[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.

[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 🙂

[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]

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 🙂

[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).

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