Patent ID: 7426320

Claim:
A method of setting a value of a performance controlling parameter of a data processing apparatus operable to perform a processing operation upon at least one data block of an input data stream comprising a plurality of data blocks, said method comprising: performing an initial processing stage of said processing operation on said at least one data block; deriving from at least one result of said initial processing stage a complexity measure indicative of an amount of data processing required to perform at least one further processing stage of said processing operation upon said at least one data block; setting said performance controlling parameter to a predicted value in dependence upon said complexity measure; and performing said at least one further processing stage upon said at least one data block subject to said predicted value of said performance controlling parameter, wherein at least one of said plurality of data blocks of said input data stream comprises one of an image field or an image frame, and said complexity measure is derived from one or more features of an image rendering display list generated by a deferred rendering graphics processor, for said one of an image field or an image frame, and wherein said one or more features used to derive said complexity measure comprises a count of constituent image items in said image rendering display list.