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Impact of higher clock speeds

I have heard a lot of people saying they can't tell the difference between the underclocked default and running at 172 to 528 so I thought it best to discuss the benefits, disbenefits and thus if it's worth doing, if it's worth slowing it down further and if it's worth going even faster.
So far I have found the most noticable area of improvement to be in file transfer performance. To transfer a 134mb file from SD card to notebook I got 14 seconds vs 19 seconds at stock speed (somebody confirm?).
I have not noticed any change in battery life.
Was it underclocked from new due to cooling issues or battery or what?
I think it was also a bit quicker updating 13,000 camera locations in MySpeed.
A lot of the variables are difficult to test so any suggestions would be welcome.
A

You didn't verify what speed you are running it at. I assume you set it at a constant 528? I overclock it every once in awhile. I think I may set it to 528 and let it sit all day.

I don't know about you guys, but when I leave it locked at 528 for a long period of time. My phone speed gets ****ed. It feels like its running at 172. 528 is great for when you're using your phone heavily, but once you put your phone to sleep, it seems that it drops from 528 regardless of what you have it set at. Try it out... you'll see. Especially when the phone starts getting hot. Left it on all day and the touch screen was way too hot to be normal. Not good.

Why you would **** with the speed/heat consumption of a device that already gets hot charging the battery is beyond me. It's asking for failure.

APrinceAmongMen said:
I don't know about you guys, but when I leave it locked at 528 for a long period of time. My phone speed gets ****ed. It feels like its running at 172. 528 is great for when you're using your phone heavily, but once you put your phone to sleep, it seems that it drops from 528 regardless of what you have it set at. Try it out... you'll see. Especially when the phone starts getting hot. Left it on all day and the touch screen was way too hot to be normal. Not good.
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Hmm I've had my phone @ 528MHz for like a month now. Even leaving it on for weeks at that speed I don't see any problems. One thing you might try when it starts going slow like that is make sure it's still running at 528(OS resets it sometimes) and check what apps are running.
At any rate, for me overclocking works perfectly and I haven't had any issues at all with it. For battery life it'll probably depend on your usage. Clocking at 528MHz will lower battery life if you leave your phone asleep most of the time(even if you set a lower minimum since there's more of a jump the cpu has to make when scaling back to max speed), but if you use your phone a lot and it's rarely asleep then you'll probably actually get better battery life with it set to 528 max and min, since the cpu no longer has to use the energy required to change speed.
EDIT: @afflaq: It's not the cpu that gets hot from charging, it's the battery. You're not going to overheat the cpu just by clocking it to its rated speed.

Ditto @ marcusmaximus, I got the same temperature readings during 528 and 384 mHz. Been running it on 528 for a while as well.

APrinceAmongMen said:
I don't know about you guys, but when I leave it locked at 528 for a long period of time. My phone speed gets ****ed. It feels like its running at 172. 528 is great for when you're using your phone heavily, but once you put your phone to sleep, it seems that it drops from 528 regardless of what you have it set at. Try it out... you'll see. Especially when the phone starts getting hot. Left it on all day and the touch screen was way too hot to be normal. Not good.
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Which overclocking application are you using, and which Android version are you running?

Overclocking
It works fine overclocked all the time. I don't even notice any difference in battery life either. My phone is mostly in sleep mode btw. On all day, I only see it drop to 66% with light usage. Overclocked surfing the web, I surfed for an hour continuous and the battery went from 100% to around 80%.
Using Open overclocker and any rooted build should work as long as you have it setup right. Just set it to 528 in both fields and forget it. The app automatically asks permission from the root app every time you reboot.
I am currently using TheDudes build and it works perfect. I have never had it reset the speed either as others suggest. Try one of his builds and get the Open Overclocker app from the market. That is the best build anyway.
Currently running .93 ... waiting for .95 which will be even faster.
JCD4429

Stable Overclock on Battery [Idea]

I think I may have a simple yet very inefficient method of ensuring stable overclock at higher frequencies. I have been messing around with many different OC kernels (along with many different roms ), and have noticed the same situation. While charging, all overclock speeds beyond 633 are pretty stable. It may take a few attempts to reach a certain speed (as the phone might reboot), but once successful its all golden!
I'd previously though instabilities were due to the fact that these kernels were undervolted and thus, after a certain frequency, needed more juice to function properly, but when I removed the charger. My god...it still ran! Just as effectively for extended periods of time.
The only problem was the phone would either reboot or hang if the screen was powered-off and idle/sleep for more than 1-3 secs. So I tried using SetCpu's profiles to lower the clock speed to various speeds below 633 during sleep. Yet to no avail. The phone would always freeze/reboot when it attempted to clock back up.
So if someone were to develop an app that would implement a toggle feature, or make modifications to the current kernels to disable sleep for test purposes I believe that might help. I am far too inexperienced a programmer to dev this but know there was a command under reference called "Partial Wake Lock" that can disable cpu sleep.
Also I realize, if implemented as is, this will destroy battery life. But with a good toggle switch it can be treated as an Overdrive mode!!!

Forgot to mention that while charging and clocked beyond 633 it always awoke with no problems.

My phone will clock to 710 before freezing up but it's crazy unstable. It seems to behave well at 652 with a freeze up roughly every 6-7 hours. I've never tried it that high with the charger though. Seems interesting.

extended batteries also reduce overclocking, my 2600mah battery peaks at 595, where as the official battery gets me to 633
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Sent from my HTC Magic

I have exactly the same issue. My G1 runs stable on 672, while plugged in into
the charger. Even using GPS for navigation, browsing and so on, everything works great. As soon as the charger is plugged out and the phone goes into sleep it reboots.
I end up in changing the frequencies on demand with setCPU. When i need more speed, e.g. browsing the web, i set it manually to 672. And before putting it in my pocket i reduce to 614. Even on battery i can use 672.
Also tried profiles in SetCPU but this did not help.
BTW. Using 5.0.8t4, same was on t3
Damian

Nagoki said:
I think I may have a simple yet very inefficient method of ensuring stable overclock at higher frequencies. I have been messing around with many different OC kernels (along with many different roms ), and have noticed the same situation. While charging, all overclock speeds beyond 633 are pretty stable. It may take a few attempts to reach a certain speed (as the phone might reboot), but once successful its all golden!
I'd previously though instabilities were due to the fact that these kernels were undervolted and thus, after a certain frequency, needed more juice to function properly, but when I removed the charger. My god...it still ran! Just as effectively for extended periods of time.
The only problem was the phone would either reboot or hang if the screen was powered-off and idle/sleep for more than 1-3 secs. So I tried using SetCpu's profiles to lower the clock speed to various speeds below 633 during sleep. Yet to no avail. The phone would always freeze/reboot when it attempted to clock back up.
So if someone were to develop an app that would implement a toggle feature, or make modifications to the current kernels to disable sleep for test purposes I believe that might help. I am far too inexperienced a programmer to dev this but know there was a command under reference called "Partial Wake Lock" that can disable cpu sleep.
Also I realize, if implemented as is, this will destroy battery life. But with a good toggle switch it can be treated as an Overdrive mode!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The speeds will be different on different phones due to the hardware even slightly different depending on where the phone was made mine can go to 720mhz while others 614mhz which means unless another way of overclocking is found then we won't have a stable overclock for a while :/

mejorguille said:
My phone will clock to 710 before freezing up but it's crazy unstable. It seems to behave well at 652 with a freeze up roughly every 6-7 hours. I've never tried it that high with the charger though. Seems interesting.
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Lemme know how that goes. I've noticed higher clock frequencies are much more stable while charging.
Jedipottsy said:
extended batteries also reduce overclocking, my 2600mah battery peaks at 595, where as the official battery gets me to 633
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Sent from my HTC Magic
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That's strange. Maybe its a voltage difference between batteries that makes its more unstable.
vassloff said:
I have exactly the same issue. My G1 runs stable on 672, while plugged in into
the charger. Even using GPS for navigation, browsing and so on, everything works great. As soon as the charger is plugged out and the phone goes into sleep it reboots.
I end up in changing the frequencies on demand with setCPU. When i need more speed, e.g. browsing the web, i set it manually to 672. And before putting it in my pocket i reduce to 614. Even on battery i can use 672.
Also tried profiles in SetCPU but this did not help.
BTW. Using 5.0.8t4, same was on t3
Damian
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Click to collapse
I believe when the phone is charging the operating system either suspends or extends idle/sleep when the screen backlight is off. This would explain why it reboots on battery and not while plugged in. Also the SetCpu profiles would work if only overclocking wasn't so unstable.
xillius200 said:
The speeds will be different on different phones due to the hardware even slightly different depending on where the phone was made mine can go to 720mhz while others 614mhz which means unless another way of overclocking is found then we won't have a stable overclock for a while :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is true, but if we can help the relative stability of each clock rate past 528 by using simple methods (i.e. overclocking while charging), we can simply aim to improve its reliability until a better way to overclock is found.

[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!

CPU Freq: How do you keep yours?

This is a question I've never seen asked, but it's an important one. What are you phones CPU Freqs? What Govs do they have, and what Profiles do you use?
Rom: PyroIce
Main: 192 Min, 918 Max. OnDemand.
Screen Off: 192 Min, 384 Max. PowerSave.
InCall: 192 Min, 540 Max. Interactive.
Time 11pm-7am: 192Min/Max Powersave.
Sent from my HTC myTouch_4G_Slide using Tapatalk

that's cool, i might start using profiles again. from fiddling around i've noticed the difference between the ondemand and conservative governors- with ondemand, the processor seems to go from min. to all the way to max. and back down to min, and doesn't use the middle frequencies as much, while on conservative, the processor doesn't shoot up to max. as easily and seems to meander thru the middle frequencies a lot more. it makes sense too, because i've noticed that the phone seems snappier with ondemand.
i noticed you're using some of the others... i'll have to check them out as well.

ondemand
Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed. - SetCPU website
conservative
Available in some kernels. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery. - SetCPU website
performance
Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "max" set value at all times. This is a bit more efficient than simply setting "max" and "min" to the same value and using ondemand because the system will not waste resources scanning for the CPU load. This governor is recommended for stable benchmarking. - SetCPU website
powersave
Available in some kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "min" set value at all times. - SetCPU website
userspace
A method for controlling the CPU speed that isn't currently used by SetCPU. For best results, do not use the userspace governor. - SetCPU website
Interactive
The 'interactive' governor has a different approach. Instead of sampling the cpu
at a specified rate, the governor will scale the cpu frequency up when coming
out of idle. When the cpu comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire
within 1-2 ticks. If the cpu is 100% busy from exiting idle to when the timer
fires then we assume the cpu is underpowered and ramp to MAX speed.
If the cpu was not 100% busy, then the governor evaluates the cpu load over the
last 'min_sample_rate' (default 50000 uS) to determine the cpu speed to ramp down
to

so, I bought set cpu about 3 phones ago, but I never really saw a differnence, can it be used with the stock kernel?

yellowjacket1981 said:
so, I bought set cpu about 3 phones ago, but I never really saw a differnence, can it be used with the stock kernel?
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Yeah Plus there's a huge difference with the Battery. I you use my CPU Settings, you should gain 3 hours Min on your phone. Also dropping the CPU in call is great, helps for longer calls and less overheating. If your S-Off you should use a custom kernel. UV Kernels are great.

AgentCherryColla said:
Yeah Plus there's a huge difference with the Battery. I you use my CPU Settings, you should gain 3 hours Min on your phone. Also dropping the CPU in call is great, helps for longer calls and less overheating. If your S-Off you should use a custom kernel. UV Kernels are great.
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Click to collapse
I actually just got an uv kernel, I am about to flash it, I will use your settings too, thanks.

yellowjacket1981 said:
I actually just got an uv kernel, I am about to flash it, I will use your settings too, thanks.
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If you run a Sense 3.6 Rom, boost the CPU to 1Ghz. 918Mhz Lags.
Sent from my HTC myTouch_4G_Slide using Tapatalk

yellowjacket1981 said:
so, I bought set cpu about 3 phones ago, but I never really saw a differnence, can it be used with the stock kernel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
You cannot use anything the kernel doesn't already serve as an option, though.
SetCPU doesn't create options - it allows you user-level access to the ones already existing.
Normally you have no control over your clock speed but with it you can...say... limit the maximum clock speed to only be two-thirds of the stock speed.
Since it doesn't ramp up all the way, it doesn't drain as much power.
If you are playing games and stuff that needs a lot of resources, then the slower clock speeds cost you battery since it takes more effort to get the same work done. But if you don't do much with your phone, and don't need a lot of high-end CPU ability, why let it run flat out?
You can also set it to be like that only sometimes, and maximize battery savings by telling your device to chill out when it doesn't have to be awesome.
Now, if you get into custom kernels where you or a dev has opened up more options, SetCPU will again give you user level control over them.
Especially once you get into overclocking beyond manufacturer(s) recommendations, not having some end-user level control over the processor like this is irresponsible.
If you think I run a 1.7 or 1.9 or 1.5+anything on the device flat-out balls-to-the-wall all the time, I would ask you if you drive your car with the gas pedal smashed to the floor all the time. (it's a fitting analogy)
No, again, that would be irresponsible abuse of the hardware for no good reason.
If not SetCPU, then there would be something else to use, but SetCPU is a great interface that not only works well but is maintaned within the XDA community by a member here.
I will always go for the XDA community member version of any app first - it's usually a problem solved from a perspective very near the way I am perceiving the issue, supports the community, and is always easier to find help on if necessary.
What's even cooler is SetCPU is given away free by the dev to XDA members.
I did go ahead and buy it anyway to support the dev. It is a fantastic tool at my disposal, and I have come to realize just how much time and energy goes into making this kind of stuff.
Beyond all that, though, there are a ton of crap apps and software out there slapped together by people who don't care or didn't put the right level of effort into their work. When I find something that actually works and works well after sifting through a sea of garbage, if there is a paid version of the app i'll usually buy it not only as a thank you but also to encourage that particular person to keep working. They - unlike many, many others (in my opinion) earned it.
I know i'm drifting off topic a bit, sorry for that - I just really appreciate quality work and SetCPU falls in with that crowd nicely.
Even without a custom kernel providing options beyond stock, there is still a lot of value this app can hold for anyone with root level access to their device.

Blue6IX said:
If you are playing games and stuff that needs a lot of resources, then the slower clock speeds cost you battery since it takes more effort to get the same work done.
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Click to collapse
Is this true? in my mind, I feel like it will take longer/not be as smooth, but wouldn't necessarily be worse for battery than a higher clock speed.

On a one-for-one comparison it leans more towards an even playing field, until you add that it's a dual-core processor and it very heavily skews the results towards less battery at higher clock speeds for complex operations.
Faster CPU speeds process the actions more quickly, and when you have to crunch a lot of numbers real quick like you do for most games the higher clock speed (especially on the dual core we are using) will complete the act with less power used. It is able to keep up with and/or outpace the flow of data being thrown at it.
If you are just using a notepad or browsing some forums maybe...sending a few texts? Then the higher clock speeds show a negative return on battery usage - you don't need it and it's wasteful.
But when the data has to stay buffered because the CPU is taking it's time working with it, not only is there more electricity consumed by keeping the processor alive longer but also the juice spent on keeping the data buffered.
The data computed is the same data computed at any speed (unless you lose data along the way...) but the power spent on completing that operation is not equal - not by a long shot.
On single core older processors where you are talking about a couple hundred megahertz one way or another the equation is much different, significantly diminshed returns on electricity invested, but with higher quality and multi-core processors especially they can cut through the data with significant ease when sufficiently powered.
But this is on processor intensive activities, and gaming is the first thing that comes to mind. For most other use of the device it's worth underclocking it and you will see battery gains.

Faux123 kernel for CM9

I have been noticing bad battery life recently and I checked my setcpu settings and for some reason my phone never goes below 602 MHz. I have my profile set to 389 as the lowest frequency. I was wondering if anyone knows the problem and if there is anything I can do about this.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA

Bump
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA

there was another thread (Here) about 5 days before you posted this. Read that... this is just part of what i posted:
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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