Serious performance issues

[EskeRahn 5,471]

2 hours ago, 3zet said:

Even if, company advertised phone with SoC which cannot be utilised in 100% when you compare it to other companies. That's kinda silly I think. 

That's most likely the issue. Honestly, someone from company should investigate this, because the fact We can't use full potential even quite old SoC just sucks. 

Well good that you reported it, and the more details the better. I'm not in anyway saying that they by optimisation wenot could extra out of the hardware.

But I think they are more than busy with fixing bugs & malfunctions, so the easier we can make it for them to narrow down where there is an optimisation needed, the more likely it is to be implemented.

It could be as simple as some code left in a debug mode somewhere, that uses/wastes time on logging, or it could be a complex thing needed. And worst case it is a limitation with the screen hardware/interface.

So the more it can be narrowed down the better...

A good place to start would be to with the use of benchmarks (as @FlyingAntero did above) compare it with another device with the same msm8998 835 and/or something like Aida64, that can give a little info of the version of the graphics

 

[Slion 1,201]

3 hours ago, elvissteinjr said:

I kinda wish my phone was here so I could provide my own numbers. Guess that'll have to wait.

Sorry about that mate. Hope you get it soon. Must be so frustrating seeing everyone here having fun with theirs.

[3zet 100]

5 hours ago, elvissteinjr said:

What Samsung phone are we even talking about? I know you said it should be the same SoC... but still, which Samsung model?

S8+. Graphics options are identical, excluding rendering resolution, which in Samsung I was able to set it higher.

[Laska 41]

Well, I've also tried Dolphin and I've observed strange behaviour: sometimes fps is higher and sometimes it is slower. Sometimes performance is better on vulkan and sometimes on opengl. And I mean on the very same title. It also doesn't depend on restart status -sometimes after fresh restart the sound is choppy and fps very low.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 minutes ago, Laska said:

Well, I've also tried Dolphin and I've observed strange behaviour: sometimes fps is higher and sometimes it is slower. Sometimes performance is better on vulkan and sometimes on opengl. And I mean on the very same title. It also doesn't depend on restart status -sometimes after fresh restart the sound is choppy and fps very low.

Hmm, that is odd. No matter how good or bad, we would expect it to be consistent. Could something be running in the background taking the resources?

Try something like "Android Assistant", and click the "Processes" tab, and perhaps kill (=stop) irrelevant stuff, and see if you can get more consistent results.

Perhaps try something that works off line, and put it in Aeroplane mode, to isolate.

[Laska 41]

I've cleaned this phone pretty good, I'm purist in that matter. No google BS, no social media apps. My guess is it have to do something with thermal throttling but I don't know how to check it.

[FlyingAntero 871]

6 minutes ago, Laska said:

I've cleaned this phone pretty good, I'm purist in that matter. No google BS, no social media apps. My guess is it have to do something with thermal throttling but I don't know how to check it.

CPU Throttling Test and GFXBench (use Manhattan Battery Test for long term test) are good apps for thermal test. I will post my results shortly.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

3 minutes ago, Laska said:

I've cleaned this phone pretty good, I'm purist in that matter. No google BS, no social media apps. My guess is it have to do something with thermal throttling but I don't know how to check it.

Well if you quick-charge it you certainly get it extensively heated, so if you get a low FPS rate then, but a high rate when it is cold, that should give a pattern.

You could even try to operate it on something cold, and see if that helps it. If it does, your intuition on throttling is right. Be careful not to take something TOO cold, we do not want risking condensation of water vapour from the air inside the device.

[Erik 1,487]

It's definitely the Snapdragon 835 CPU. The sound issue is a bug with the system forcing a power saving rule as investigated below. This is at the top of our list for the coming update/s.

 

[Laska 41]

I don't use quick charge, only when I'm in hurry and really have to quick charge. Later on I'll try to test with posted apps. Thank you.

[Laska 41]

2 minutes ago, Erik said:

It's definitely the Snapdragon 835 CPU. The sound issue is a bug with the system forcing a power saving rule as investigated below. This is at the top of our list for the coming update/s.

 

But can it be disabled? I don't care about battery life because, as I said earlier, I've removed most of apps and my battery life is excellent.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 minutes ago, Laska said:

But can it be disabled? I don't care about battery life because, as I said earlier, I've removed most of apps and my battery life is excellent.

Well though you might not care on the battery stamina, I assume you are interested in the battery life - even if the device are not glued together. Heating the device too much kills the battery. (That is the exact reason why we -as you wisely do- should avoid fast charging in normal daily usage, and only use it when we are in a hurry)

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 minutes ago, FlyingAntero said:

CPU Throttling Test and GFXBench (use Manhattan Battery Test for long term test) are good apps for thermal test. I will post my results shortly.

I just tried the first on a S8- (exynos, so not the same) and the Pro1. And even throttled it is higher than my S8- before throttling.

(The Pro1 was disturbed by a call I did not answer during the test, the red line)

 

[FlyingAntero 871]

Here are my results for comparison:

CPU:

GPU:

These results are quite normal so the issue is not thermal throttling. I think that it has to be software thing.

Reference (Honor 20 Pro and Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro)

 

Honor 20 Pro:

Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro:

Edited March 2, 2020 by FlyingAntero

[EskeRahn 5,471]

I just ran it again WITH the tick box to include the temperature, and note on the first how the temperature of ONE of the cores is sky-rocketting in the first minute, and stays up during the entire test, while the other cores are at a more moderate temperature. They all start out at around 20 (it was placed at a table at a room temperature of 21)

Also note that I have been EVIL, I did NOT take it out of the flip-case, so it did NOT have the cooling from the exterior it is designed to have.

 

[EskeRahn 5,471]

The same author also have a "Transparent CPU Monitor", that can show CPU and GPU as a transparent layer. That might be helpful in debugging?

[Craig 1,435]

Sorry if I'm back to the beginning of the thread, not paying attention to all this complicated cpu/temp stuff.  The app only has a setting to use 1 core or 2.....

I tried Wii version of Mario Kart under Dolphin under Lineage, to see if I had any issues.

First thing is the f-droid version of Dolphin won't even load the ~2GB nkit iso version of SMK I grabbed from vimm.net.   However, the latest official version will (https://dolphin-emu.org/download/).  Seems they don't keep f-droid very updated, some 5k commits behind.  @3zet What version of dolphin are you using?  (The latest reports 5.0-11701 if I'm reading the cut off text correctly...could be 11781... see screenshot)

After configuring to use keyboard (disabling swiftkey by setting to aosp/gboard, configuring gamepad emulation to set my preferred keys in the dolphin UI (2nd screenshot), then toggling off the onscreen controls and setting controller type to gamepad within the game itself by swiping and clicking the dots), seems completely playable to me, in a brief test of running the three laps that come up by pressing a over and over accepting all the defaults.  The one time I noticed what appeared to be a slowdown was when it dropped my kart at the beginning of the race, it seemed like to pause a couple times while rotating it.  Other than that, ran around the track a few times just fine.

And @3zet, is your experience similar under stock, or perhaps there is something behaving better under Lineage, besides just the key chording which makes game emulation under stock a bit tricky to find a decent keymap; I posted a bit about that a bit in December... still waiting on stock ota fix... but here in sfos/los or netmans kernel with stock.

There is one setting to use dual core, but that was checked by default.  All other settings I just set however made sense.

I only turned the screen sideways to show more in the screenshot; I didn't actually configure or use it that way.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Craig

[3zet 100]

17 hours ago, Craig said:

@3zet What version of dolphin are you using?

The latest build. I downloaded it from dolphin website. 

17 hours ago, Craig said:

And @3zet, is your experience similar under stock, or perhaps there is something behaving better under Lineage, besides just the key chording which makes game emulation under stock a bit tricky to find a decent keymap; I posted a bit about that a bit in December... still waiting on stock ota fix... but here in sfos/los or netmans kernel with stock.

How many fps you have? I didn't try Mario Kart so I just test it and I will tell you. The problem is the games which should run on 60fps on Snapdragon 835 works maybe on 30 or even less, so fast paced  60fps games are unplayable because they are working with half of the original speed. 

 

About software - I know about many issues on stock but I need working one, simple thing - my banking apps. So I trying to keep stock firmware at all cost. 

[Craig 1,435]

I thought Mario Kart Wii was one of the games I thought you listed, that's why I tried it...   I'll try it now see if I can display fps and report back.  I did play it once more since posting, and it does that slowdown on every single level intro before each race....

edit:

Ok so it jumps around, its not stable at 60.  During a race it seemed to get down as low as 39 but usually in the 40s, and sometimes up to 62...

 

I also tried Luigi's mansion gamecube.  Its around 29/30 most of the time, but jumps to 59/60 for in game movies and certain scenes like a closeup of when I try to open a doorknob,or later when i got the key and actually unlocked the door,  but i don't really know how to play this. so haven't done much after the intro besides walk around and pointing my flashlight.

 

Anyway if its working better in lineage than stock, that proves its not the hardware, which your bench marking already showed anyway.  So hopefully ota update fixes it.  You kinda need ota update for the key rollover fixes anyway for console games to be playable.  And right now even in lineage there's still audio crackle each I start the game, have to plug or unplug charger to get rid of it.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Craig

[3zet 100]

I will also try it in the moment, I'm making image of my own disk. 

That's how game runs on S8+ with this same SoC. 

[david 929]

I clicked around in that video to a few different places.  I didn't see the FPS. Is it shown somewhere?

[david 929]

I tried the USB plug-in/unplug on stock and it didn't fix the cracking audio in WhatsApp playback of audio messages.

Edited March 3, 2020 by david

[Craig 1,435]

That video does the pause when rotating before each level that I was trying to describe.  first time is right at the 1 minute mark.....   then again around 725-735...    I'llsee if I can make my own video...   but my behavior seems same on Pro¹

edit: made a video, but it probably wont be online for a couple hours, my upload b/w is slow

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by Craig

[Craig 1,435]

Video *finally* finished uploading.  Seems the same to me as that S8 video.  Is it worse with stock?    With stock you'll have to assign a (gas) to a modifier key so that you can still turn while driving....

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Craig

[3zet 100]

Okay. That's getting weird.

I don't know what I've done but not only I fixed the issues with performance with my unit (Mario Kart was working much slower than you showed on the movie @Craig), I also found a way how to speed them up significantly! You need to select overclocking option and instead to go over 100%, just select something below. Now emulation will be much smoother at cost of fps (when emulation can't keep up game runs slower than it should so its better to keep it run normally when fps are a bit lower). 

Now all the games runs just fluently. Slowdown at the end of video was make by thermal throttling I think. 

I have no idea what was the issue with emulation speed. I didn't change any option. Because of the stock firmware I'm using onscreen controls and also there is sound stuttering.