'new' inventions meant to be improvements

S

sorex

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Hello,

Last night I was testing and double checking some drivers and firmwares for my Dell Precision M4300 laptop which is a so-called mobile desktop.

Having a look at some performance features in the BIOS I noticed like before that Speedstep & Dynamic Acceleration were on.

So this is as optimal as it can get.

Yeah right ;)

When I was tweaking these, which is plain on or off, I had some surprising results.

B4X: 
SS: Intel SpeedStep
DA: Intel Dynamic Acceleration
1C: Single CPU benchmark with CPU-Z
MC: Multiple CPU benchmark with CPU-Z
Pi: SuperPi mod 1.5 XS

SS   DA    1C   MC   Pi
on   on    078  154  58s
on   off   078  132  54s
off  off   115  242  36s
off  on    115  230  38s

as you can see turning off these 'improvement features' makes my laptop 47-57% faster!

SuperPi's first value was 62% faster (36s) than the time needed with the 2 features on (58s).

Where is this technical blahblah leading me too?

having a look at compiling speeds in the B4x tool set didn't seem to be much faster but since it relies a lot on 3rd party stuff (java) the compile times vary a lot even when not touching the source at all.

@Erel: a total compiling time before the "send to device" line would be nice for measurement reasons ;)

Let's have another look at one of the v5.x problem points encountered by several people...

re-enabling the implicit autocompletion...

surprise surprise...

the autocompletion stuff appears at once
no more delays when having a key constantly pressed
CPU dropped from 95% to 60% during the keypress

and this is after changing the ini lines back to their original values (altho 1000 seems better for thread2)

BackgroundGuiThreadInterval2=50
backgroundIndexerThreadInterval=1000

the designer...

selecting another view (label in this case) has a slow refresh of the properties panel(s).
unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an improvement here and I don't feel to reboot once again to change the setting to meassure it ;)

I don't know if this slowdown has been mentioned yet so I will do it if I can't find a thread about it.

summerized:

double check your bios and don't always believe what you read, dare to tweak and compare and it might be a benefit in the end.

In my case it seems to gain the missing cycles needed to have B4x's IDE optimal running.

hopefully this solves something for those who have similar B4x problems and features in their BIOS (could be named turbo mode these days too)
 
S

sorex

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yes, according to add/remove programs it's 4.5.2 (4.5.51209).

it's like it's removing and recreating these labels and input boxes each time.
 
S

sorex

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designer.gif
 
S

sorex

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I don't mind a small delay but 2 seconds is kind of a problem.

when I need to change a setting in each of them I lose half a minute just for that panel refresh.

maybe it just needs to store the last view type and when it is the same it just fills in the values instead of recreating everything.
 
S

sorex

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I've put the issue to the bug/whish forum. If this can be checked again that would be nice.
 
KMatle

KMatle

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S

sorex

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yes, fast enough for what I do tho.

Time for a new one? i5 perhaps?
Click to expand...

sure, if you can borrow me forever €700+ I'll get one ;) Don't have a budget for a new one.

Actually I have a better one but I don't know if it's an Ix but that sucker is 17" and weighs too much to sit with in the couch.
Funny thing is that it has on the bottom a sticker with "Warning. Don't put this on your lap" :)
 
S

sorex

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Just checking some site about the prices... i3 has become very cheap.

after some previous tests I figured out that the speed of an i3, i5 and i7 is the same (per CPU model) for a single core app so what the difference between these 3?

dual, quad & octa core?
 
Last edited:
S

sorex

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Hold yar horses!

Today I checked that other faster laptop and it was a Packard Bell with AMD Turion 64 X2.
It appeared to be a lot faster while the CPU specs were equal to my Dell Precision M4300
as the Turion was an answer to Intel's Core 2 Duo series.

Strange is't it?

so the checking'n tweaking continued with even more massive results.

apparently the system might throttle your CPU speeds based on some weird or unknown reasons.
With Dell it could be the adapter check but I still use the original 65W one and the BIOS didn't nag about it.

In my case the CPU was locked to 6 multipliers and a total max of 1.2GHz.

With ThrottleStop I was able to force it to 13 multipliers with a max of 2.4GHz and an increase of voltage from max 1 to 1.2 (needed as I got a few bsod's due to the lack of voltage)

the results...

superPi dropped from the original 58s to 14 seconds! (x4)

CPU-Z benchmark value went from the original single core 78 to 333 (x4.25)
for dual core it went from 154 to 703. (x4.5)

so my system is suddenly 4 times as fast in some tests.

lets have a look at Erel's babies.

B4x boots faster
autocomplete > fast
reported designer delays > gone
compilation > a lot faster
B4J app start after compilation > a lot faster

The lock returns after a reboot so I just need to reopen the tweak tool (it's in the startup folder now)

I guess I saved myself 700+ euros for a while ;)
 
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