Gpu vs Cpu rendering - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey all! Have a little question. I've been putting roms together and have noticed some weird issues. Running a Galaxy S 2 skyrocket. I've noticed some strange behaviors with the pulldown notification bar on some roms and kernels with gpu rendering on in the build prop. Becomes laggy. Turn it off and butter smooth. I also noticed that this only happens in touchwiz. Other launchers seem unaffected. So my question is first is it worth rendering the ui with the gpu on a device like this? (1.5ghz dual core) What exactly is benefiting from the change? (homescreens and what else?) It seems snappier when its on but could be a placebo effect as well. Also why does touchwiz appear affected? Is it the way it renders pages? If someone smarter than me could shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!!

garu12 said:
Hey all! Have a little question. I've been putting roms together and have noticed some weird issues. Running a Galaxy S 2 skyrocket. I've noticed some strange behaviors with the pulldown notification bar on some roms and kernels with gpu rendering on in the build prop. Becomes laggy. Turn it off and butter smooth. I also noticed that this only happens in touchwiz. Other launchers seem unaffected. So my question is first is it worth rendering the ui with the gpu on a device like this? (1.5ghz dual core) What exactly is benefiting from the change? (homescreens and what else?) It seems snappier when its on but could be a placebo effect as well. Also why does touchwiz appear affected? Is it the way it renders pages? If someone smarter than me could shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!!
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Click to collapse
I have this same question as well. I hope we get an answer too. I'm using launcher pro so I don't know if thats advisable either
Sent from my SGH-I727 4.0.4 leak using XDA

Related

Slow/jerky transitions, panning, scrolling, etc.

I'm a fairly new Galaxy Tab 10.1 user (had it for a few weeks, from the woot deal). I'm not new to android, however. I'm currently running the Task 7 ROM, but this issue seems to be present in all ROMs I've tried so far (including stock). Transition screens (when it zooms to launch an app), panning between home screens, scrolling in emails, etc. are all jerky.
I've seen threads about jerky video playback (movies), but I haven't seen much about this. I have to figure this either isn't happening to anyone else, or it's happening to everyone and people have just accepted it by now. Is there a fix for this? A kernel, or ROM, perhaps? Coming from an iPad, the jerkiness is very apparent, and it is really bothering me.
Thanks in advance...
dodgeboy said:
I'm a fairly new Galaxy Tab 10.1 user (had it for a few weeks, from the woot deal). I'm not new to android, however. I'm currently running the Task 7 ROM, but this issue seems to be present in all ROMs I've tried so far (including stock). Transition screens (when it zooms to launch an app), panning between home screens, scrolling in emails, etc. are all jerky.
I've seen threads about jerky video playback (movies), but I haven't seen much about this. I have to figure this either isn't happening to anyone else, or it's happening to everyone and people have just accepted it by now. Is there a fix for this? A kernel, or ROM, perhaps? Coming from an iPad, the jerkiness is very apparent, and it is really bothering me.
Thanks in advance...
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I recommend getting a home screen replacement, like adw ex. That will get you silky smooth homescreen transitions. As far as any other lag, it can probably be fixed by overclocking. Tasks newest rom includes pershoots OC kernel, but make sure you do your homework before delving into overclocking.
At the moment my tab is running at 1.4 GHz and I haven't seen any lag, although you are correct that the device can be pretty jerky without using some of the great mods available here.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
sendan said:
I recommend getting a home screen replacement, like adw ex. That will get you silky smooth homescreen transitions. As far as any other lag, it can probably be fixed by overclocking. Tasks newest rom includes pershoots OC kernel, but make sure you do your homework before delving into overclocking.
At the moment my tab is running at 1.4 GHz and I haven't seen any lag, although you are correct that the device can be pretty jerky without using some of the great mods available here.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
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I am running ADW EX. It dramatically improved the jerkiness, but it's still there. I mainly notice it when launching apps. The swiping between homescreens is not as noticeable.
I was hoping to not have to OC to fix the issue. In my experience (with phones) it usually leads to some other kind of instability...
Any other ideas? Could it be that the clock speed is dropping too low when nothing on the screen is moving, and doesn't spool back up fast enough?
dodgeboy said:
I am running ADW EX. It dramatically improved the jerkiness, but it's still there. I mainly notice it when launching apps. The swiping between homescreens is not as noticeable.
I was hoping to not have to OC to fix the issue. In my experience (with phones) it usually leads to some other kind of instability...
Any other ideas? Could it be that the clock speed is dropping too low when nothing on the screen is moving, and doesn't spool back up fast enough?
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Yeah you could play around with different governors, although pershoot's kernels generally have optimal default settings.
As for your choice to not overclock, I can understand why you don't want to, (as I have a fascinate and it's all to easy to cause instability) however pershoot did a ridiculously good job. Paired with setcpu you really only have to move the slider to your desired clock and your good to go, I've never actually had a random reboot or sleep of death with this tablet at 1.4 GHz. If you only did a slight overclock I really don't think you will regret it...
Edit: Also keep in mind that this tablet allows widgets on the homescreen, and by default it uses non uniform icons. For this reason you should not be comparing it to an iPad. At the moment I'm running with the suave hd icon pack (uniform icons) with minimal widgets and it's just as smooth as an iPad. (but also more useful).
Also a small tip, turn off wallpaper scrolling in ADW, it makes it seem so much more laggy than it really is.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
It will never be the same as an iOS device. Post 64 of the thread about ICS removing lag is helpful in shedding light on why. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=20458845&postcount=64
Either overclock and live with a bit of it or get a plain uncustomizable iPad (talking homescreens).
That being said with pershoots kernel and supercharger/kernelizer/zipalign scripts the performance is noticably improved over stock and more than acceptable for many of us.
muzzy996 said:
It will never be the same as an iOS device. Post 64 of the thread about ICS removing lag is helpful in shedding light on why. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=20458845&postcount=64
Either overclock and live with a bit of it or get a plain uncustomizable iPad (talking homescreens).
That being said with pershoots kernel and supercharger/kernelizer/zipalign scripts the performance is noticably improved over stock and more than acceptable for many of us.
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+1 this. If smooth homescreen performance is your #1 priority in a tablet, get an ipad. It's lower resolution and doesn't have widgets so it's sort of a no-brainer why homescreen performance is generally better.
Thanks for your input, everyone. It turns out that my issue is almost nonexistent when the screen is oriented in landscape mode. All transitions are smoother, scrolling is smoother, etc. Seems silly, but that's the case. Unfortunately, I use the tablet primarily in portrait mode, for magazine reading and puzzle games.
Dave
It's been said that this is a Honeycomb issue (portrait vs landscape scrolling lag) and that ICS should improve upon this. Many such as myself use our tablets primarily in landscape mode so we tend to overlook the issue but those who need to use the device in portrait do have to suffer with it for now.

Is the Flyer supposed to feel sluggish?

I picked up 2 Flyers recently from Cowboom and one of the first things I did was root and flash a custom rom. After setting everything up how I wanted it, I have come to find that the Flyer is sluggish in a lot of things, like scrolling around, switching apps, opening new apps, etc.
I understand that it's a single core processor but is this normal? I am running the latest LeeDroid rom.
Thanks
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
Not it's not normal. It may be single core, but it's much faster than most single cores. It's fairly comparable to dual cores, and you can flash an overclocked kernel. Mine isn't sluggish.
schadenfroh said:
Not it's not normal. It may be single core, but it's much faster than most single cores. It's fairly comparable to dual cores, and you can flash an overclocked kernel. Mine isn't sluggish.
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Hmmm any recommendations on kernels? I flashed LeeDroid's kernel but haven't tweaked. Should I?
Opening the app drawer is obviously skipping frames, zoom in/zoom out too.. as well as browser scrolling.. extremely lagged.
Overclocking won't fix that. I don't know what you have loaded. Some people put 2000 animated widgets and 200 apps on a tablet, then say,"its laggy". Guarantee there ain't a device on the planet that won't bog down under that. If you are using it in a sensible manner it should be very snappy. The home screens and most of the GUI is rendered by the GPU so overclocking will do very little for you since the GPU doesn't overclock. That's also one of the big reasons that dual core devices don't perform any better. Try removing a bunch of apps and widgets and see how it behaves. If that doesn't work, Id try a different ROM.
Download Advanced task manager
Here is the Link :https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.infolife.taskmanager&hl=en
It shows the RAM u got free. When i kill all my apps, i get about 400+ RAM free and then it runs very smooth. It becomes sluggish when you hit the lower 300's. So just kill unecessary apps and you won't have a problem. I supposed you could go back to Gingerbread (it uses less resources) or try a different honeycomb ROM like CoolHoney 3D. If you REALLY want smoothness and can live without the Pen and Camera, you should try the ICS ROMS. They still in developement, but most are functional and very very smooth.
DigitalMD said:
Overclocking won't fix that. I don't know what you have loaded. Some people put 2000 animated widgets and 200 apps on a tablet, then say,"its laggy". Guarantee there ain't a device on the planet that won't bog down under that. If you are using it in a sensible manner it should be very snappy. The home screens and most of the GUI is rendered by the GPU so overclocking will do very little for you since the GPU doesn't overclock. That's also one of the big reasons that dual core devices don't perform any better. Try removing a bunch of apps and widgets and see how it behaves. If that doesn't work, Id try a different ROM.
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Haha you should see my home screen...its just a few shortcuts and the Gmail inbox widget. Nothing more. Stock lock screen too.
I have no idea why it feels so sluggish. I'll try to get a video...
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
The Flyer is sluggish. I have an Acer Iconia A100 also and it is much more responsive. I think that the culprit is Honeycomb and Sense combined.
Flyer running on the ICS ports is much, much more responsive but those ports cannot be used as daily drivers, IMO, at least for me.
For this reason, I hope either that the ports progress or that we somehow get AOSP ICS.
Honeycomb is garbage and Honeycomb with Sense slows things to a crawl.
lawguy said:
The Flyer is sluggish. I have an Acer Iconia A100 also and it is much more responsive. I think that the culprit is Honeycomb and Sense combined.
Flyer running on the ICS ports is much, much more responsive but those ports cannot be used as daily drivers, IMO, at least for me.
For this reason, I hope either that the ports progress or that we somehow get AOSP ICS.
Honeycomb is garbage and Honeycomb with Sense slows things to a crawl.
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I am on LeeDroid with sense stripped.. I'm pretty sure there are still components there, but coming from Samsung products I am not sure how involved Sense is compared to TouchWiz (Samsung's crap).
It's not that the tablet is slow, it is like it just has trouble keeping up sometimes. It's very hit or miss. I guess it's expected from a $150 tablet.
Seems to be personal opinion and maybe experience. I run the stock HC rooted and have no lag , no slow downs, no problems. Other complains of these. I had and sold my Acer A100 because i hated the screen on it. Found the Acer to be slower in almost everything compared to the Flyer. So your mileage may very.
DigitalMD said:
Seems to be personal opinion and maybe experience. I run the stock HC rooted and have no lag , no slow downs, no problems. Other complains of these. I had and sold my Acer A100 because i hated the screen on it. Found the Acer to be slower in almost everything compared to the Flyer. So your mileage may very.
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The Flyer is fine for apps. It is the user interface that lags. This is very obvious when compared to the A100, especially now that the A100 has ICS. And, yes, the screen on the A100 is horrible (as is the build quality overall).
Well some people say this and I believe them, but its certainly not universal, and its certainly not obvious on my HC Flyer. I see no lag. Its very smooth and quick. I never had ICS on the A100, but the Flyer was clearly faster for most apps, as it should be with a faster base processor speed.
I'm going to try a different launcher and see if that helps. Are there any recommended HC launchers?
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
ADW EX works well, I use it for a pretty display when I do not need anything that Sense provides. There are several others.
Any launcher close to stock honeycomb that doesn't add an extra notification bar? Or atleast replaces it?
j510 said:
Any launcher close to stock honeycomb that doesn't add an extra notification bar? Or atleast replaces it?
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The HC notification bar is part of the system, not part of the launcher. You cannot safely eliminate it or replace it. There are some hack apps that hide it, but they can cause compatibility problems.
j510 said:
Any launcher close to stock honeycomb that doesn't add an extra notification bar? Or atleast replaces it?
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I believe you may be talking about the extra bar on top that many nonnative apps and launchers add to 7inch hc tablets. Unfortunately you'll just have to look around. I use xeam which allows icons up to the screen edges.
About laggyness: I experienced a huge amount of lag after some rom installs. This shouldn't be the case but leedros rom was very slow even after a couple months usage. I use the senseless hc rom now and its noticeably faster.
If you want to see blazing speed, downgrade and install the CM7 1.1 rom. I would switch in a heartbeat if pen worked properly.
Yeah I use the pen for work so I can't go to GB/CM/ICS, unfortunately
Are there any tablet-oriented UIs out? I do see that new one Chameleon but that's not out yet.. all of the launchers I'm finding are just larger phone launchers, like Go Launcher EX HD, ADW EX, etc.
I thought it was fast until I played with my bothers ipad and my dads playbook. Really smooth scrolling web pages and stuff compared to mine.
The best I managed to do was use setcpu to set the minimum cpu freq to like 800MHz, which helped.
boastt said:
I thought it was fast until I played with my bothers ipad and my dads playbook. Really smooth scrolling web pages and stuff compared to mine.
The best I managed to do was use setcpu to set the minimum cpu freq to like 800MHz, which helped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tell your father to throw anything blackberry related out of the house . Anyway, just install a custom ROM. DeSensified v3 and CoolHoney 3d V4 are the best two i tried so far, if you kill all running apps, you have about 400+ RAM free and only ocasional lag, but not on the UI. Keep in mind that honeycomb uses alot more resources than others and HTC just threw it together in a few min.
algorhythm said:
Yeah I use the pen for work so I can't go to GB/CM/ICS, unfortunately
Are there any tablet-oriented UIs out? I do see that new one Chameleon but that's not out yet.. all of the launchers I'm finding are just larger phone launchers, like Go Launcher EX HD, ADW EX, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try VTL Launcher, it's not developed anymore afaik but works fine except for some occasional bugs. It's pretty much what I would want from a homescreen, very customizable, uses ADW icon sets and gives you the whole screen without any wasted space.

[Q] Why are Stock ICS launchers so choppy?

I have tried every ROM available, senseless or with sense; and whenever I run Apex or Nova, the scrolling is low quality, laggy, and choppy. I've tried setting different scrolling times with no avail. Is their some sort of optimization that stock ics has that sense phones don't? I'd love to know if I can fix the issue, or at least figure out what's causing it.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA
apex on nils business runs perfect for me. scroll times are set to 1
dyetheskin said:
apex on nils business runs perfect for me. scroll times are set to 1
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Guess I'm going to give Nils' rom a shot. Ill report back, thanks :3.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA
dyetheskin said:
apex on nils business runs perfect for me. scroll times are set to 1
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Did you install it or push to /system/?
I've used Apex Launcher on CleanROM and am currently using it on Newts OnE XxX. I've never had a problem with it being slow/laggy/choppy on either.
epsilonomega said:
I've used Apex Launcher on CleanROM and am currently using it on Newts OnE XxX. I've never had a problem with it being slow/laggy/choppy on either.
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You beat me to it!! lol I'm using the same ROM with Apex and its smooth as butter.
Guess i should change my sig....
epsilonomega said:
I've used Apex Launcher on CleanROM and am currently using it on Newts OnE XxX. I've never had a problem with it being slow/laggy/choppy on either.
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I don't get it! I'm on One XxX and its choppy and the scrolling is very low fps.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA
Insidious said:
I don't get it! I'm on One XxX and its choppy and the scrolling is very low fps.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA
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People's perceptions vary. It's the same for them as it is for you. They've probably never seen the launchers running at a full 60 fps on a Galaxy Nexus and have no clue they're getting subpar performance.
It seems to boil down to unimplemented acceleration for some functions in the graphics driver (if sense doesn't use it, they don't need to support it). Don't bother with the 218 drivers, either, they aren't any better.
i dont know why more people dont use nova.. its the smoothest launcher for me.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda app-developers app
That's why I left Apex for LauncherPro. Not ICS, but fast as hell.
I emailed the programmer for Nova and he told me it might have something to do with our leaks not including the proper 3D or graphics libraries.
I do know exactly what you mean, when flipping desktops with Sense, it looks like we get 60 frames per second and it's super smooth. With Apex, Nova or GO, it's still fast but the framerate drops down a LOT.
What's weird is that when opening the app drawer, all those launchers become really fast and really smooth. It's only when flipping desktop pages. Even with no wallpaper scroll it's choppy.
Same problem here. I tried flashing the Adreno 220 update but it lowered benchmark scores and didn't improve the responsiveness of Apex.
Guess I'm stuck with Ultrasmooth Rosie, I don't really like the Sense app drawer (neither 3.6 nor 4.0) but I'll take 60fps over 10fps.
Nic2112 said:
I emailed the programmer for Nova and he told me it might have something to do with our leaks not including the proper 3D or graphics libraries.
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Click to collapse
My thought was that the libraries just fell back to software for some functions, and that was why it was slow. We certainly have the necessary library files, but that doesn't mean all the hooks were properly implemented.
What's weird is that when opening the app drawer, all those launchers become really fast and really smooth. It's only when flipping desktop pages. Even with no wallpaper scroll it's choppy.
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For me, the app drawer in Nova is choppy until you get to the widgets section, which is ultra smooth. Apex's app drawer is adequately fast. Both home screens are terrible, though.
This is also quite irksome for me because it also seems to affect Chrome's performance, and I'd really like to use that.
One can only hope at this stage that the official OTA is different and properly accelerates the missing drawing functions.
MaulingDeOso said:
People's perceptions vary. It's the same for them as it is for you. They've probably never seen the launchers running at a full 60 fps on a Galaxy Nexus and have no clue they're getting subpar performance.
It seems to boil down to unimplemented acceleration for some functions in the graphics driver (if sense doesn't use it, they don't need to support it). Don't bother with the 218 drivers, either, they aren't any better.
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Actually I have used a Galaxy Nexus, and the only thing that my Rezound does not compare too would be Jelly Bean on the Nexus. I switched things up lately though to sense 3.6 to run Tablet mode again though and I Still dont have any performance issues, Even on Apex Launcher. Both on Sense 4 and on 3.6.
Although I would agree that when running Tablet mode, Nova runs a tad choppy, but Apex is still beasting it!
dalvear88 said:
Actually I have used a Galaxy Nexus, and the only thing that my Rezound does not compare too would be Jelly Bean on the Nexus. I switched things up lately though to sense 3.6 to run Tablet mode again though and I Still dont have any performance issues, Even on Apex Launcher. Both on Sense 4 and on 3.6.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a Galaxy Nexus, too, and the home screen was much smoother when scrolling. Are you saying you're getting 60 fps with your Rezound?
What about with Chrome? Is your scrolling there 60 fps or does it stutter?
I'm curious about the Droid Incredible 4g now, too. I'm wondering if it does or doesn't have this issue. I pulled the Adreno drivers from its image and tried them and it makes no difference on this phone.
MaulingDeOso said:
I had a Galaxy Nexus, too, and the home screen was much smoother when scrolling. Are you saying you're getting 60 fps with your Rezound?
What about with Chrome? Is your scrolling there 60 fps or does it stutter?
I'm curious about the Droid Incredible 4g now, too. I'm wondering if it does or doesn't have this issue. I pulled the Adreno drivers from its image and tried them and it makes no difference on this phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So far its super smooth, I have a friend I work with too that has a Nexus and he says I did a good job setting up. We did side by sides and it keeps up very well with his ICS Nexus, then he Put JB on and I lose lol.
For Chrome I dont know, I never use it, I use stock ICS Browser or even ICS + (The Stock runs better than ICS + [Although I'm sure they are the exact same thing?]). Only issue I have is that stuff shows up kinda small since I'm running Tablet Mode now.
Also what's the purpose of the Adreno drivers? I read the thread on it a while back when they first pulled them from some other device, but dont remember what they were for.
dalvear88 said:
So far its super smooth, I have a friend I work with too that has a Nexus and he says I did a good job setting up. We did side by sides and it keeps up very well with his ICS Nexus, then he Put JB on and I lose lol.
For Chrome I dont know, I never use it, I use stock ICS Browser or even ICS + (The Stock runs better than ICS + [Although I'm sure they are the exact same thing?]). Only issue I have is that stuff shows up kinda small since I'm running Tablet Mode now.
Also what's the purpose of the Adreno drivers? I read the thread on it a while back when they first pulled them from some other device, but dont remember what they were for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Saying it's "super smooth" doesn't mean anything, because it might mean something different to you than us. I was looking to quantify things. If you know what 60 fps looks like, you can definitely say whether or not you're achieving that. I can say that this phone does not reach 60 fps in the cases I mentioned. A Galaxy Nexus does.
I use ICS Browser+ as well, as it doesn't seem to suffer from the stuttering issue. If you're willing to test, it's simple enough to download Chrome and check if scrolling is smooth like it is in the stock browser or ICS Browser+.
The Adreno drivers are just that: the drivers for the Adreno 200 series of graphics hardware. They are an implementation of EGL and OpenGL ES for the GPU in the phone. The theory was, being newer, that they would be faster or have improved acceleration and/or power management. From testing, I haven't seen any qualitative benefits to using anything other than the stock drivers, and people have said their benchmark numbers aren't any different, either.
MaulingDeOso said:
Saying it's "super smooth" doesn't mean anything, because it might mean something different to you than us. I was looking to quantify things. If you know what 60 fps looks like, you can definitely say whether or not you're achieving that. I can say that this phone does not reach 60 fps in the cases I mentioned. A Galaxy Nexus does.
I use ICS Browser+ as well, as it doesn't seem to suffer from the stuttering issue. If you're willing to test, it's simple enough to download Chrome and check if scrolling is smooth like it is in the stock browser or ICS Browser+.
The Adreno drivers are just that: the drivers for the Adreno 200 series of graphics hardware. They are an implementation of EGL and OpenGL ES for the GPU in the phone. The theory was, being newer, that they would be faster or have improved acceleration and/or power management. From testing, I haven't seen any qualitative benefits to using anything other than the stock drivers, and people have said their benchmark numbers aren't any different, either.
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Click to collapse
I agree with you that saying Super Smooth doesnt really mean much to everyone else, but without any real method of measuring the true FPS at the moment makes it even tougher. Although I can truthfully say that it seems to be matching the smoothness of the Nexus so far, if its not a full 60fps then its pretty DARN close lol.
For Chrome I'll be testing in a few when I get out from work and I'll post what my findings are. Never used Chrome on Phone mode or Tablet mode lol.
I might try out those Drivers see if it makes it even better....ish? Although If you guys havent had much luck with your rezounds then I assume I won't have much luck either. Either way i'll Try that out too. Anyone have a link to it?
Yep, this was the main reason why I stopped using de-sensed roms with apex/nova/trebuchet and switched to sense roms. Just couldn't take the choppiness anymore
Anyone have the latest apk for chrome. I can't get it off the market. Says not compatible. Much thanks in advance

Jelly Bean Smoothness

**DISCLAIMERS**
This thread has no intention of attempting to complain, diminish, degrade, or criticize any developers on this forum or any of their work, as all of us are nothing but grateful for the amount of free, altruistic, and superior quality code that they provide us with. :good:
This thread has no intention of trying to reiterate the content of the "Butery Smoothness" thread found at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1814010 nor to define what "Buttery Smoothness" is, as the previous thread defines it well enough already through the posts and insight of multiple users.
This thread has been created with full knowledge and consideration of the alpha development stage that Android 4.1.1 is currently in and all content discussed in this thread is stated with regard to said knowledge and should only be perceived as an attempt to contribute to at least one of multiple bug fixes to further improve the state of Android 4.1.1 on the SGH-i717 for the good of all users
Purpose
The purpose of this thread is to solve the perceived lack of graphical smoothness and fluidity inside of Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean) on the SGH-i717 which has been noticed and reported by many users in multiple ROM's through the collaboration of information, ideas, and solutions between all users and developers.
Background
Many users have reported a significant lack of graphical performance in multiple Jelly Bean ROM's for the SGH-i717 in various scenarios such as home screen navigation, UI animations, and in-app scrolling where there is not only a user-noticeable drop in performance but a quantifiable drop in frame-rate. With Google's Project Butter being a highlight of Jelly Bean, the lack of smoothness in its current state for our device brings not only dismay but logical confusion as other, older devices with lower specifications (such as the Galaxy Nexus for example) perform better graphically than the SGH-i717 with higher specifications. The higher graphical performance in the older Ice Cream Sandwich indicates that the highlighted performance issue in Jelly Bean is not related to hardware incapability but to software utilization of the hardware.
I want to leave as little of my insight in this thread as possible because I want to hear from other users but I'll post some initial information and questions to provoke some response.
Ever since Jelly Bean development began, I've noticed this issue on my device and have even had a replacement device with the same experience so hardware isn't a likely culprit in my opinion. h0tw1r3 was one of the first developers to bring a Jelly Bean ROM to SGH-i717 users and other ROM's were formed briefly after his using it as a base. Until about the third or fourth build ( 8-21 I believe), the performance was sluggishly the same. After this build though, there was a noticeable increase in graphical performance, although still significantly behind ICS. That new standard hasn't changed much since until the latest CM10 nightly builds where I've noticed quite an increase in graphical performance putting it a little closer to ICS performance but still painfully behind such that Dolphin is the only browser that feels smooth enough to use efficiently.
I have also noticed an odd phenomenon where the performance varies from build to build without a noticeably significant change. For example, I remember using DaGr8's AOKP port for a while and finding it smoother than other ROM's at the time but once installing his next build (that only mentioned minor unrelated changes, although some could have been unlisted) the performance was back down again. I have experienced this with multiple different ROM's though which is what is most peculiar that there is so much inconsistency.
Helpful Questions
Have you noticed any of these issues before? If so, which ones?
Do you think the issue is hardware or software/driver related?
How would you compare your best JB experience to stable ICS builds?
Which processes/applications perform the best and the worst for you graphically?
Which ROM's run smooth for you and which ones don't?
Which browsers have you tried in Jelly Bean and which ones do you prefer the most?
Have you noticed graphical performance issues in Chrome consistently at all? If so, in which ROM's or instances have you experienced such?
Do you have any ideas/suggestions as to what is causing or what could fix this issue?
And regardless of the inevitable bugs we are experiencing in alpha software, are you extremely grateful for the developers who have provided us with them? (SAY YES!!)
If any of you would like to add more content or questions to this list (and PLEASE do), just ask them and I'll add them to this OP.
Suggestions and Modifications for Improvement (list will grow over time as new information is presented)
1) Verify that the "debug.mdpcomp.maxlayer" parameter in build.prop is set to the value of 3 and not 2 when you first install a ROM (thanks to NYConex for the tip!). Some developers/ROM chefs (lol) will customize this setting based on their preference. This setting disables (value 2) and enables (value 3) GPU acceleration taking the load off of the CPU. Disabling has fixed the flicker issue that has developed in Jelly Bean for many people but will severely impact performance and graphical smoothness as well as battery life potentially. For flickering, I instead recommend using a live wallpaper which will force the GPU to refresh the screen much more often disabling flicker (in the homescreen at least).
2)**ESSENTIAL FIX FOR SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT** Change the debug.composition.type in /system/build.prop from "dyn" to "gpu" and reboot. This makes a MAJOR difference in ALL areas of performance. The existing string that is entered by default is a "dynamic" setting which alternates putting the graphical load on either the GPU or CPU depending upon resource allocation. Changing the setting to "gpu" will force Android to constantly use the GPU for graphics so you won't notice stutter and lag as Android switches the load from the CPU and GPU. Using this setting also increases overall system speed IMMENSELY as it allows the CPU to do more central tasks like launching applications and communicating with hardware instead of handling the graphics. This "constant GPU setting" plays very nicely with Project Butter in the sense that it uses a constant component of hardware to render graphics along with the constant frame rate that VSync provides. I may try to learn how to make my first ROM sometime soon and when I do, I'll be sure and integrate this into the ROM. Either thank the post or let everyone know if this has helped you!
I have noticed that the liquid ROM as well as the most recent nightly (2 SEP) have been pretty smooth. Nova launcher works great and I don't really see a lot of lag outside the launchers. One thing that kinda brothers me is the lag that is introduced when you enable the nav bar. I don't know exactly what happens behind the scenes (other than it disable the hw keys and enables the soft keys) but it adds a lot of lag. Is there a way to monitor exactly what happens when doing things to your phone? When I use liquid it changes without a reboot but with cm10 I have to manually disable the hw keys so it requires a reboot. Anyone know what's going on with it?
NYConex said:
I have noticed that the liquid ROM as well as the most recent nightly (2 SEP) have been pretty smooth. Nova launcher works great and I don't really see a lot of lag outside the launchers. One thing that kinda brothers me is the lag that is introduced when you enable the nav bar. I don't know exactly what happens behind the scenes (other than it disable the hw keys and enables the soft keys) but it adds a lot of lag. Is there a way to monitor exactly what happens when doing things to your phone? When I use liquid it changes without a reboot but with cm10 I have to manually disable the hw keys so it requires a reboot. Anyone know what's going on with it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good question. I know there are settings in Developer options that allow you to show GPU status and updates which may provide some insight into GPU/CPU utilization. I don't have an immediate answer for you though. I'll do some research and report back.
With the Liquid ROM, I noticed it to be of the poorest performance as others. Was your experience smooth out of the box or did you have to change the debug.mdcomp.maxlayer from 2 back to 3 first?
**EDIT**
I just tried the Liquid ROM again and realized the debug.mdpcomp.maxlayer setting was set to 2 by default in that ROM and after the changing it, the performance was much better, though about the same as CM10 nightlies.
The mdcomp.maxlayer is always the first thing I check after flashing a ROM. I always set it to 3. But if you go back to liquid try the navbar and you will see what I mean. In not home right now but when I get back I'll mess with it a little.
I'm on the Liquid ROM and I don't notice any lag. So i don't think anything needs fixed...since I dont have the problems u describe.
I use almost all aspects of the Note except little music and games.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
Try pulling down the notification drawer. Now sit there and tell me to my face its 60fps. No its not... its really choppy.
Fasty12 said:
Try pulling down the notification drawer. Now sit there and tell me to my face its 60fps. No its not... its really choppy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol damn right. I'd say its between 14-21 FPS variably.
Which ROM's have worked the best for you so far?
On mobile, had 2 scroll forever to read topic
SayWhat10 said:
On mobile, had 2 scroll forever to read topic
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you saying that my OP is too long which made you scroll forever or are you saying that the lag in Jelly Bean cause you to scroll forever?
andrawer said:
I'm on the Liquid ROM and I don't notice any lag. So i don't think anything needs fixed...since I dont have the problems u describe.
I use almost all aspects of the Note except little music and games.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you use Google Chrome? If so, how would you describe its performance in comparison to Ice Cream Sandwich?
The CM10 nightly has been the smoothest this far. So going by experience heres the rankings ATM.
1) Nightly... Smooth but constant flicker.
2) Liquid
2) Paranoid
3) Aokp
4) manualscout4life's rom.
Fasty12 said:
Try pulling down the notification drawer. Now sit there and tell me to my face its 60fps. No its not... its really choppy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure if i understand.
I use my thumb to initiate the notification bar/drawer pulling down and it's immediate and smooth?? Up/down/up/down/up/down...smooth...just tried it. Not even a hint of lag...and that's with 4 notifications waiting for me to do something.
The mentioned lag on jellybean compared to anything previous doesn't come from anything done by Google or issues with software but comes from the lack of hardware acceleration which we don't get to use with jellybean, so our device is not being used to the fullest, is known like previous versions of android when it comes out and ported , is not going to performed like it's supposed to until HWA becomes available. This is the performance drop in fps compared to ICS. Some think because is a newer version of android is going to be better performing out of the box, but that won't happen unless an official version with HWA becomes available or a developer figures out how to implement it into a ROM.
I think JB is amazing and smooth in the little time it has been out.
RoloRacer Paranoid on JellyBean
I agree about the sluggishness of JB at its current state, its normal since we don't have HW acceleration, I'm on Paranoid and flashed Flaps Hot kernel, OC'ed to 1.7Ghz and its performing really well, you should try it out
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
egomezmorales said:
I agree about the sluggishness of JB at its current state, its normal since we don't have HW acceleration, I'm on Paranoid and flashed Flaps Hot kernel, OC'ed to 1.7Ghz and its performing really well, you should try it out
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So when will we get hardware acceleration? When jb officially comes out for the note?
roloracer said:
The mentioned lag on jellybean compared to anything previous doesn't come from anything done by Google or issues with software but comes from the lack of hardware acceleration which we don't get to use with jellybean, so our device is not being used to the fullest, is known like previous versions of android when it comes out and ported , is not going to performed like it's supposed to until HWA becomes available. This is the performance drop in fps compared to ICS. Some think because is a newer version of android is going to be better performing out of the box, but that won't happen unless an official version with HWA becomes available or a developer figures out how to implement it into a ROM.
I think JB is amazing and smooth in the little time it has been out.
RoloRacer Paranoid on JellyBean
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been my thought and awareness all along and what I've wanted to work on repairing. Perhaps it's everyone's use of the term "smooth" that is making everything amiss. When people boast that their JB experiences are "incredibly smooth!" and even more specifically "smoother than ICS!" I think they are making very fallible statements because I don't think that my perception of JB being behind ICS in smoothness can be interpreted as just a "difference in opinion or interpretation". It's definitely factual and quantifiable when testing frame rates and comparing them to ICS. Perhaps it's safe to say that "Jelly Bean is remarkably usable right now considering its alpha state", but to say that it is smooth is quite a fallacy. It's really not much better than Gingerbread and Gingerbread lacked HW acceleration altogether.
But if JB lacks hardware acceleration completely, then how is toggling the maxlayer setting and HW overlay setting in developer options clearly affecting performance if HW acceleration isn't even supported at all in the first place? Some sort of acceleration is clearly being enabled for the evident difference in performance to occur.
I am grateful that you recognize JB's current state to be behind and also attribute it to HW acceleration as I initially did. Now we can hopefully gain some momentum on finding the hindrance of bringing HW acceleration to JB!
If there's anything we've learned thus far, it's not to label a ROM officially "smooth" unless you can prove it greater than or equal to stable ICS builds with quantifiable means!
The word "smooth" is beginning to become a profanity for me, which is rather extreme, as there aren't many words I don't say! Lol...
Everyone should read this.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/0...roject-butter-how-it-works-and-what-it-added/
Jb runs exceptionally well for me with just the 2 buffers. Are all the animations perfect every single time? No, but it's perfectly usable, and slick enough for my dd. I'm sure it will be sorted in time.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
So far the smoothest jb rom for me has been dagr8's aokp Sept 1 build.
HW overlays are disabled and cpu at stock frequencies. Running Nova 1.2.2 and have fluid home screen transitions and overall smoothness.
If I were to nitpick, the notification bar is the only thing that seems somewhat sluggish but only when I pull it down on the home screen (I am running a live wallpaper.)
No reboots or sleep of deaths so far, loving this rom at the moment.
yollasho said:
Everyone should read this.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/0...roject-butter-how-it-works-and-what-it-added/
Jb runs exceptionally well for me with just the 2 buffers. Are all the animations perfect every single time? No, but it's perfectly usable, and slick enough for my dd. I'm sure it will be sorted in time.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really interesting read, thanks for sharing!
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
---------- Post added at 01:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:04 PM ----------
Fasty12 said:
So when will we get hardware acceleration? When jb officially comes out for the note?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, or that a developer taps on how to get HW acceleration
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
We've had hardware acceleration.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app

[Q] I can believe there's no butter

So had my nexus 10 for a few days now and im confused about the general stuttery performance issues. my galaxy s3 running cm10 runs android rather buttery and smooth. the nexus 10 seems to be lacking butter. ive tried the nexus 4 and it's a great buttery performance but the 10 lags and stutters alot, is this just because of the screen resolution or is a fault of android? ive tried cm10 and others nexus 10 roms but still seems kinda stuttery. is over clocking the answer? it's only really 2d performance where the 10 seems to be lacking and i expected more from a 1.7 dual core proc.
something i have noticed is that as long as i keep my finger on the screen, it does not lag, however if i fling and then remove my figure it lags and stutters.
i want to hear other peoples opinions on nexus 10 performance because so far, i fail to see the butter.
moonytoonyking said:
i want to hear other peoples opinions on nexus 10 performance because so far, i fail to see the butter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If there are performance problems, the reason they never get fixed is that people insist on posting subjective experience with "lag" on xda instead of objective, useful bug reports on the AOSP bug tracker..
In my experience, though, it's always a ****ty app hogging the UI thread in a service or some other noob developer move causing lag.
My N10 is smooth and stock.
The idea behind Project Butter, I believe, is that when you have your finger on the screen, then the governor automatically ramps up the speed to whatever the max has been set to. This is the reason why interactive is now the most common governor of choice for AOSP. I suppose you could root and flash a different kernel with other specialised governors like KToonses, which comes with PegasusQ, KToonsertive and others. Or even on stock you could change to other kernels and see if that helps out. I haven't really been noticing much problem with the stutter even on interactive tbh. Animations are fine, so could be that you do have some cpu intensive app causing the lag.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
I use both daily, cm 10.1 on my d2vzw and can tell you my N10 doesn't lag/stutter, both are comparable speed wise in daily use here. As others have suggested I would check your installed apps for irregular behavior
Sent from my SCH-I535 using XDA
I have a nexus 10 and a 9300i too, and my nexus 10 is much much faster!
Actually thinking about it 1 app runs better on my S3, google chrome. I use the AOSP browser instead on my N10, for this as well as flash support.
Think i found the problem
it would appear that having google currents syncing in the background causes lag. tablet is super fast after disabling.
No lag here whatsoever. Running cm10.1 nightlies.
I haven't had a single hint of lag since day one. Seriously, literally as smooth as smooth can be as far as 2D desktop experience goes. If you're suffering noticeable lag I'd honestly think you have a faulty tablet. This thing is BUTTER.
moonytoonyking said:
it would appear that having google currents syncing in the background causes lag. tablet is super fast after disabling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe the thread you're referring to is here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2012756
bamboosensei said:
The idea behind Project Butter, I believe, is that when you have your finger on the screen, then the governor automatically ramps up the speed to whatever the max has been set to. This is the reason why interactive is now the most common governor of choice for AOSP. I suppose you could root and flash a different kernel with other specialised governors like KToonses, which comes with PegasusQ, KToonsertive and others. Or even on stock you could change to other kernels and see if that helps out. I haven't really been noticing much problem with the stutter even on interactive tbh. Animations are fine, so could be that you do have some cpu intensive app causing the lag.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The other aspects of project butter such as the vsync made a much bigger difference than the ramping up CPU. Prior to jellybean if a toast notification came up all the animations would become really choppy. Even with the CPU at low speeds the animations stay smooth as they are rendered by the GPU.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
blackhand1001 said:
The other aspects of project butter such as the vsync made a much bigger difference than the ramping up CPU. Prior to jellybean if a toast notification came up all the animations would become really choppy. Even with the CPU at low speeds the animations stay smooth as they are rendered by the GPU.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree but the TC stated that it didn't lag when he kept his finger on the screen so I assumed it was due to that particular part of Project Butter that made a difference.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

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