X98 Air III 2/64G dual boot, just in today :)

[bun]

Found the source of the problems, some.   Wifi dropped upon wake up, cannot shake it to reconnect, reconnect upon reboot.  Wifi dropped, clock wrong.  Fix by NOT having clock set by Wifi, i.e., uncheck time set automatically, hope will solve clock problem.  Dont know what to do with wifi wont reconnect upon awake.  For the time being, I have wifi on even when sleep; unfortunately, that will eat into precious battery juice.  In android, settings>wifi> advance options; in window, settings>system>power and sleep.

bun

[bun]

lazy way of fixing the clock, right lower corner, click the time>date and time settings>set time automatically, click it 2 X, this will set the right time till next boot. Or, more involved, do this, http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/teclast-x98-dual-boot-win-clock-problem/

bun

[Chris G]

I’ll have mine Monday, hopefully free of those issues. But I will check it out.

Chris | Admin
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[bun]

Good to hear you decide to get one. This is my daily tablet now. The dual boot really lures me back to windows. cant wait to see your opinion on this one. i use it w a bt flying mouse keyboard. it comes in handy. btw, where do you ordered from?

i wonder how is this measured up to x98 plus, a low end cherry trail? it is 4/64G for $185, a cherry trail w possible decent battery life, widi and capable of wireless charging, and yet, only $10 more from the air iii. todays cherry trail is going to be changed, http://techtablets.com/2015/11/intel-to-phase-out-current-atom-cherry-trail-series-with-slightly-faster-refresh/.

i will wait for the dual boot on x98 plus for now. as straight windows is not my cup of tea 🙂

bun

[shedenig]

I can only chime in on the Android side of things, since I chose the 2G/32G Android-only version of the Air III. After rooting, debloating and installing Nova Launcher this is a really neat tablet. If only the GPU would work as fast as it should 🙁 For some reason it’s very slow in this ROM, giving me trouble even with rather simple 2D games. Maybe alternate ROM development will pick up for this device (at least I hope so).

[bun]

Mind to share how you root your Air III? thanks,

 

I have very bad wifi dropping issue, to the point, the WIDI works once in a blue moon.  Hows yours?

 

bun

[shedenig]

Sure, I followed the instructions here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/development/intel-android-devices-root-temp-cwm-t2975096

When asked which TWRP/CWM version you want to load, choose 5 (CWM)
When asked which trigger should be used, choose T4.

After flashing the SuperSU zip file and selecting Reboot System, CWM will warn you about losing root access, and asks you if you want to fix it. Choose “no” because otherwise CWM will overwrite the su binary that is included with SuperSU.

When your tablet has rebooted, start SuperSU to check if everything worked 🙂

[bun]

Thank you, will report back.

 

bun

[Chris G]

@hbunanson No wifi issues on my Air III. Works well apart from the lag on the Rom and demanding 3D games like Godfire and GT Racing 2 lag like crazy. over 7 hours screen on time and 5+ hours surfacing time. Not bad. My full video review will be posted soon just uploading all 5GB of it.

Chris | Admin
Please support us and help keep TechTablets online. Affiliate revenue is used to pay for the server, studio apartment (Techtablets HQ) and buy new tech to review. Without it, this site would be dead.
Next up for review:
Ordered and waiting for my: BMAX S15 & Teclast F6 Plus
Currently testing: LG G8X & Redmi K30

[Chris G]

Here is my X98 Air III review:

Chris | Admin
Please support us and help keep TechTablets online. Affiliate revenue is used to pay for the server, studio apartment (Techtablets HQ) and buy new tech to review. Without it, this site would be dead.
Next up for review:
Ordered and waiting for my: BMAX S15 & Teclast F6 Plus
Currently testing: LG G8X & Redmi K30

[shedenig]

I have some input regarding the HDMI and gaming issues – if you root your X98 Air III, you can use an app called “Resolution Changer” (the one with the blue icon) to change the resolution and dpi setting for your device. I have mine set to 260 dpi so more stuff fits on the screen. It can supposedly automatically change the resolution to whatever you configure (eg. 1920×1080) when you connect an HDMI cable, which should get rid of the black borders people in here were complaining about. Also you can reduce the resolution to 1024×768 and 160 dpi for 3d gaming and give it a shot that way. Caveat: You will need to use the “fix navigation bars” menu option if you reduce your resolution, which will lead to a quick reboot.

I still have the suspicion that there is something fishy with the GPU performance and I happen to have another tablet with an Atom Z3735F here to try and compare… I’ll update this post once I find something out.

Edit:
Correction, the other tablet (HP Stream 7) has a Z3735G, which is weaker (only half the memory bandwidth and only 1GB RAM, but same GPU and clock speeds), but I get a vastly better score on the weaker hardware in 3DMARK Ice Storm (not Unlimited):

X98 Air III: Score 7516, Graphics score 6721, Physics score 12822
Stream 7: Score 10954, Graphics score 11180, Physics score 10234

So I still have a feeling that the Gen 7 GPU in the Air III is for whatever reason capped running at minimum clock (314 MHz), while the Stream 7 can scale up to 646 MHz.

Does anyone (maybe you Chris) have an idea how this could be influenced? I know Mirek has a script that can do that in his ROMs, but since I don’t have a device that’s compatible with his ROMs, I can’t look up how he does it in his current Lollipop ROM v6.0:

(GPU-fix -you can under-clock ( stock 580 MHz ) to prevent freezes – you can easily change it in ( /system/etc/init.d/gpu-fix )

I guess there’s still a lot of untapped potential in this little slab of glass and metal 🙂

[shedenig]

Okay I figured out how to elevate the clock – you need a terminal emulator and root.

Apparently, in this ROM the GPU frequency is capped to 396 MHz, you can confirm that by typing out
cat /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_max_freq_mhz
which will return 396. I tried setting it to 646, but apparently the dynamic clock scaling is disabled, I will try to find a way to enable it later.

As a quick fix, you can type
echo 646 > /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_max_freq_mhz
echo 646 > /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_min_freq_mhz

which will lock the GPU frequency to the maximum value.
With this change, I get a score of 14573 in Ice Storm Unlimited, as opposed to around 10500 without those settings.

Caveat: this will make your battery run dry a lot faster under load, and will be lost on reboot, so if you want this to be permanent, you need to put that in some kind of boot script.

In the meantime, I have used Intel Mobile Performance Viewer to check on the idle power usage – it seems there is a very tiny amount of extra power used when the GPU is clocked at 646 and the system is idle at the home screen (around 2500 vs. 2400 mW). Therefore, I will leave my tablet clocked at 646 MHz at all times 🙂

[Chris G]

Thanks for the info. I will share it on the video in YT for others.

 

I have a feeling this limit will not be present in Windows 10, so it should run better with Win 10 or 8.1 I haven’t flashed my over to dual OS as I can’t seem to get the bios to flash. Needs root first, so will look into this.

Chris | Admin
Please support us and help keep TechTablets online. Affiliate revenue is used to pay for the server, studio apartment (Techtablets HQ) and buy new tech to review. Without it, this site would be dead.
Next up for review:
Ordered and waiting for my: BMAX S15 & Teclast F6 Plus
Currently testing: LG G8X & Redmi K30

[shedenig]

Great! Additionally, installing GLTools also helps with performance since you can use it to force certain apps to run at half (or even quarter) screen resolution, which should give a big boost as well. Forcing Antutu to run at 1024×768 brings the score up to 38000.

[Blackburn]

SO flashing dual boot is easy?

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