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[Q] Overclocking and voltage control

Can someone point me to where I can learn how to use set cpu and set voltage properly. Just installed superotimized kernel and wondering how to take full advantage of it

p4ranoid4ndroid said:
Can someone point me to where I can learn how to use set cpu and set voltage properly. Just installed superotimized kernel and wondering how to take full advantage of it
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overclocking is pre-enabled, under volting can be done through an app the link is in the thread. there are 2 settings. try about -50v each if that works fine bump one down to -75mv at a time. test the phone over a day or two and see how it runs, see if it has sleep death after a few periods of inactivity, especially extended periods, see if it has sleep death while charging, which seems to make a difference that will test the low setting.
see if the phone shuts down without freezing, and see if it shuts down without freezing while charging, the heat in the battery makes a big difference, play some 3d games. if you have freezing issues you can disable overclocking under different situation with set cpu or se t the volts to a more conservative setting.

Dani897 said:
overclocking is pre-enabled, under volting can be done through an app the link is in the thread. there are 2 settings. try about -50v each if that works fine bump one down to -75mv at a time. test the phone over a day or two and see how it runs, see if it has sleep death after a few periods of inactivity, especially extended periods, see if it has sleep death while charging, which seems to make a difference that will test the low setting.
see if the phone shuts down without freezing, and see if it shuts down without freezing while charging, the heat in the battery makes a big difference, play some 3d games. if you have freezing issues you can disable overclocking under different situation with set cpu or se t the volts to a more conservative setting.
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I've been told that undervolting can improve the battery time. Of course, lots of varying opinions of how good/bad it may be to overclock.
If I want to just undervolt, is that possible with SetCPU?

Dani897 said:
overclocking is pre-enabled, under volting can be done through an app the link is in the thread. there are 2 settings. try about -50v each if that works fine bump one down to -75mv at a time. test the phone over a day or two and see how it runs, see if it has sleep death after a few periods of inactivity, especially extended periods, see if it has sleep death while charging, which seems to make a difference that will test the low setting.
see if the phone shuts down without freezing, and see if it shuts down without freezing while charging, the heat in the battery makes a big difference, play some 3d games. if you have freezing issues you can disable overclocking under different situation with set cpu or se t the volts to a more conservative setting.
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ewingr said:
I've been told that undervolting can improve the battery time. Of course, lots of varying opinions of how good/bad it may be to overclock.
If I want to just undervolt, is that possible with SetCPU?
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Interesting stuff...
I too would like to know if it is possible to simply under-volt. Does anyone know the optimal settings for SetCpu with the Captivate...or does it vary depending on each users profile/ phones?

So Ive been playing around with various settings for set cpu and voltage control and all has been well so far. The only problem im having is voltage control seems broke. I try to open the all but it just black screens. I tried to clear the memory and unistall and reinstall and still have the same problem. Any ideas?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=432086&d=1288709102
^you can under volt setirons kernel and disable overclocking with this app.
i find my battery life to be less than stock with this kernel, i need to see if it is a common issue, maybe because it is not a captivate kernel. but in the past with unhelpfuls kernel for 2.1 battery life was awesome.

spartan062984 said:
Interesting stuff...
I too would like to know if it is possible to simply under-volt. Does anyone know the optimal settings for SetCpu with the Captivate...or does it vary depending on each users profile/ phones?
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It's going to depend on the individual CPU in your phone. Your best result is to start at a given clock speed and begin lowering voltage in the smallest step possible, test for stability, repeat until you begin to notice instability (or you just run out of voltage options). You can just undervolt without increasing clock speed any, or you can not undervolt yet raise clock speed, or you can overclock and undervolt, depending on how your particular chip reacts. Some might need additional voltage to stabilize the snapdragon at 1.2Ghz while others (mine for example) is stable Able @ -100mV and 1.2Ghz. Overclocking silicon is the ultimate in YMMV.
Another thing to bear in mind is that increasing clock speed necessarily increases power consumption. There is no way around this. So a chip at 1.2Ghz will use more juice than 1Ghz even with the same voltage. It's difficult to say at this point whether, say, the Snapdragon @ 1.2Ghz and -100mV uses more or less power than the same chip @1Ghz and stock voltage. It's absolutely possible that the former uses more power, which would explain why you see at least one claim here of battery life decreasing even when voltage settings are left untouched.

hawkeyefan said:
It's going to depend on the individual CPU in your phone. Your best result is to start at a given clock speed and begin lowering voltage in the smallest step possible, test for stability, repeat until you begin to notice instability (or you just run out of voltage options). You can just undervolt without increasing clock speed any, or you can not undervolt yet raise clock speed, or you can overclock and undervolt, depending on how your particular chip reacts. Some might need additional voltage to stabilize the snapdragon at 1.2Ghz while others (mine for example) is stable Able @ -100mV and 1.2Ghz. Overclocking silicon is the ultimate in YMMV.
Another thing to bear in mind is that increasing clock speed necessarily increases power consumption. There is no way around this. So a chip at 1.2Ghz will use more juice than 1Ghz even with the same voltage. It's difficult to say at this point whether, say, the Snapdragon @ 1.2Ghz and -100mV uses more or less power than the same chip @1Ghz and stock voltage. It's absolutely possible that the former uses more power, which would explain why you see at least one claim here of battery life decreasing even when voltage settings are left untouched.
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Thanks for clarifying Hawkeye! I will report back on in a few days once i have tested out a few profiles. In my opinion, I feel that it is best to leave Over-clocking at default and maximize battery utilization with setcpu. However, the thought of over-clocking the Dragon beast is VERY tempting. Who wouldn't? I will definitely check out the differences when playing games and such.

spartan062984 said:
Thanks for clarifying Hawkeye! I will report back on in a few days once i have tested out a few profiles. In my opinion, I feel that it is best to leave Over-clocking at default and maximize battery utilization with setcpu. However, the thought of over-clocking the Dragon beast is VERY tempting. Who wouldn't? I will definitely check out the differences when playing games and such.
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I have to tell you, I'm not personally very fond of SetCPU on this device, even though I paid for the app (ugh). With raspdeep's voltage control app and SetIron's OC/UV kernel, the CPU defaults to 1.2Ghz at stock voltage, which for a basic setup is fine. Voltage Control app is phenomenal for adjusting in increments of 25mv at a time...one setting is for high clocks (1Ghz - 1.2Ghz) and the other is for < 1Ghz. It's probably best actually to start with the lower clock setting in Voltage Control, as your phone will spend the lion's share of it's time at those clocks and so that is where you should see the most gain in battery life. My only gripe is that I can't get the boot settings to stick on the Captivate so I have to go in and adjust them each time I reboot the phone. no biggie there.
SetCPU, on the other hand, has caused me loads of problems in the past, including causing the phone not to wake up from sleep and just atrocious battery life, I assume from constantly polling the CPU clock to measure clock speed. I have not experienced any of that with Overclock Widget, but I also don't use any of the independent clockspeed controls in the app...basically it's just a widget to display clock speed the way I use it. Otherwise, Setiron's kernel gives the 200mhz overclock and I just let the Hummingbird deal with changing clocks on its own. Jmo, but it works for me with no resulting battery drain beyond the additional I expect as a result of the extra 200mhz.
edit: whoops, long day. hummingbird in my post from above, not snapdragon. I need a drinky poo.

hawkeyefan said:
I have to tell you, I'm not personally very fond of SetCPU on this device, even though I paid for the app (ugh). With raspdeep's voltage control app and SetIron's OC/UV kernel, the CPU defaults to 1.2Ghz at stock voltage, which for a basic setup is fine. Voltage Control app is phenomenal for adjusting in increments of 25mv at a time...one setting is for high clocks (1Ghz - 1.2Ghz) and the other is for < 1Ghz. It's probably best actually to start with the lower clock setting in Voltage Control, as your phone will spend the lion's share of it's time at those clocks and so that is where you should see the most gain in battery life. My only gripe is that I can't get the boot settings to stick on the Captivate so I have to go in and adjust them each time I reboot the phone. no biggie there.
SetCPU, on the other hand, has caused me loads of problems in the past, including causing the phone not to wake up from sleep and just atrocious battery life, I assume from constantly polling the CPU clock to measure clock speed. I have not experienced any of that with Overclock Widget, but I also don't use any of the independent clockspeed controls in the app...basically it's just a widget to display clock speed the way I use it. Otherwise, Setiron's kernel gives the 200mhz overclock and I just let the Hummingbird deal with changing clocks on its own. Jmo, but it works for me with no resulting battery drain beyond the additional I expect as a result of the extra 200mhz.
edit: whoops, long day. hummingbird in my post from above, not snapdragon. I need a drinky poo.
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LOL. No Worries. I myself made the same mistake. I thought something was odd with my post. SnapDragon...Hummingbird....Bulbasaur.....I knew what you meant. lol

Still not having any luck with the voltage control app. Ive tried flashing different roms to see if it would work. I undervolted it to 100/75 the first time i did it and now i cant change. Only a little worried

i guess there was an issue with the set on boot scripts not working. supposedly that is fixed, i dont know for sure though, i haven't updated.

From what I'm gathering, in order to undervolt, you must have a kernel to su pport that, for example Setirons.
I'm not necessarily interested in overclocking, as it performs well as is. Of course there are arguments that overclocking may ultimately harm the phone, and arguments that by the time that happens, you'd be ready for a new phone. In any event, if I start getting slower, I may interest in overclocking.
Does anyone know if dramatic improvement in battery performance with underclocking?

I've noticed quite a bit of a difference, just pretty difficult to tune it precisely. (Coming from a person who enjoys overclocking computers a little too much). I just wish there was an app that would test each frequency and then let you know which one failed (without having to manually set it).

HELP! Where did I go wrong?

So I just got a brand new D2G and thanks to the info in this forum I rooted it and installed fission rom and FRM...Im loving the phone, its fast, smooth and beautiful but the battery is AWFUL. I have read all the info about how to get the most out of your battery and everything on these forums but mine is waaaay worse than anyone has said before.
For instance, last night my phone was charging oernight, at 6 am when i woke up to pee it was at 100% so I unplugged it and went back to sleep, come 10 am when i woke up my phone was down to 15%!!! From just sitting there with the screen off...
Ive set the network to CDMA/Evduo automatic, installed Jrummy's overclock app...Can anyone explain in detail what exactly the settings in the overclock app mean? "set scaling frequencies at boot, cpu scaling frequencies etc?" for instance if I set scaling frequencies not at boot to ultra low voltage and 1 ghz and lower, do i need to also go into cpu scaling frequencies and make profiles and stuff?
Any information is greatly appreciated, Ive been reading up for days but this stuff is hard to find clear answers on specific issues. Thanks!

This is probably the most basic first thing to ask/do, but have you checked the battery useage to see which apps are using the most power? try doing what you did where you charged, and then let it sit for 4 hrs, and after that see what's using the battery, I bet there is some app that just nonstop uses the gps or 3g data or something wearing your battery life out super fast.

Yeah i looked at that this morning to see and all it said was suspend took up like 90% of the battery...Doesnt make any sense

1. Set at boot isn't what you're thinking. Set at boot means that whatever your current settings are will be set the NEXT time the phone boots. This is used when you have a setting you like. The reason you DON'T want to set at boot is that if you accidentally pick a setting that your phone doesn't like, and it makes it crash, then next time it will boot up with normal settings. Otherwise, you'd be looking at some work doing a recovery with either CWR or RSDLite... There are better ways to spend 30 minutes. Disclaimer: I use SetCPU, but the settings are all essentially the same.
2. For scaling, unless you're a power user (read: Geek) who's really up on his stuff, you should just stick with ondemand. This means your CPU will run at the lowest frequency possible, but will scale its speed up when processes call for it. This is efficient.
3. Yes, you should still make profiles. The setting on the main screen where you choose "Set at Boot" (Again, I'm speaking from SetCPU experience, but it SHOULD be the same) is just the main profile, setting the global minimum and maximum. You should leave the minimum on this at 300. The phones don't like to run much lower than that, even with the screen off; They start not ringing for calls, not waking up, etc. Set the maximum to whatever you want the max to be. You can overclock, which will obviously hurt your battery life. You could underclock and set the maximum to 1GHz, or even 800MHz, which would have a decent effect on battery life with no noticeable performance decrease to the average user. I run mine at the stock 1.2GHz and it's fast enough for my needs.
4. I wrote this thread to help people maximize their battery life. It's pretty detailed, you should give it a thorough read, it works well for me, and seems to work for others. I'm at 32hrs unplugged and my battery has gone from 90% to 20%. That's pretty light use, and I have an extended battery, but I still see over a day on my stock battery when I use it. There's a list of my SetCPU profiles there too, that might be helpful in setting up your own.

Thanks for the info on overclocking, I think I have it figured out now...
I will definitely read through your thread, but is it possible that I just had a bad battery? due to a shipping error, when verizon sent me my phone they sent 2 by accident so I just swapped out the battery for the other one and it seems to be doing much better already...

[Q] Underclock - usefulness AND values

I am playing a bit with underclocking my DS (Using UNITY v4 kernel atm, will update to v9 later).
However, I'm figuring out the usefulness of it (to extend battery life mainly).
Does it really save battery life? I'm already using JuiceDefender, and its SetCPU function.
Or is it not very useful since the most batterydrain comes from radios anyway.
What are the best values for it?
What's the standard clockspeed for the DS? And what is the best Max IDLE clock speed?

Well, i wont underclock at all.
First of all there is no need to do that to get good battery life. You can do lot other stuff to do so.
Under-clocking is risky as it might now have enough power that needed to the phone. that means that some stuff might not get processed like calls and stuff.
Right now with me using miui i get life for about 3-4 days.

Standard clock speed is 1,000mhz.
I have mine underclocked to 600mhz during idle times and it's perfectly fine.
Never had any issues at that speed and it keeps my Desire S much much cooler which can only be a good thing.
As for it's ability to extend the battery, I don't think it does so much in my case. I typically run WiFi overnight and G/3G/H during the day and my display usually chews up 60-70% of my overall battery usage even on a very dark screen.
I'd pick a setting that you feel comfortable with but have low expectations of the benefits.

The only time I use underclocking is for using Google Navigation.
On a hot day using Navigation for over a couple of hours, my DS would over-heat and restart (usually as I was approaching my motorway exit). So I have Tasker dialing back CPU to 768Mhz when using Navigation, and it does seem to help the phone run a little cooler. I no longer have to take it out the case for example.
Using the smartass governor (I believe) automatically knocks the CPU back to 240Mhz when sleeping. Not 100% on that though.
I'm currently testing a new kernel, and I spent an entire charge cycle on 'Smartass' and then an entire charge cycle on 'Powersave'. Aside from lots of lag on the latter one, the battery life was pretty much the same!

[Q] CPU hitting 601mhz frequently even on idle

Doesn't matter which ROM, which kernel (except stick, didn't stay on there long enough to notice), when everything are off or idling, CPU would still constantly kick up to 601mhz (unless i under clock of course), never really sleep/idle at 214 or whatever
Y?
Seems like this CPU can never sleep, or even idle, thus killing the battery

this phone (and alot of newer ones) are using an idea called Race to idle.
this means that the cpu will kick its cpu speed up higher than it needs to get things done faster, so it can get back to a low power idle state faster.
In reality your cpu is really going in and out of sleep states hundreds or thousands of times a second, the frequency is just kicked up so that it can spend less time computing, and more time sleeping.
for the hell of it try downloading an app that shows you cpu usage in %
that number is the amount of time that the cpu is in a fully awake state vs being in its first stage sleep state, LP1.
if nothing happens for a bit longer than it will go into an even lower power state called LP2. frequency can still be set to a higher number (like 600mhz or even 1ghz) but the cpu is actually not doing any calculations. its sleeping till something needs it.
also, changing cpu speed takes a long time (cpu wise), the cpu has to pause, change speed, then wake up. so the less it does this the less lag you have.

^The guy above is right, you can put it to 1.5 gHz and it wouldn't die sooner, what makes the difference is how much you use the phone. If you listen to music and text, you don't need it to go farther than 800 mHz, but the extra boost with make it faster but also use more energy.
What background apps are open?

Klathmon said:
this phone (and alot of newer ones) are using an idea called Race to idle.
this means that the cpu will kick its cpu speed up higher than it needs to get things done faster, so it can get back to a low power idle state faster.
In reality your cpu is really going in and out of sleep states hundreds or thousands of times a second, the frequency is just kicked up so that it can spend less time computing, and more time sleeping.
for the hell of it try downloading an app that shows you cpu usage in %
that number is the amount of time that the cpu is in a fully awake state vs being in its first stage sleep state, LP1.
if nothing happens for a bit longer than it will go into an even lower power state called LP2. frequency can still be set to a higher number (like 600mhz or even 1ghz) but the cpu is actually not doing any calculations. its sleeping till something needs it.
also, changing cpu speed takes a long time (cpu wise), the cpu has to pause, change speed, then wake up. so the less it does this the less lag you have.
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Thanks, and i know about the race to idle. 1. My previous phone was a galaxy s 4g. when in idle, it stays at 100mhz, lowest speed and stay there til the screen goes out. Great idle battery life. Cpu info and the likes shows large percent of time in sleep state based on reading the time in state file
2. I haven't found a single kernel that support the time in state file (various cm, faux, morfic, harsh, can't remember the rest, sorry devs - gb n ics). Without this file, we cannot determine time in sleep
Bonus, i use to have a viewsonic tab with same harmony tegra 2 board as the g2x and it can't get 3 days of standby compared to other tablets that can do over a week. Also due to sleep issue. And that don't even have cell data. Wifi off too

atb1183 said:
Thanks, and i know about the race to idle. 1. My previous phone was a galaxy s 4g. when in idle, it stays at 100mhz, lowest speed and stay there til the screen goes out. Great idle battery life. Cpu info and the likes shows large percent of time in sleep state based on reading the time in state file
2. I haven't found a single kernel that support the time in state file (various cm, faux, morfic, harsh, can't remember the rest, sorry devs - gb n ics). Without this file, we cannot determine time in sleep
Bonus, i use to have a viewsonic tab with same harmony tegra 2 board as the g2x and it can't get 3 days of standby compared to other tablets that can do over a week. Also due to sleep issue. And that don't even have cell data. Wifi off too
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that's due to the 'unique' governor built into tegra. it likes to kick the speed up at the slightest need for power, and keep it there just in case you want to do something. its sure as hell an eager little bugger
on the galaxy s 4g you can change the governor to change its behavior, your probably using a fancy Linux governor that is tweaked to be damn near perfect, Nvidia tried to design its governor from scratch... the success they had is debatable, but its different from what your used to.
Nvidia seemed to prefer performance over battery life, and its definitely not the most standby friendly, but the good news is that custom kernels and roms allow you to change that

Thanks. That's a satisfactory and most likely to be true. Used on demand gov on the gs4g w plenty of tweaks. Hopefully we can do similar tweaks in here on the new kernels

Yeah for a light user like myself, I only use the phone for text/fb/twitter/email and music, so I usually keep my clock at 800mhz, and well.....when i need to play games i just clock it to 1.2kmhz, thats usually enough for me, havnt lag in any 3d games i played yet so far.
and sell, if you open the setcpu and watch it for like 20 seconds, you should notice it never going above 601 on idle, mine kinda bounce between 389 and 601 with 389 most of the time. Which kernel/rom you using anyways? Just wondering.

Optimal Undervolt/OC Settings

So I have a few apps... Voltage Control, SetCPU, No-Frills CPU... but I've honestly been a bit weary to use them. I want the best battery life since I'm a heavy user, but I also don't want to overclock/set voltage to a point where I'll screw up my phone. I'll admit that I'm a novice user when it comes to voltage/overclocking, but not when it comes to ROMs, kernels, bootloaders, etc. I work with those all the time, but really trying to get the most out of the battery and CPU.
There's this thread I found that has someone's settings on it, but don't know if its good or how much this guy knows(no offense to him):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1356211
Anyone got any insight or perhaps screenies of their optimally tested settings? VERY VERY appreciated to anyone that can help.

jgruberman said:
So I have a few apps... Voltage Control, SetCPU, No-Frills CPU... but I've honestly been a bit weary to use them. I want the best battery life since I'm a heavy user, but I also don't want to overclock/set voltage to a point where I'll screw up my phone. I'll admit that I'm a novice user when it comes to voltage/overclocking, but not when it comes to ROMs, kernels, bootloaders, etc. I work with those all the time, but really trying to get the most out of the battery and CPU.
There's this thread I found that has someone's settings on it, but don't know if its good or how much this guy knows(no offense to him):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1356211
Anyone got any insight or perhaps screenies of their optimally tested settings? VERY VERY appreciated to anyone that can help.
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there is no rule. every cpu is different. very different. my captivate took a lot of effort to get a meer 1300 mhz but my infuses get 1600 no problem at all. some infuses wont go to 1600 but more will go to 1500 than galaxy s's. they probably held out the best testing cpu's for the higher clocked phone.
for battery life try clocking @ 800 mhz and dont use screen off profiles just because it looks like a good idea to slow the cpu when you arent really using it(causes problems if the max freq is too low with some kernels) and test stability with your uv settings, go down a little at a time, for max frequency uv from the top down, for battery life go from the bottom up and disable the upper freqs if they become unstable. this is because rapid voltage changes can contribute to instability. too much differential will cause crashes if the uv is extreme or the oc is extreme.
at some point though the cpu settings will have a limited effect. the radios use battery as well. manage your screen brightness and try edge only with the screen off using any number of apps that manage the radio. try one of entropys kernels to avoid a feature of the wifi chip (or was it bt) from sucking power when in proximity of another device with the same chip. turn off sync if you dont need push emails from gmail or real time facebook updates and if you really need battery life get in the habit of togging wifi and bt and gps on and off depending on need. i do none on this because i always found the battery life adequate on samsung phones but on my aria, well it was a must and prolly why people hate android. htc and battery life dont go together unless you manually manage the phone functions.

That's a great bunch of information. I currently keep my Brightness at 0%, GPS off, Wifi only ON when I'm at work when the charger is plugged in.
I guess I'm more concerned with the undervolting than the overclocking. I'd rather preserve the battery life with undervolting... the overclocking isnt a HUGE concern, but it'd be nice to see. Regardless, if you have any "ideal" UV settings, or ones that have worked for YOUR Infuse(assuming you have one), then I'd love to see them.

at one point i had -200mv on every freq from 100-1600mhz and no crashes. i started manually editing the uv script (voltage control is only able to write -200 into the script unless you have the pay version) and forgot what i ended up with. but my first infuse was exceptional in that area. some infuses freeze above 1400 mhz no matter what voltage settings are used. about -50 seems to be safe 99% of the time with minor or no overclock across the board but you could probably go -50 down low and -100 from 400mhz up to 1200 and -50 or -75 on overclock freqs. with underclock or atleast no overclock it's probably safe to go -100 to -150. it may be safe to go much more than that as well but on a small number of phones that might be too far as it is. cpus are made on such a small scale that microns of inconsistency make large percentages of difference. many dont pass testing and qc. some are borderline for the application, some are exceptional. the smaller the architecture gets the more potential the design has for speed but the larger the variance in performance is given a manufacturing technique. obviously the manufacturing gets better and better combating this so that they can make smaller architectures they also have redundancy built in, but sometimes they just disable features of a chipset and market it as an economy version if they have a low pass rate. ever see a 3 core cpu for a pc? most are manufactured as 4 cores and on many motherboards the bios can unlock the 4th core with somewhat unpredictable results.

Again, some really great info for the technical guys such as myself. What is the best way to test the UV settings? The built in tools and stuff in SetCPU? Or is there another way that would be more effective and/or would get more realistic results?