cpu boost

[nloewen]

I was looking in the debug menu, and was wondering what the chances were of overheating my e200 if i increase the CPU boost.

[saratoga]

Zero.  It boosts automatically when playing most audio formats.

Also, playing with that setting will probably reduce your battery life quite a bit, so I don't recommend doing so.  Its meant for debugging problems with CPU boosting and codecs, not normal use.

[nloewen]

I noticed that it was doing that, but when I manually boosted it, there was a noticeable increase in performance. It was most noticeable when running a plug in with high CPU usage. The speed pulses with the auto cpu boost (lag-fast-lag-fast), but with the boost on it was smooth. Is this then a bug that rockbox isn't automatically boosting properly?

[Llorean]

Rockbox boosts to keep music from skipping, not to make the UI smooth.

What plugin wasn't running at full speed without boosting?

[nloewen]

they all are faster with the boost. The most noticible is wormlet on high speeds or the hyperspace demo fast.

[Llorean]

I find it hard to believe that every single plugin is faster with the boost, when some of them run themselves boosted.

And I was more getting to the point of "are any of them obviously problematically slow?"

[nloewen]

almoast all. none are problematicly slow but it gets anoying if the speed increases and decreases with the boost.

[Llorean]

Thank you for continuing to be vague. If you have no interest in providing helpful feedback, I don't know why you posted this.

Remember: These are MP3 players, not gaming devices. Performance is not going to be consistent, because a consistent amount of CPU time is not dedicated to the game unless you stop music first.

If it's a problem for specific ones, please tell us which. If you just don't like it, stop the music before you play the game, or buy a gameboy. The device is optimized for music playback, not gaming.

[nloewen]

I recognize that they aren't gaming devices, I just trying to point out that you do get better performance with the manual boost and that rockbox was possibly not doing a great job of automaticly boosting the cpu. Sorry for being vague, I don't know what info you need.
The problem appears on the sanza e200 when playing music and running a plugin that requires more than average cpu time such as plasma. To solve it you can increase the cpu boost to 1. The plugin then runns quickly and smoothly. other plugins that run fine without the boost such as brickmania also experiance a speed increase. Is there anything else you need?
If this isn't something to be fixed/changed, I don't mind boosting manually. my original goal was to find out if boosting was safe to do for extended periods of time, not to get someone to fix it.

[saratoga]

Plugins actually request to be be boosted.  If a plugin runs better when you force boosting, that means it doesn't request it.  If boosting is actually important enough to deplete the battery faster for that plugin, the source code should be changed to boost appropriately.

[LinusN]

Plugins actually request to be be boosted.  If a plugin runs better when you force boosting, that means it doesn't request it.  If boosting is actually important enough to deplete the battery faster for that plugin, the source code should be changed to boost appropriately.

Well, if a plugin doesn't run at its intended pace, it should boost. Period. Plasma is there only to look good, and it only looks good when it runs at full speed.

As people often point out, Rockbox is a music platform and not a gaming platform. Hence there is no point in trying to save battery in the plugins, since it is the music playback that is our focus.

[Llorean]

In some cases, though, it doesn't make sense to boost. For example, Jewels isn't speed dependent, so if it's pretty usable anyway, boosting so that it eats more battery doesn't make sense.

That's why I kept asking for specific plugins where it's actually a problem, rather than an aesthetic thing. There's no sense in intentionally draining more battery than necessary for plugins that can be played fine without it.

[nloewen]

So is that all the info you need? Should I get a complete list of plug ins that run well and ones that don't without the boost?

[Llorean]

You should list ones that are difficult to actually use properly without the boost.