Speed up your Nook Color running ICS+ - Nook Color General

Hello all, today I will be showing you how to speed up your Nook Color a bit... these methods should work for CM9/CM10/CM10.1/Paranoid Android/etc., but I personally found these out while running PA ICS. The apps you may need to make your phone faster are Ram Manager (Free OR Pro) and No Frills CPU Control (In the case that your ROM doesn't have overclocking in settings). Basically, using these "tweaks" (minus overclock, as whenever I flash a ROM the first thing I do is overclock it), I went from a painfully slow (as in, I was ready to go back to Gingerbread) device to a somewhat faster device. I've seen huge differences in launching games and apps especially, and opening to app drawer seems to be smoother also.
CPU Overclock
Either using No Frills CPU Control or the built-in overclock, set your max CPU speed to the highest on the list (not exceeding 1200, but it shouldn't show anything above that anyhow). Change your governor to either Ondemand or Performance (I personally use Ondemand and have no problems with it). Most of you are probably already overclocked though, so please don't look at me like I'm stupid.
Swap Space
Open up RAM Manager and there should be an option to change your swap space at the bottom. I changed mine to about 48 and am content with that, although I must add it may make your SD card's life shorter. This will increase your RAM, thus allowing you to have more apps open at once.
Force GPU rendering
Open Developer Options in your settings app and check "Force GPU Rendering"... I'm guessing this is one of the biggest factors to my tablet becoming smoother, as from research it helps lower end devices achieve a better framerate, although it may decrease your battery life. Also, I cannot guarantee every app will run great with this. I tested a game (Dynamite Jack) with this setting enabled and it wasn't too shabby at all! But yes, I can definitely see a difference in the overall speed of my Nook Color.
Please tell me how these work for you

I tried these settings, but unfortunately didn't perceive any performance improvement.

Good call on RAM manager. Hadn't seen that before, its going on my NC and RAZR now

Can anyone tell me a good reason for that RAM Manager app to have the permissions it does? Location, Identity, and full network access?

Does NOT work. All this app " no frills CPU" does is provide a GUI front end for the settings already found for our nook color using CM 10+ in its "performace" settings. Also this app does not provide over clocking above our set 1100 MHz. You will need a custom over clocking kernel for the encore for this. Check over on the CM 10 kernel thread n the development section.

Related

[Q] Do I Need SetCPU with DamageControl?

Hi all, I'm AWOL from the EVO forum while I get my wife's Hero set up.
I just loaded up DC 2.09 (latest / final release) and I'm working through SetCPU, but I saw one user at least who said DC automatically scales the CPU all by itself. So do I need SetCPU to get some battery benefits? The phone is screen-off a lot, mostly used for just calls, texts, and camera other than that, so if it will kick down to 245 automatically, that should save a lot of watts.
So do I need SetCPU, or will DC underclock out-of-the-box?
(Edit: I guess SetCPU gives me the OVERclock, doesn't it? Still, I'd like to know about DC's background so I know how to set up profiles, or even if I should.)
I haven't used DC in a while, but I'm fairly certain it doesn't come with the ability to underclock by default....I'm pretty sure it comes with a stock or very-similar-to-stock kernel that wouldn't have any different cpu speed settings. I could be wrong but nothing in the main OP of his post (here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=656690) suggests otherwise. That ability might be available in the DConfig settings somewhere, but I haven't used/seen it in a couple months to remember. Check there first.
If you don't see anything, you probably will want to use SetCPU or the OC widget to scale down. I'd also recommend using the Screen Off profile in SetCPU, to lower the max speed when the screen is off. Sounds like it would be a useful one for you.
This may not work with the included kernel, so if you don't see any results try a different kernel built specifically for use with OC/setcpu:
This one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=750170
or one of these: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=705074 for DC.
Hope this helps.

[Q]need help with RAM

I'm using Team ICSSGS RC4.2 ROM on my cappy with Glitch 14 B5 kernel
OC-ed my device to 1.2 with 1350 mV with NSTools
it is wuaite snappy but I get around 50-70MB free RAM most of the time
I'm using RAM Manager Pro to monitor my RAM
Using Nova launcher with 3-4 widgets on
I'm getting ~1500 points in Quadrant bench with 1.2 GHz OC
any advice on improving RAM and what else can I do to tweak my cappy for max performance ?
There's been a lot of discussion about the things you're mentioning, so I'll distill down the key points:
1. Free RAM = Wasted RAM. Android loads programs into RAM to keep them quickly accessible for faster load times. If a program needing more RAM opens, Dalvik will kill other things in RAM to make room.
2. Quandrant Score = very poor metric. The idea of a Quadrant Score, while good in theory, can be manipulated in a lot of ways to where the results aren't as useful as we all would like them to be.
If you're wanting to improve performace, it sounds like you've already got a decent start. Overclocking can help a little, and not having a lot of widgets running helps, too. You may also want to try different kernels - some will respond better to your phone than others.
jmtheiss said:
There's been a lot of discussion about the things you're mentioning, so I'll distill down the key points:
1. Free RAM = Wasted RAM. Android loads programs into RAM to keep them quickly accessible for faster load times. If a program needing more RAM opens, Dalvik will kill other things in RAM to make room.
2. Quandrant Score = very poor metric. The idea of a Quadrant Score, while good in theory, can be manipulated in a lot of ways to where the results aren't as useful as we all would like them to be.
If you're wanting to improve performace, it sounds like you've already got a decent start. Overclocking can help a little, and not having a lot of widgets running helps, too. You may also want to try different kernels - some will respond better to your phone than others.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also installed Autokiller memory optimiser and enabled tweaks from there
I also messed with Rom manager and its kernel tweaks

[Q] Galaxy S OC/OV/UV - RAM management and VM heap size?

Hi everyone!
I have one question, what is the most stable config. of your device including OC of the CPU and GPU, overvolting and undervolting, governors and VM heap size?
I have CM9 ICS 4.0.3. with devils kernel, in NSTools enabled deep sleep, OC-ed to 1350MHz CPU and 10% LiveOC GPU, Voltages are default, RAM is set to Hard gaming with 64Mb of VM in RAM Manager PRO. Governors are deadline and ondemand (I´ve had cfq and smartassv2 before).
What is most interesting to me is voltages..as I´ve read somewhere that that is the most important part in stability of system running OC-ed settings. How can you accomplish that? Tell me your examples.
Hi there, I use last nightly cm9, sgs is OC till 1,3 and i think it's perfect. Everything is open quick, all games are work stable and fast without freezes. I don't see difference between 1,3 and 1,5 OC. Regards !
Hi, thanks for your reply!
I would disagree, there is a huge difference between 1.3 and 1.5 as it is between 1.3 and 1GHz in the way of speed and handling heavy staff. What is different is that your device heat rises much faster on higher clocks than of those default.
My main concerns about this is because I want to be able to play all the new games (to be specific: Nova 3 , I can play multiplayer but single player allways crashes after few seconds)..and so that is why I wanted to share my settings with all of you, and you also share your settings.
The key to higher clocks speed is voltages, but I have no knowledge about it.
When I normal use phone I don't see any difference between 1,3 and 1,5 maybe it's my sgs charm It is as quickly as possible. When I oc to 1,5 it often freez
Well, that depends on what you mean by "normal use" ..but, no doubt that your phone or any other is much smother when OC-ed.

[CM10] (5Feb13) NC Performance (and) Placebos

After getting a little annoyed at the runty, poorly mapped-out, scratchy thicket of real and imagined performance tweaks, I decided to embark on a semi-long term project to determine what's real and what's "zomg mega-booster performance pills".
First project was to evaluate existing performance options on stock CM10 for actual gains using experimental design. (tl;dr: for those geeky enough to want to know, it was a main effects only d-optimal design with 32 design points for the 16 parameters listed, including several lack-of-fit and pure-error replicates. I could go on, but do you really want me to?). I ended up with a list of 16 parameters all together, from the Developer Options and Performance settings, based on their showing up in various performance tweaks discussions.
The main challenge was finding a way to measure actual performance instead of perception. I settled on several benchmarking tools: Antutu, Quadrant, SQL Benchmark, and Chainfire's benchmarking app. One of the parameters being tested ("don't keep activities") actually breaks Antutu at the graphics testing step, so I'm not reporting anything from Antutu.
All told, out of the 16 parameters tested, only 9 showed any kind of effect whatsoever, and combining best settings for all 9 simultaneously, total performance only boosted by ~20%, of which fully half was due to switching max speed from 1000 to 1100. this means the other 8 settings combined for a total boost of ~10%, meaning individually they're peanuts. The remaining 7 settings that showed no effect are only so much fluff and unlikely to do a thing for you performance-wise.
Results are summarized below for your reading/teeth-gnashing pleasure:
Max Speed (1000 versus 1100): Very clear, notable difference between the two settings on all benchmarks. This is the expected result, about 10% improvement in all benchmarks on average. Recommendation: set max speed at 1100.
Governor (convservative vs interactive vs ondemand): This only had any impact on Quadrant benchmark, no other benchmarks appeared to care. In Quadrant, conservative was the worst overall, while interactive provided an ~ 5% boost and ondemand gave ~6% boost. Recommendation: use ondemand.
Scheduler (BFQ, CFQ, noop, deadline): I don't know what schedulers do or the differences between these settings, but the only place they had any effect at all was in the SQL benchmark. There were clear differences here though: BFQ was by far the worst. CFQ and deadline were about the same with a 17% increase in SQL activity performance. noop was the best with ~ 20% increase in SQL activity performance. Recommendation: use noop. [update: some have reported stability issues with noop. If thus us the case for you, CFQ would be the next best choice]
Zram (disabled, 18% default, 26%): Zram effects only showed up in Chainfire's benchmark app, specifically for Java activities. Default 18% setting performed worst but disabled setting wasn't significantly different. 26% setting gave a 4% boost, but again, only for the java-specific benchmark. Recommmendation: use 26% setting.
16-bit transparency (off or on): Turning on the 16-bit transparency setting gave a smallish 3% boost to Chainfire's java benchmark. It did not have a measureable effect anywhere else, and I did not visually see any differences anywhere during testing. Recommendation: turn on 16-bit transparency.
Kernel same-page merge (off or on): This had a *negative* effect when turned on, resulting in a 1% performance hit on Chainfire's native benchmark. It did not have any measurable effect anywhere else. Recommendation: Keep off.
Don't keep activities (off or on): This was very problematic: it provided a distinct improvement in quadrant score (+8%) when turned on, but behaved poorly with other apps (Antutu being one). Since it didn't seem to help anywhere else outside of Quadrant and didnt' play well with others, recommendation is to keep off:
The following list are the settings that had no measureable impact anywhere. Any attempt to claim they have "zomg" status should be summarily whipped with placebo pills, or else they should let me know the exact details in which they supposedly work and I can test.
Placebo hall of shame:
Surface improvement (since it had no effect anywhere, why not just set it on banding/blur and have the best pictures?)
Background process limit
Disable HW overlays
Force GPU setting
Any of the animation scale settings (although they look snappier at lower settings, so it at least *feels* faster)
minimum speed (seriously? people think this has an effect? keep at 300 for best battery life)
Allow purging of assets
Hope you like this, y'all! Let me know if there's any other mad-scientist experiments you'd like to see.
Nicely done. How many times did you run each test? Or perhaps the results were very consistent.
FYI; regarding the governor, scheduler and the like, you may want to have a look at this thread;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1369817
I think gives your tests / results some perspective as well.
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
NCKevo said:
Nicely done. How many times did you run each test? Or perhaps the results were very consistent.
FYI; regarding the governor, scheduler and the like, you may want to have a look at this thread;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1369817
I think gives your tests / results some perspective as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link. Very informative.
How familiar are you with factorial designs? All parameters were tested simultaneously in such a way that their individual effects can be partitioned out mathematically. That's what allows me to test all those settings with just 32 runs and still get solid estimates of their effects, and more importantly, the amount of variation around them (a requirement for distinguishing real effects from noise).
I suggest googling "factorial design of experiments" if you're interested.
skwalas said:
Let me know if there's any other mad-scientist experiments you'd like to see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are some others you could try gauging:
Seeder
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1987032
V6 Supercharger
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1191747
Lagfix
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2104326
OOM/Sysctl tweaks
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=34123854#post34123854
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=34448792#post34448792
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
Good suggestions. Before trying these third party tweaks would be good to know a few things from actual users:
Has anyone tried any combinations of these tweaks simultaneously? If yes, did they all play well together? If no, details please!
Some of these appear to have device specific settings, can anyone share settings being used on the NC?
I intend to sandbox these, as i have little desire to use then in real life just yet. Can anyone confirm that if i restore my current setup, the restore process will clean out whatever settings these tweaks out in place?
Speaking for all scientists, thank you kindly!
skwalas said:
Good suggestions. Before trying these third party tweaks would be good to know a few things from actual users:
Has anyone tried any combinations of these tweaks simultaneously? If yes, did they all play well together? If no, details please!
Some of these appear to have device specific settings, can anyone share settings being used on the NC?
I intend to sandbox these, as i have little desire to use then in real life just yet. Can anyone confirm that if i restore my current setup, the restore process will clean out whatever settings these tweaks out in place?
Speaking for all scientists, thank you kindly!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have only used V6, from my experiences, restoring a Nandroid or flashing a new nightly will clean out everything it changes other than the files you store on the SDcard. This post details how I set it up http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=34991382&postcount=1234
I never really noticed a huge performance boost from V6, it did reduce the lag that was in the Beta's and early nightlies, mostly seemed to keep memory available and avoid the lag issued in the early builds. Have not used for the last few weeks since performance has improved on the newer builds.
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
I set all recommendations. I get back to you in a couple of days. I am running 20130120 nightly
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk HD
Thank you!
Thank you for your measured and logical approach and recommendations! It is appreciated. I have experimented a little with the third party tweaks and haven't found any that fascinating, honestly.
When I install CM10.1, I also flash a script I made to customize to my preference and delete stuff I don't use like language modules, ringtones, quicksearch, boot animation, etc to free up some RAM. Between that and killing memory hungry apps when I'm done, my old Nook is still holding on reasonably well.
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
Skwalas:
Got to tell you, your suggestions on settings are paying off. My nook is smooooooth. Is working ok there is sometime that lag liittle bit, but my p3113 also doing the same. I will stay with this 0120 nightly for a while with your settings on perfomance. .
I will report later how i am doing
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk HD
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
performance is ok....
Sent from my NookColor using xda app-developers app
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
Sometimes mook freezes and I have to leave it until it settles. The rest of the time works good
Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk HD
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
Ok. Today my nook wakeup crazy. Rebooted, but it stays changing from settings , battery and some icos. It llok like it retains some touches i did to the screen and created like a loop. I have to rebooted again. Then i change the io scheduler to cfq.
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk HD
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
Lakland said:
Ok. Today my nook wakeup crazy. Rebooted, but it stays changing from settings , battery and some icos. It llok like it retains some touches i did to the screen and created like a loop. I have to rebooted again. Then i change the io scheduler to cfq.
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would be hard to know what is settings specific and what is hardware or OS specific. I've had no issues with the settings as described, so let us know if you are able to resolve your issues.
Re: [CM10] NC Performance (and) Placebos
skwalas said:
Would be hard to know what is settings specific and what is hardware or OS specific. I've had no issues with the settings as described, so let us know if you are able to resolve your issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know and I am using your settings as a baseline, rigght now I change de io scheduler to cfq. Is working fine. Keep you posed and thanks!
Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk HD
Lakland said:
I know and I am using your settings as a baseline, rigght now I change de io scheduler to cfq. Is working fine. Keep you posed and thanks!
Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had erratic behavior from schedulers also, especially BFQ, NOOP is not bad, but have had better luck with CFQ.
skwalas said:
Zram (disabled, 18% default, 26%): Zram effects only showed up in Chainfire's benchmark app, specifically for Java activities. Default 18% setting performed worst but disabled setting wasn't significantly different. 26% setting gave a 4% boost, but again, only for the java-specific benchmark. Recommmendation: use 26% setting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm surprised that zram enabled IMPROVED things. So between disabled, 18%, and 26% (no idea what default really is without digging in the code), 26% was the best option?
Interesting. I thought zram would improve multitasking (maintaining background activities) at the expense of potential slowdowns (compressed swap to ramdisk).
khaytsus said:
I'm surprised that zram enabled IMPROVED things. So between disabled, 18%, and 26% (no idea what default really is without digging in the code), 26% was the best option?
Interesting. I thought zram would improve multitasking (maintaining background activities) at the expense of potential slowdowns (compressed swap to ramdisk).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It might have that effect, but wasn't apparent in the benchmarks i used. It could be that a different benchmark is needed to detect it, or it could be the negative effects are too small to be measurable compared to the normal "noise" of operation.
Any ideas how we could measure this more explicitly, if there is any interest?
skwalas said:
It might have that effect, but wasn't apparent in the benchmarks i used. It could be that a different benchmark is needed to detect it, or it could be the negative effects are too small to be measurable compared to the normal "noise" of operation.
Any ideas how we could measure this more explicitly, if there is any interest?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good question, I'd think it'd require some way to switch activities around and somehow measure their switch rates, but the environment would be quite difficult to keep consistent.
BTW thanks for the scientific work on this stuff, MUCH better than "OMG THIS TURNED MY TABLET INTO A UNICORN" posts we see a lot on tech forums.
skwalas said:
Any ideas how we could measure this more explicitly, if there is any interest?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since it would help most when memory is low (like it ever isn't), running two memory hogs simultaneously should show an effect if there is one. A custom memory-hog app built under two different names, perhaps?
I have a shell script that creates a swapfile and enables its use that would also be well tested this way, since zram creates an in-memory swapfile. I was never able to see any tangible results except for the output of "free", so I don't use it anymore, and haven't tried it under CM10.1.
Sent from my NookColor using xda premium

12 Hours of Screen On

AFTER DOING EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE INCLUDING THE OPTIONAL ONES YOU'LL GET 12 HOURS OF SCREEN ON TIME
IF YOU EXCLUDE OPTIONAL ONES YOU'LL GET MINIMUM 7+ HOURS OF SCREEN ON TIME
First,obviously, you need a rooted OP3 or OP3T
If your device isn't rooted check this out.
There is several steps to achieve this results,
TAKE A BACKUP
This is the most important. In case you mess something up or this guide doesn't quite work for you, you can always go back to your old setup.
Pick a ROM that works best for you in terms of battery life (I am using this ROM)
Pick a kernel that works well with your requirements and the ROM (I am using Boeffla Kernel)
So the key to achieve the best amount of screen on time is underclocking your CPU and GPU. An average user shouldn't have any problems underclocking but some users that play games or care about benchmarks shouldn't underclock. There is optimal values that I found while messing around in the config app.
After flashing ROMs and kernels don't boot yet! We have more to flash!
Download AKT profiles and flash!
After you've done these you can boot up your OP3/OP3T
Now we have several things to do on the device:
First thing's first, let's tweak the frequencies! The optimal values are around 844 MHz for the little and 1324 MHz for the big CPU and minimum frequencies should be at lowest possible. For the GPU the best value seems to be 401 MHz and again minimum frequency is lowest possible.
Next! Let's set our ROM's battery profile to performance! Wait hold up there wasn't I talking about longer screen on time how is performance profile is going to help? Here is the answer: Since we have already underclocked our CPU and GPU setting this profile to performance will allow things to be used up a little more. And it will make you feel good
Now remember when we flashed AKT Profiles? Now we'll set that to performance.. Oh wait what? Performance again? YES! But we'll pick the most smooth one. Set it to Fusion Performance!
(Optional) Now we have things to do with apps. Download Greenify to hibernate things when you aren't using them. Select apps according to your preferences and hibernate.
(Optional) Now we'll play with some wakelocks. Download a wakelock detector app and monitor the wakelocks. After some amount of time you'll see some useless apps waking your device every now and then. Go to your ROMs wakelock disabled and disable those wakelocks! Show them who is the owner of the phone! (For example you can block The File Manager HD's wakelock since it has no job when screen is off and MX Player's wakelock because again what can a video player app do when you aren't watching anything.)
After this point if you see more lag increase the CPU and GPU frequencies or reduce them if you see no lag and if you want more battery!
This method might not turn out the same for everyone! You might disable some wakelocks that are important for the device and mess up things so be CAREFUL and when hibernating note that all the hibernated apps will stop pushing notifications! So don't hibernate WhatsApp, Messenger etc.
There is a screenshot below as a proof.
I know I've done nothing but writing this but still if you want to donate here it is LOL
*UPDATE*: Blocking the useless wakelocks allow OP3 to survive 24 hours (if you aren't using it at all) only 3G on (no wifi, no GPS ONLY 3G)
what io scheduler and readahead values you use ?
tadessi said:
what io scheduler and readahead values you use ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cfq and 1024 the defaults that came with Boeffla

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