[Nexus 4 Original Android Development] Hanny:
I shouldn't be doing this, but we all know that lots have been changed in r80, and interestingly I felt lag today while I tried GTA.

WHAT? YOU LAGGED WITH r80 OUT OF THE BOX? nah, no lag while the cpu is able to go above 1026. I am currently talking about throttling. While we are gaming, the CPU/GPU load must stress the phone thus rising the temperature for sure. We surely don't want to hold a "throttling warm phone" for a long time and makes our palm sweat. Don't we all like to hold a "throttling cool phone" and game all the way? Therefore, its all about throttling-performance, i.e. our phones goes to 1026 max automatically while we game for a few minutes, while we don't have to set the max manually beforehand. It is just simple to achieve this while not affecting normal usage besides gaming, just set throttling threshold to somewhere between 58-63.

Setup

AOKP Feb15 Sethyx Unofficial Android 4.2.2 [no PUB no Krait optimizations]

franco r80 Interactive (default gov control) - Deadline (default scheduler control)

384/1512

Thermal throttle threshold 35 (As mentioned above, I need to test on absolute throttling scenarios as they appear the most while gaming.)

Fsync on

r80 Gaming Throttling Test

r70 Gaming test - http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=37793234#post37793234 (for comparison if necessary)

Temple Run 2 (Light game)

Superb performance even when throttling. Only 2 cores active, and should be enough.

NFS MW (Med game)

Comparing to the r70 throttliing test, ONLY two cores are used all the time. All the time. No random kick ins however the experience is generally smooth, even on the fastest bugatti. (fastest landscape loads)

GTA VC Max Graphics (Heavy game) <- Unsatisfying results

Unfortunately, this is giving me bad results.

Still, only 2 cores are used all the time. Again, All the time. Even when I make explosions, crash stuffs, driving fast on a busy road, there are obvious stutters. However, the 3rd and 4th core did not kick in.

On r70, the 4 cores did kick in and worked all together to make the experience much better.

Even when not throttling

Still only 2 cores are being used. For example in GTA VC, one is 1512 while the other fluctuates between 1026-1512. I must say the 3rd and 4th core are very very much more conservative during gaming on r80.

However, in normal app occasional peak loads (while opening/closing, initial loading etc), all cores come online correctly at the right moment and go back off after a few seconds. Therefore daily usage is unaffected.

Conclusion

If I have not remembered wrong, franco has the default of 375-275-125 for Online all cores threshold - Online a single core threshold - Offline a single core threshold respectively, for all the time since long ago. They have not been changed between 72 and 80. However, the 3rd and 4th cores are MUCH more conservative than what they used to behave like. While not affecting the throttling-performance in light games, it is affecting heavy games, because the 3rd and 4th cores do not kick in even when the phone is obviously requiring more power. I have tried modified the three values to like 200-125-75 but I think thats overly low and not quite logical because in the past the original default values were working ok. In order to run GTA smoothly (30+fps) while throttling, I need to run quad core mode again. Sorry as I am no dev, what recent changes has been causing the two extra cores so conservative? Thanks for reading!

Oh and by the way, on r80 my phone is stable for the whole day at -125 over the board (going to test -150 tomorrow) but on r70-72 my phone reboots within 3 hours of daily usage (means not sleeping overnight) at anywhere below -75. I really don't know what's happening but my phone just dislikes r70-72 :o