[EVO 4G General] davebu:
I've been using setcpu for a while now, but have never bothered to mess with the advanced settings. Searching around I have only found out what most of this stuff means, but I'm missing some still. I thought I would share my findings. I have included SetCPU's descriptions (in italics) supplemented with my findings.

Governor choices (I'm using king's bfs kernel #1 on fresh 3.1.0.2) -

Ondemand - Uses the highest frequency when tasks are started, decreases step by step

Conservative - Increases frequency step by step, decreases instantly

Interactive - I couldn't figure this one out... any help?

Powersave - Uses the lowest possible clock speed to complete its tasks

Userspace - Manual controll of the frequency

Performance - Always uses the highest clock speed

Advanced Settings -

Sampling Rate - An interval (in microseconds) at which the governor will poll for updates. When this happens, the governor will decide whether to scale the CPU up or down. It uses such little power that it is better at lower values when using profiles such as screen off.

Up Threshold (1%-100%) - Defines a percentage from 1% to 100%. When the CPU load reaches this point, the governor will scale the CPU up. When using low min values (245), this happens instantly, using higher values (768) it overclocks less often. With Conservative lower values are better because it slowly increases your clock speed to what you need, with Ondemand, higher is better, as it overclocks less often.

Down Threshold (1%-100%) (conservative only) - Defines a percentage from 1% to 100%. When the CPU load reaches this point, the governor will scale the CPU down. Higher values will offer more aggressive battery saving, lowering the clock speed quicker.

Ignore Nice Load (0/1) - If this value is "1," the system will ignore "Nice" processes when deciding to scale up or down. I need a little more info for this one, what exactly is a nice process? DO NOT GOOGLE 'NICE LOAD' ESPECIALLY AT WORK OR AROUND CHILDREN/WIFE

Freq Step (0%-100%) (conservative only) - Defines how much (as a percentage of the maximum CPU speed) the conservative governor will increase the CPU speed by each time the CPU load reaches the Up Threshold. Increased the value slightly to be able to overclock quicker, but not to high to avoid unnecessary overclocking.

Powersave Bias (0-1000) (ondemand only) - Setting this value higher will "bias" the governor toward lower frequencies. This is a percentage, where 1000 is 100%, 100 is 10%, and 0 is 0%. The ondemand governor will scale the CPU to a frequency lower than its "target" speed according to this value. Gives ondemand some more battery saving potential. High values give worse performance than conservative with equal or worse battery saving. If you want the performance of ondemand with some more battery use values under 200.

I hope this info was helpful to someone, and here are my setcpu settings. I have attempted to target 150-175ms for short and 350-400ms for long benchmarks to match my performance governor and save battery at the same time.

With ondemand I get about 170ms short and 380ms long. I use 90 for up and 50 for powersave. The performance is slightly better than the default settings, and the battery is about equal. I might play with this more, as it should hit the same values as performance with better battery life.

In conservative long benchmarks in setcpu are actually faster than short ones because it takes setcpu time to adjust the speed. Run a short one immediately after a long one to see its actual value. Up changed 75 and down to 25, not much of a change, but drastic performance increase with no battery change. I also increased freq step to 10% to obtain higher speeds faster. Getting the same 170ms short and 370ms long.

My Settings

Conservative 245-1190

Temp > 50C - 768 conservative

Screen Off - 499 ondemand (allows for the screen to be unlocked faster, especially useful with incoming calls)

Charging/Full - 1190 performance

Battery < 15% - 652 conservative

Sampling - 200000

Up Thresh - 75

Down Thresh -25

Ignore Nice - 0

Freq - 10

More DFS Info

SetCPU Info