Kernels & Performance?

[heartburnron]

Ok, so I have rooted my phone and flashed Checkrom 4. That's it. I'm using the Galaxy blue theme which I love. I still don't fully understand what a kernal does, I've been reading the forums and the conclusion I've come to is that it mainly impacts on battery life and performance. I'm a heavy user of my phone, playing many HD games but I have a spare battery and chargers located at work, car, home so I'm not overly concernced with the battery performance. I've noticed since I rooted and flashed checkrom that some of my HD games are slowing down. Ashpalt 6 sometimes freezes then switches to the pause menu from which I can then resume playing agin. This only happens occasionally but it never happened before I rooted and flashed the custom rom.

So my question is, can I flash a kernal that will improve the performance of my phone, particualry for playing games? Reading through the forum people seem to using these kernals to reduce voltages and clocking to save battery, can they be used for the opposite? Is there an app that would allow me to crank up the performance before playing a game and then reduce it again to perserve battery when not playing game? Is there a certain kernal that is better than others for boosting performance?

Thanks

 

[ironass]

Yes, they can be optimised for performance instead of battery saving.

For instance, if you are using the Siyah kernel in conjunction with the Voltage Control app, see here:-

http://androidforums.com/galaxy-s2-...7-12-dummies-guide-installation-settings.html

You would select a scheduler such as, say, noop and a governor called performance.

You could then set the Min: to 200Mhz and the Max: to 1400 or 1600Mhz, (called o/c or over clocking), and leave the voltages as the kernel's default.

This would give you maximum performance with minimum battery savings.

You could then enact the battery savings shown in the first link, which you could save as a Voltage Control profile previously.

For more information on governors and schedulers, see here:-

[REF][TWEAKS] Kernel Governors, Modules, I/O Schedulers, CPU Tweaks [Reorganize Feb3] - xda-developers

Hope this helps.

 

[heartburnron]

Yes, they can be optimised for performance instead of battery saving.

For instance, if you are using the Siyah kernel in conjunction with the Voltage Control app, see here:-

http://androidforums.com/galaxy-s2-...7-12-dummies-guide-installation-settings.html

You would select a scheduler such as, say, noop and a governor called performance.

You could then set the Min: to 200Mhz and the Max: to 1400 or 1600Mhz, (called o/c or over clocking), and leave the voltages as the kernel's default.

This would give you maximum performance with minimum battery savings.

For more information on governors and schedulers, see here:-

[REF][TWEAKS] Kernel Governors, Modules, I/O Schedulers, CPU Tweaks [Reorganize Feb3] - xda-developers

Hope this helps.

Thanks Ironass, I think I'll have a go at flashing a kernal this weekend. Have you any idea why the games have been struggling a bit since my root and flash. Would the CF kernal I used to root my phone or CheckROM have default settings that would have reduced the phone performance compared to the stock kernal and rom?

 

[ironass]

Thanks Ironass, I think I'll have a go at flashing a kernal this weekend. Have you any idea why the games have been struggling a bit since my root and flash. Would the CF kernal I used to root my phone or CheckROM have default settings that would have reduced the phone performance compared to the stock kernal and rom?

I wouldn't have thought so. CF-Root kernel is basically the stock kernel and CheckROM, by default, has all the Samsung, "bloatware", removed. I assume you followed the CheckROM installation instructions about doing a, "Full Wipe", if you encounter any problems. See my guide here:-

http://androidforums.com/galaxy-s2-...1620-checkrom-dummies-guide-installation.html

 

[heartburnron]

I wouldn't have thought so. CF-Root kernel is basically the stock kernel and CheckROM, by default, has all the Samsung, "bloatware", removed. I assume you followed the CheckROM installation instructions about doing a, "Full Wipe", if you encounter any problems. See my guide here:-

http://androidforums.com/galaxy-s2-...1620-checkrom-dummies-guide-installation.html

Yes I used your (brilliant) guide and did the full wipe. I wonder if it's because I am now playing the games off the exteranl SD card were before they were on the internal memory. The SD card is a class 10 Samsung 32G but I guess it would still be a bit slower than the internal memory?

Edit: Just an after thought... if the external SD card is the reason the games are stuttering would this mean that overclocking the performance of my phone would make no difference as the problem is with the card and not the phone? I guess I'll need to experiment...

 

[ironass]

Yes I used your (brilliant) guide and did the full wipe. I wonder if it's because I am now playing the games off the exteranl SD card were before they were on the internal memory. The SD card is a class 10 Samsung 32G but I guess it would still be a bit slower than the internal memory?

Edit: Just an after thought... if the external SD card is the reason the games are stuttering would this mean that overclocking the performance of my phone would make no difference as the problem is with the card and not the phone? I guess I'll need to experiment...

The SGSII is not capable of taking advantage of a Class 10 card, 4 or 6 is about it, so moving them back to the internal SD might be a good idea. O/C'ing in this case would have very little effect I feel.

 

[heartburnron]

The SGSII is not capable of taking advantage of a Class 10 card, 4 or 6 is about it, so moving them back to the internal SD might be a good idea. O/C'ing in this case would have very little effect I feel.

Thanks again and interesting about the card classes, I didn't know that. Can I just confirm that you feel O/C'ing would have little effect whilst the games are on the external SD or regardless if I move them back to the internal SD or not?

 

[ironass]

Thanks again and interesting about the card classes, I didn't know that. Can I just confirm that you feel O/C'ing would have little effect whilst the games are on the external SD or regardless if I move them back to the internal SD or not?

My personal feeling is that it would make very little difference if the data is on the external SD card as there is a read/write limit. You may well find an improvement if they were on the internal SD card.

Try one game and see.

 

[heartburnron]

My personal feeling is that it would make very little difference if the data is on the external SD card as there is a read/write limit. You may well find an improvement if they were on the internal SD card.

Try one game and see.

Brilliant. I'll have a go. It will be interesting to see if I can move the game back without loosing the game progress/data. I'll do I titanium back up of course before hand...