times for days at a time and seen no gain. Just random reboots n lag that i never had a problem with before or after i enabled it.
Sent from Enrique Iglesias.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could be wrong but I think jit has a lot to do with how much mem you have free. " I think " I was running data2ext ext2 on a 16gb class 4 sd and a 2048 ext2 partition with the boost added and jm's 806 kernel oc to 768 max and 691 min. When ever I turned jit off I would notice a big difference in app loading, scrolling in apps,web page loading, animation and transitions. Boot time was a lot slower as well. But with jit on I automatically notice a speed gain in all of the above. Its true though no to phones are alike so its a hit or mis with it. I was one of the lucky ones were it actually benefited me. Also with comcache any amount of ram gain on the hero "Imo" was a plus.
Locked & Loaded

laie1472 said:
Why would you want to use ext 4???
Locked & Loaded
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure but i got faster startup and a bit better performance out of my samsung transform with a coverted system to ext4

Are you planning on using a certain mod that requires ext 4??
Locked & Loaded

laie1472 said:
Are you planning on using a certain mod that requires ext 4??
Locked & Loaded
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no not at this time
just thought id ask cause i always swapped the systems to either ext3 or 4 and it got me better startup and such (from what i saw) on my transform

Well from my knowledge on data2 ext. Ext2 was faster but ext 4 was safer. In terms of data loss and battery pulls. But I've always used ext2 and have pulled my heroes battery several times and never lost any data.
Locked & Loaded

Stock vs custom - multitasking

So, i've tried many different roms out there on my SGS. Never got any major issue with flashing or setting them up. Supposedly a custom rom has something improved but there was one think i kept thinking they all fail and i was wondering if anyone else feels the same.
I see random posts all the time telling how great multitasking in android is. But all these roms i keep using try their very best to close just about everything i have running. As far as i can tell, a few seconds after i switch to anything else, my first app gets closed. For example, everytime i'd leave browsing to manage what im listening to or sort out files on some file manager i'd find i needed to open my browser again instead of being there opened and waiting for me to return.
After searching for a while, the best explanation i could find out is to prevent battery drain from opened apps and to keep things smooth by having free ram, which kind of makes sense. Goes against what i read in a paper from google about android multitasking but fair enough.
Except the other day i happened to returned to a froyo stock rom (JS8 with darkcore 1.4) on my SGS and found out this does not happen. Apps stay open for the most part, except when i run something really heavy (like a game). And i dont really notice any performance decrease or extra battery drain from my usual usage.
Granted, i could be just told something along the lines "well dude, just use whatever works for you" and i totally plan on doing so, hence me experimenting, but thats not really my point. What i'm going for is, are custom roms being overzealous? because this really spoils any attempt at multitasking...
Again, this is not a rant of any sort, i was just wondering what are other people's thoughts about it

I'm suffering same problem
i want to have the browser and messenger at the same time
it close one after swetching to the other
i have 80mb free ram

I had the same problems, although lack of multitasking appeared on my stock rom, not a custom... sgs couldn't handle faceboom messager, viber, and a browser at the same time, everytime I switch from my browser to something else - it gets killed, which is frustrating
at the same time I saw how nexus s work, and how much free memory it has, compared to mine, the difference was huge!
I tried cyanogen at first, which was very close to stock nexus s, but it doesn't work good with sgs's camera and crashes once in a while
so eventually I installed JVT with voodoo and uninstalled different samsung stock apps, which gave me about 50mb of additional RAM compared to stock, and there doesn't seem to be any aggressive memory cleaners working, so I can now finally switch between all the apps I need

If you want the best roms for multitasking, go for the final builds of Froyo 2.2.1. They have plenty of free ram and are very smooth. I'd recommend Froyo ZSJPK. You can download it from XDA.

I think it depends on the ram settings in your ROM. The way android works is there are a bunch of system settings on how much ram to keep clear, and if it drops beneath certain values they start killing apps.
It's highly possible these values were tweaked in the custom roms, to improve the perceived smoothness and so on, but at the same time reducing multitasking. There's a trade off between performance and multitasking (guess why apple was so reluctant to add multitasking?)
I'm not really an expert on it, but I'm sure some quick searches around will find out where those values are and how to change them.. some rom/app probably even allows you to tweak them to your liking.

All Gingerbread roms do the same, closing apps after moving away from this, don't know why, but froyo didn't do this and ginger does.

I used to be like TS, clearing RAM because it might let the phone run smoother. After getting more exposed to Android, I realised that it could be logical to keep your apps in RAM instead of doing a cold boot again, meaning to close an app, open, close and open again, making it taxing on the phone.
So I tried to use up as much RAM as possible and it works just fine, it feels good. I believe the problem you have stated is that in your ROM, the task manager has instructions to clear the RAM once it hits a certain threshold. When it does, it starts to clear apps in different category, starting from what is known as empty apps, which are generally just apps you use and are not important to the android OS or rather independent from the OS.
In the new Samsung ROM, the threshold is set to 40MB, and it is working great for me. You can go to the android market and download "Galaxy Tuner" to set the threshold to a value you feel comfortable with. To multitask better, set the threshold as low as possible.

MaoJie said:
I used to be like TS, clearing RAM because it might let the phone run smoother. After getting more exposed to Android, I realised that it could be logical to keep your apps in RAM instead of doing a cold boot again, meaning to close an app, open, close and open again, making it taxing on the phone.
So I tried to use up as much RAM as possible and it works just fine, it feels good. I believe the problem you have stated is that in your ROM, the task manager has instructions to clear the RAM once it hits a certain threshold. When it does, it starts to clear apps in different category, starting from what is known as empty apps, which are generally just apps you use and are not important to the android OS or rather independent from the OS.
In the new Samsung ROM, the threshold is set to 40MB, and it is working great for me. You can go to the android market and download "Galaxy Tuner" to set the threshold to a value you feel comfortable with. To multitask better, set the threshold as low as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok i downloaded galaxy tuner but idk how to change threshold

Apps Performance issue

Hello evry one. I have problem in my captivate and other models of android. I installed almost every custom rom but problem of loading apps fast still exist. What i mean is.. that when i on my mobile, so first time apps like calender, messenging etc take a little time to load. than when i close the app and open again, it loads very quickly. When mobile goes to standby for more than 10 mins, and when i on it, it again take little time to load apps, and widget menu etc.
Why it is like that ??? and whats the solution to always load the apps quickly

majidshahab091 said:
Hello evry one. I have problem in my captivate and other models of android. I installed almost every custom rom but problem of loading apps fast still exist. What i mean is.. that when i on my mobile, so first time apps like calender, messenging etc take a little time to load. than when i close the app and open again, it loads very quickly. When mobile goes to standby for more than 10 mins, and when i on it, it again take little time to load apps, and widget menu etc.
Why it is like that ??? and whats the solution to always load the apps quickly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's how Android manages memory. It keeps your apps in memory until it needs to free some, at which point it starts to close apps to free some up. If they're already in memory they open fast because they're already open. If they aren't, they open more slowly.
There's not a ton you can do, really. Some 3rd party sms apps let you lock the app in memory, but I honestly never checked to see if it really works or not.
Personally, I restart my phone every morning when I wake up. This frees up the most memory and allows your phone to leave more apps open before closing them.

make sure you arent running any ****ty task killers.

You could flash an I9000 ROM/kernel that let's you tweak the lmk. (low memory killer)
Talon and semaphore both offer that option.
The trick is to make it weak enough to not kill the apps you want, but aggressive enough to not allow to run out of ram completely.
both of those kernels also have a "bigmem" version that gives the user a bit more ram at the cost of being able to record video in 720p.

studacris said:
You could flash an I9000 ROM/kernel that let's you tweak the lmk. (low memory killer)
Talon and semaphore both offer that option.
The trick is to make it weak enough to not kill the apps you want, but aggressive enough to not allow to run out of ram completely.
both of those kernels also have a "bigmem" version that gives the user a bit more ram at the cost of being able to record video in 720p.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like ur answrr. But can u pls guide me abt lmk. I like this idea but never use such tweaks. I m using talon kernel right now and rom is much fast. But have same prb of apps loading

In the app memory freak, that installed with the kernel, there is a slider for you to adjust,
lower number the more aggressive the lmk but the better the overall performance.
Higher number is less aggressive and is better for multitasking, but can be a bit slower.

studacris said:
In the app memory freak, that installed with the kernel, there is a slider for you to adjust,
lower number the more aggressive the lmk but the better the overall performance.
Higher number is less aggressive and is better for multitasking, but can be a bit slower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where to find app memory freak ? i haven't seen any option in CWM

Should have been installed when you flashed talon. If not, it should be linked in the talon op.