OLD - USE NEW POST - MK808b FAQ's, includes 1080p

[dankec]

Yesterday I replaced old(new) LIBSTAGEFRIGHT.SO with the new(old) one (2539kb) on my Finless 1.7 (720p resolution) firmware.

I hoped my problems with stuttering and freezing during video playback would be history.

Unfortunately, not!

I took Wall-E (720P) movie from the WD Elements USB2.0 external HDD as a test. (I have powered 4-port USB HUB - 2.3A and powered mk808b - 2A)

Results: Stuttering in MX player (with HW+), XBMC (the one suggested), BS player and always in the same way: It hiccups every 2 seconds, very noticeable with big camera panning! Totally annoying

It even stuttered with a very old MPEG4 SD material (sometimes it rewind a few frames backwards) but not so often...


The whole miniPC story reminds me to Dreambox Cardsharing story: when you finally succeed to make everything operational, they change algorithm... Everything stays on the basis of great potential.

[Abducted]

Maybe just as a test you should flash the MK808 2Dark4U kernel to see if that fixes it. I think i had weird stuttering problems with the stock kernel on my MK808 too. But to be honest i flashed to Finless ROM and 2Dark4U kernel a few hours after i got the device, so im not sure if i remember correctly.

Using CWM recovery you should be able to flash to that kernel and back again just to test.

If that solves it, you might just have to wait for a new kernel for the MK808B.

[ofb]

I'm on this setup right now on my MK808, finless 1.7c and 2dark4u's 1.4 kernel and my mxplayer doesn't stutter at all, xbmc stutters only slightly on panning shots but that's only on true 1080p video now, and I'm using a plex plugin to connect to my plex server through xbmc. It works fine for hd content but sd content I have to go into xbmc settings and turn off hardware acceleration.

I've also been playing around with the Mirage video player. Doesn't work in SW mode but in HW mode it plays anything I throw at it from my plex server and my airplay server (other than itunes movies... stupid apple...), and local video from the micro sdcard and usb. Streaming video with it does take a little while for it to start though, I think it's probably buffering several seconds worth of video though from how it acts but once it's going you can scan forward and back as far as you want and it doesn't even hiccup. Hopefully the history icons, aka bookmarks, being too small at 720p is just because it's still in beta.

I know my setup info for the rom and kernel I'm using doesn't really help people with MK808B's much but you might try the video player I mentioned at any rate. Can't hurt right?

[ididmytime]

Thread wont let me update

Hybrid will be recommended from now on, has a big problem with droidmote, which cuts framerate in half, and settings problem with ethernet and the script at boot.. apart from that its fine.

[AlbaJoe]

Thread wont let me update

Hybrid will be recommended from now on, has a big problem with droidmote, which cuts framerate in half, and settings problem with ethernet and the script at boot.. apart from that its fine.

It like watching a tennis match

[dankec]

I'm on this setup right now on my MK808, finless 1.7c and 2dark4u's 1.4 kernel and my mxplayer doesn't stutter at all, xbmc stutters only slightly on panning shots but that's only on true 1080p video now, and I'm using a plex plugin to connect to my plex server through xbmc. It works fine for hd content but sd content I have to go into xbmc settings and turn off hardware acceleration.

I've also been playing around with the Mirage video player. Doesn't work in SW mode but in HW mode it plays anything I throw at it from my plex server and my airplay server (other than itunes movies... stupid apple...), and local video from the micro sdcard and usb. Streaming video with it does take a little while for it to start though, I think it's probably buffering several seconds worth of video though from how it acts but once it's going you can scan forward and back as far as you want and it doesn't even hiccup. Hopefully the history icons, aka bookmarks, being too small at 720p is just because it's still in beta.

I know my setup info for the rom and kernel I'm using doesn't really help people with MK808B's much but you might try the video player I mentioned at any rate. Can't hurt right?

It seems like Mirage plays the best till now, but it's still beta and has only basic functionality.

One question regarding MX player: it's possible to check both decoders at the same time: HW+ and SW for local and network... What to check?

I tried to check HW+ only, SW only, HW+ and SW but it's mostly the same whatever I choose: stuttering when panning in a simple SD movie (Bullets over broadway ).

[ididmytime]

It like watching a tennis match

Yep, but thats only due to problems with roms, which do get fixed in time.

Hybrid is about as close to as good as the rk3066 will see, doubt there will be too many more roms for these devices, and if Bob makes 1.8 there would be little incentive to update.

I have a ton of new content for the FAQ, including benchmarks for ALL kernels.

[Abducted]

I thought the hybrid performed very bad in XBMC or were you able to fix that?

BTW i also wasn't able to update my thread. Bob suggested i make a new one in the Test sub-forum of the off-topic forum. When i was done he just copy and pasted into the real thread. There is a limited period within you can edit a post. I think if every few days you just change a smiley you can keep it editable. Too bad i found that out too late.

P.s. 2Dark4U kernel v1.5 is in beta testing now. (I was beta testing it before i killed my MK808... At that time i had the v1.4 kernel installed again so it had nothing to do with the v1.5 let me make that clear!. )

[ididmytime]

Benchmarks.

I have rarely seen benchmarks in good detail about the mk808/b. I have decided to run three benchmark tests on stock kernels, as well as the fastest kernel for our devices, the 2dark4u v1.4 kernel, which will be referred to as the overclocked kernel from here on out. All these test will be done on the Hybrid 2.2.3 rom. All kernels have been set to their native resolution (no running the 720p kernels on 1080p upscaled in the settings). CPU is running at 1.4ghz performance on all kernels. You may notice that its not 'true' 720p and 1080p, that is because I ran these tests with the navigation bar at the bottom, hence why they are losing a few pixels. The GPU clock speed on stock kernels is 266mhz, and overclocked it is 466mhz.

Right click the pictures, and press view to get the full size image.

Antutu:


Stock 720p

Stock 1080p

Overclocked 720p

Overclocked 1080p

Antutu tends to be 'the' benchmark most people use, and why not? as it seems to test every part of your device. If you look closely you can see the ram speed has been improved using any overclocked kernel. The stock 1080p kernel really struggles in the GPU department, scoring less than 1000 for the 2d performance. Notice how the overclocked 1080p kernel scores 200 points for the SD Card reading? I would disregard some points for that, as that probably is a bug. The result shows that an overclocked 1080p kernel will perform around the same as the stock 720p.

Futuremark Ice Storm Extreme:


Stock 720p

Stock 1080p

Overclocked 720p

Overclocked 1080p

Wow, what an absolute beast of a benchmark. I originally thought because of the score, that the CPU is clearly the bottleneck here, however, it is mainly GPU intense. This test really shows just how old the GPU is, with even an overclock not helping much. The Mali 400 simply can't do this kind of performance, regardless of it's clock speed speed.

Epic Citadel:


Stock 720p

Stock 1080p

Overclocked 720p

Overclocked 1080p

Now here we go, an actual GPU testing benchmark that the GPU actually likes. The overclocked 720p absolutely hammers all contenders. The result really doesn't do it justice, it is the only kernel that managed 60fps for parts of the test. The stock 1080p simply cannot handle itself, and if it were a game, would be deemed unplayable. The overclocked 1080p is still slower than the stock 720p kernel.

Conclusion:

The results show that by far the best performance you can have is running the 720p kernel, with, or without an overclock. The stock 1080p is pretty much worthless for anything that will tax the GPU, remember, it's not just games that need the GPU, most movie players will require the GPU to decode video files. You may find that running the stock 1080p not only limits the games you can play, but also the quality of the movie.

Although new quad devices are coming out, I don't expect the performance will be tremendously better for real world tests. The mali 400, even overclocked, will still struggle at 1080p, and since these are the GPU's which are being used in the first batch of quad core android devices, it's very hard to find a true incentive to want to upgrade.

[ididmytime]

I thought the hybrid performed very bad in XBMC or were you able to fix that?

BTW i also wasn't able to update my thread. Bob suggested i make a new one in the Test sub-forum of the off-topic forum. When i was done he just copy and pasted into the real thread. There is a limited period within you can edit a post. I think if every few days you just change a smiley you can keep it editable. Too bad i found that out too late.

P.s. 2Dark4U kernel v1.5 is in beta testing now. (I was beta testing it before i killed my MK808... At that time i had the v1.4 kernel installed again so it had nothing to do with the v1.5 let me make that clear!. )

Yeah, support for the 2dark4u kernel was added, there is either a rom issue (probably) or app issue using it and droidmote, it cuts GPU framerate in half, as soon as you quit out it returns to normal. If you don't use it then it's not a problem. It's by far the best rom I have used, custom.ko is pretty impressive, as if you need NTFS support all you need to do is drop a file in root of the SD Card and that's it, native support. I have always enjoyed that rom, it's faster, and just comes chock full of support and fixes.

I just posted the benchmark stuff here, dunno what to do with it, probably would of added it to the FAQ, dunno if its worth making a new thread, maybe a link at the bottom of the FAQ to navigate to the post?

I think my flashing rom days are pretty much done, really don't see the need to upgrade rom, or kernel, everything that annoyed me is fixed.

[Abducted]

Looks good! BTW the (internal) SD-card performance is also tweaked in 2Dark4U kernel, so it might be correct.

By starting a "new" thread in the test area, i meant just start a new one, copy/paste the text from your current opening post and add to it what you want. Bob can than copy/paste is back into the opening post of this thread. So you can have the benchmark results in the opening post.
After that the thread in the test area could be deleted, or you could keep it editable for future updates.

BTW are you using the 2Dark4U kernel now? With the stock heatsink i assume?

[ididmytime]

Looks good! BTW the (internal) SD-card performance is also tweaked in 2Dark4U kernel, so it might be correct.

By starting a "new" thread in the test area, i meant just start a new one, copy/paste the text from your current opening post and add to it what you want. Bob can than copy/paste is back into the opening post of this thread. So you can have the benchmark results in the opening post.
After that the thread in the test area could be deleted, or you could keep it editable for future updates.

BTW are you using the 2Dark4U kernel now? With the stock heatsink i assume?

Well, the SD card performance is running 10x faster than stock, and not doing it on the 720p OC version.

I am using the 2dark4u kernel, hence why I needed the ethernet on boot to work correctly. I am using the stock heatsink at performance 1.4, doesn't get hot by any means.

Might get v1.5 extreme if comes out, as the mali 400 can go up to 500mhz, so really it's only 33mhz over. If it does get to hot, I might just mount a tiny fan on the heatsink and have air blowing air away from the heatsink.

[Abducted]

Well, the SD card performance is running 10x faster than stock, and not doing it on the 720p OC version.

I am using the 2dark4u kernel, hence why I needed the ethernet on boot to work correctly. I am using the stock heatsink at performance 1.4, doesn't get hot by any means.

Might get v1.5 extreme if comes out, as the mali 400 can go up to 500mhz, so really it's only 33mhz over. If it does get to hot, I might just mount a tiny fan on the heatsink and have air blowing air away from the heatsink.

Ah didn't look at the numbers.. 10x might be a little too much, even for a good tweak

If im not mistaken the GPU runs at 233Mhz or 266Mhz at stock. The v1,4 kernel runs the GPU at 433Mhz. So 500Mhz or even 533Mhz is quite a bit higher than stock speed.

[ididmytime]

Ah didn't look at the numbers.. 10x might be a little too much, even for a good tweak

If im not mistaken the GPU runs at 233Mhz or 266Mhz at stock. The v1,4 kernel runs the GPU at 433Mhz. So 500Mhz or even 533Mhz is quite a bit higher than stock speed.

It is around that, but I remeber seeing somewhere that the mali-400 can go to around 500mhz. If you look at devices which have the GPU, they are all running at different speeds.

The new quads 'on paper' (if they are actually to be believed) are running the mali at 533mhz, using what looks very similar to the standard heatsink, this may be the reason why 533mhz was tested, it's probably very stable, doubt it will go higher.

The difference between using 466mhz and 533mhz could be next to nothing however, as there gets to a point where you see diminishing returns on an overclock.

[Abducted]

You cant compare quads with dual cores since they are made on a different process (40nm vs 28nm). So while 1.6Ghz for the CPU is within specs and should be rock stable with the right appropriate size heatsink, 500Mhz for the GPU will be quite an overclock.

Also the reason why often an overclock yields less performance gain is because something else becomes a bottleneck. Like with the Pentium 4's where they were running well over 4Ghz but still got blown away by AMD just because the front side bus couldn't keep up.

With these sticks i dont know what would be the limiting factor. It's a SOC so communication between components should be quite good. It's DDR3 memory (at 1066mhz even with an OC kernel) which should me more than enough if you compare overal performance of these sticks. So that would mean that the CPU would be holding the GPU back or the GPU holding the CPU back.
So as long as you overclock both i think you should still see very nice gains.

For example my UG007-II with 1080p UG802 kernel (466Mhz GPU and 1608 CPU) does 35,4FPS in Epic Citadel and 10453 in Antutu (that's with a 1080p kernel)