speeding up fitlet-iA10

crusader
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:30 am

speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by crusader »

Hi,

I got my fitlet-iA10 Barebone, installed memory (8gb), mSDD (250Gb) and set it up according to this page: http://www.fit-pc.com/wiki/index.php/Fi ... ux_Mint_17

It runs fine, but:
- dragging window around in cinnamon is sluggish and there is quite a bit of tearing. Is it normal? (I thought it should not happen if graphics accelerator is used)
- random 1920x1080 videos (youtube) play fine for ~10 seconds and then whole bunch of frames get skipped, then again it is fine for few seconds. Is there any way to improve that?
- tried few old games (e.g. Master of Orion in DosBox) -- they are crawling

Is there any way to increase performance a bit? My search so far produced this (not sure if I should play with these settings):
(a) switch off 2 cores (so that AMD Turbo Core tech can kick in)
(b) increase TDP in BIOS (right now it is at 4500 out of possible 15000). Right now rig runs at ~52C

Please, help. Maybe there is better video driver around?

Thanks,
Michael.

P.S. Maybe I should also take out WiFi card? I am not using it anyway.

mbirger

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by mbirger »

fitlet is a very capable machine to its size and class, however it is not a gaming machine, neither complete home workstation.
Nevertheless, fitlet TDP is limited by default in BIOS in order to keep the temperature at low levels. You can adjust and raise the TDP value - your machine will perform faster but expect hotter temps. We will soon present two cooling solutions that will allow run fitlet at max TDP value without sacrifice on temperatures.

crusader
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:30 am

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by crusader »

Oh, I fully realize that it is not a top end PC. I just wanted to run simple games like 2d platformers/strategy/etc.

What about switching off cores -- does it have any merit? These old games usually use 1 processor only -- they should benefit from cpu frequency boost (if it actually happens).

mbirger

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by mbirger »

There should be no problem to run these simple games

crusader
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:30 am

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by crusader »

mbirger wrote:There should be no problem to run these simple games
Do you know anything about 'switching cores' approach?

fmk
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:22 pm

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by fmk »

I also wasn't expecting high end, but I am a bit disappointed in the graphic performance. There are reviews and comments saying youtube, hulu, etc. shouldn't be a problem. One review I read recently said there should be no problem with any 1920x1080 50Mbps video. I don't know how he could claim that.

I've done some testing, adjusting the TDP value to see how it affects performance. I used VLC and a 9Mbps 1920x1080 video full screen and looked at stats for the first 2 minutes. System is an iA10 with 4gb crucial ram, Samsung 850 120GB ssd. XFCE version of Mint 17.1 installed then upgraded to 17.2.

Started with idle temperature of cpu at 52.5

TDP at original 4500
1839 frames displayed, 1830 lost or 49.9 % frames lost
after 10 minutes of video cpu at 62

TDP 6000
15.7% frames lost, cpu at 69

TDP 7000
2% of frames lost, cpu at 76

So, higher TDP will improve performance, but that's getting warm.


Then I looked at disabling cores. I limited it to 2 cores in bios and repeated 2 tests. The results were confusing.

TDP 4500 2 cores
28% frames lost, but constant artifacts, unwatchable

TDP 6000 2 cores
48% (what?) frames lost, still some artifacts, about the same as TDP 4500 4 cores

Disabling cores in bios doesn't seem to help.


OP mentioned tearing and sluggish dragging of windows. For normal windows I haven't noticed that. Maybe it's XFCE. Desktop is responsive. Well, if there is a video playing in a window then yes it is sluggish to move, and tears. And the audio gets very scratchy.

Youtube performance is better with higher TDP. Hardware acceleration in firefox apparently defaults to off in linux. Tried to force hw accel and youtube windows would constantly reload, couldn't watch videos.

Firefox 40 is now out. Youtube performance is worse than 39. Videos will play, but probably worse than before, and video controls disappear. Went back to 39.

Anyway, like I said, I wasn't expecting a high end system. For my intended use it is quite satisfactory, but I do like to get all the performance I can out of a system. So, it would be great if people would post tips or tweaks that might speed up the fitlet.

irads

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by irads »

Looks like utilization of GPU for decoding and rendering is not full in the setup. The difference in performance and performance/W would favor GPU dramatically.

About system performance/temperature -
- unlock TDP to 25000. System is safe and stable - just hot.
- You may apply some thetmal pastr between heat plate and top cover. This would reduce CPU temp, even though 76C is fine.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

crusader
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:30 am

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by crusader »

Thanks for pointers. I've set APU TDP to 20k in BIOS -- effect is amazing. Games like 'Steam Dig' are working pretty good right now, temperature stays around 67C.

Dragging around Cinnamon 'welcome' window is kind of sluggish still (desktop is in 1920x1080).

I've tried to set CPU settings to '1 core per cpu' -- I don't think it caused any noticeable effect on games, but OS overall became slower. So I set it back to auto.

> Looks like utilization of GPU for decoding and rendering is not full in the setup.

How to check this? (i.e. if window manager uses acceleration fully)

P.S. I've also set GPU buffer to 512Mb -- maybe it contributes too. Will play with this setting tomorrow.

irads

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by irads »

> Looks like utilization of GPU for decoding and rendering is not full in the setup.

How to check this? (i.e. if window manager uses acceleration fully)
Best way to check this is to compare different players (e.g. VLC vs Kodi) and consult their media playback info. The best performer is the one using the best optimized GPU decoding.

You may also compare with OpenElec which is known to have excellent optimization for Kodi playback on fitlet.

fmk
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:22 pm

Re: speeding up fitlet-iA10

Post by fmk »

> Looks like utilization of GPU for decoding and rendering is not full in the setup. The difference in performance and performance/W would favor GPU dramatically.

VLC - enabling hardware decoding causes lots of block artifacts, even at 25000 TDP. There are lots of complaints about buggy gpu support in VLC. I guess that's why it is disabled by default.

Firefox on youtube - hw accel is also disabled by default in firefox. Lots of discussion on the net about how to enable it with config settings, but I haven't gotten it to work well yet.

Chromium on youtube - software rendering, even at TDP 25000 the video was not smooth although "stats for nerds" showed no dropped frames. There was also tearing and other problems. Enabled the override on software rendering (ignore-gpu-blacklist flag) and enabled hw rendering, and now videos played well.

So, you're right, it depends on which software is using the best optimized GPU decoding.


> You may apply some thetmal pastr between heat plate and top cover. This would reduce CPU temp, even though 76C is fine.

My A10 came with thermal paste already applied. I assumed this was standard now.


> unlock TDP to 25000. System is safe and stable - just hot.

How hot is too hot? In another thread I think you said at 95C the APU would throttle the speed to prevent damage. What would you suggest for a conservative high temperature to promote long life?

Post Reply

Return to “fitlet performance”