Dual Core: A Story Of Different Performance Ft Optimus 2X and Atrix4G

[kodiak799]

I've said this before one of the original bionic vs atrix (or vs tbolt or just bionic threads i dont remember), that a dual core phone as of now is an investment, with the payoff coming 6 to 8 months down the road.

Don't disagree, but I've seen several videos now where rendering and browsing is a significant and noticeable difference. The way people complain about lag around here it certainly seems like they are rationalizing going with the TBolt.

To be fair, I don't think we've seen this comparison between the Atrix or Optimum 2X and the TBolt, but even if the TBolt lands in the middle it would still be a pretty noticeable difference.

 

[streetkid]

It seems like desktop computers still to this day don't take full advantage of multiple cores.. and now we have them in our phones too

 

[kptphalkon]

Its not so much the cpus....hardware and the windows OS can only do so much. The program itself has to be capable of being multi-threaded, and still not all that get released are.

 

[tgyberg]

So until new apps/games are written to take advantage of multiple cores, fast single core phones should be just fine. That Thunderbolt that is coming out is pretty smokin fast. Hmmm!

 

[tgyberg]

I haven't observed any perceivable lag in everyday use in my atrix yet.

Tons of force closes though.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

Has the Atrix ram thing been confirmed yet? As far as does the phone only use 512 of the 1gb total for the webtop deal?

 

[Detonation]

I honestly think a lot of people are just chomping at the bit for a new phone and are rationalizing their opting for the TBolt. In about 6 months (probably sooner) there's going to be a lot of buyer's remorse around here about not having dual core.

I've said this before one of the original bionic vs atrix (or vs tbolt or just bionic threads i dont remember), that a dual core phone as of now is an investment, with the payoff coming 6 to 8 months down the road.

But the tech industry doesn't work like that - you need buy what fits your needs now, because in 6-8 months its going to be outdated and cheaper. If a dual core phone isn't useful for 6-8 months, why spend the premium price now? I guess the slight factor that changes this is the contract requirements - if you NEED a new phone right now then you can't wait to buy one in 6-8 months.

 

[bplewis24]

So until new apps/games are written to take advantage of multiple cores, fast single core phones should be just fine

While I agree they will be "just fine," apps do not need to be written for dual-core architecture for the phone to benefit from it. See my post here. In short, the OS is what actually benefits from dual-core phones. The responsiveness of task-switching and other user-interface inputs is where you will see day-to-day improvement, even before software is written to take advantage of the architecture.

Also, if you guys want a site with good reviews & specifically benchmarks, go to Anandtech.com. Here are some bits from their Atrix preview, with comparisons to the Optimus 2x from their review:

The performance benefit of a 1GB DRAM in any individual benchmark is negligible. In fact, normal smartphone usage (even with multitasking) doesn't require more than 512MB of system memory at this point. You can get close, but it's pretty challenging to go over given the requirements of Android 2.2.1 and popular apps today. As a result you won't see the 1GB of memory give Motorola an edge in any benchmarks.

Despite the extra DRAM, Motorola is actually at a disadvantage in many benchmarks. The motoBlur UI enhancements and skinning do impact performance. Even after using a task killer to stop all non-system processes, some components of motoBlur will automatically restart. Thankfully two Cortex A9s are enough to hide this from being a problem in the day to day usage of the phone, but it does mean that the Atrix 4G sometimes benchmarks slightly lower than the Optimus 2X.

After using the Atrix 4G as my only smartphone I must say, I completely agree with Brian's assessment. The dual Cortex A9s in NVIDIA's Tegra 2 make Android so much better. Even though the Atrix 4G is only running Froyo (2.2.1) it felt like the fastest Android phone I'd ever used, including my brief stint with the Nexus S.

You see the Nexus S's partially GPU accelerated build of Android (Gingerbread) makes scrolling through your list of apps buttery smooth. Even the Atrix 4G lacks that. Every now and then you get a stutter or hiccup, but it's usually pretty good.

Where the Nexus S falls short however is in actual application response time and in performance when switching between apps. Trips back to the home screen, launching new apps and even interacting with apps all feels quicker on the Atrix 4G than anything sans-Tegra 2.

Lastly, here is a chart from the Optimus 2x review on flash performance (note the Atrix 4G was not benchmarked here so it won't appear).

Brandon

 

[bplewis24]

I haven't observed any perceivable lag in everyday use in my atrix yet.

Tons of force closes though.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

Has the Atrix ram thing been confirmed yet? As far as does the phone only use 512 of the 1gb total for the webtop deal?

See the links in my post above. Anandtech is doing further investigating on it for their full review, but they do confirm that only 512 of the RAM is used for the phone, and the other half is reserved for the webtop.

Brandon

 

[tgyberg]

Cool, the charts do show those dual cores kick'n ass in everything. We have been getting different stories about what is optimized for dual core or not etc. Good to know! Thanks!

 

[tgyberg]

I'm drooling just thinking about overclocking an Atrix and using a blurless rom. It could be faster than light!

 

[kodiak799]

Anandtech is doing further investigating on it for their full review, but they do confirm that only 512 of the RAM is used for the phone, and the other half is reserved for the webtop.

Interesting...IF (big if) it ever gets rooted and unlocked bootloader, I would think the potential is there to remove webtop and the partition and have a full gig of ram (unless it's two 512 slots).

I'm sure XDA or someone can cook-up a replica of webtop to give people full desktop browsers with HDMI out. You don't need the Droid desktop mirrored if you just want to plug in and run Firefox on a bigger screen, so all non-critical services could be killed to have the needed memory for that. Anything else Webtop is capable of looks to be, at this point, pretty much completely useless.

 

[bplewis24]

I'm sure XDA or someone can cook-up a replica of webtop to give people full desktop browsers with HDMI out.

They're probably halfway there already. You may have already known this, but they already rooted the phone to allow the webtop to be used on HDMI-out for any source, so the webtop dock is now unnecessary. IMO the value of the Atrix just skyrocketed with this find.

Cool, the charts do show those dual cores kick'n ass in everything. We have been getting different stories about what is optimized for dual core or not etc. Good to know! Thanks!

The problem is, some of these benchmarks themselves aren't optimized for dual-core architecture. It's kind of ironic if you think about it. I can't find the source where I originally read this, but I believe linpack isn't yet optimized for dual-core phones.

I think the infancy stage of the dual-core architecture is the reason for all of the conflicting stories. But I'm pretty convinced that there is a real-world, tangible advantage to having a dual-core Android phone today. Even more so when 2.4 hits, and even more so 6-9 months from now when apps are multi-threaded.

Brandon

 

[kodiak799]

They're probably halfway there already. You may have already known this, but they already rooted the phone to allow the webtop to be used on HDMI-out for any source, so the webtop dock is now unnecessary. IMO the value of the Atrix just skyrocketed with this find.

True...But I'm expecting a cease-and-desist from Moto and/or AT&T, especially in the latter case AT&T is trying to charge people for this feature over 3G.

I'd be interested to know what I'd really miss just mirroring XScope (in PC user agent) vs. the full desktop client with Webtop. At a minimum, there will be an app to do something similar with the Bionic making this feature on the Atrix a trivial difference.

Although the Atrix bootloader appears to be locked down pretty tight, it would defintely add value if you could remove the bloatware Webtop seems destined to become and utilize the full gig of ram.

 

[tecnic1]

I haven't observed any perceivable lag in everyday use in my atrix yet.

Tons of force closes though.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

Has the Atrix ram thing been confirmed yet? As far as does the phone only use 512 of the 1gb total for the webtop deal?

The full 1gb is avaliable to the phone. Works out to about 800 lb with the rest allocated to system/graphics.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

 

[dafischman]

I haven't observed any perceivable lag in everyday use in my atrix yet.

Tons of force closes though.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

Has the Atrix ram thing been confirmed yet? As far as does the phone only use 512 of the 1gb total for the webtop deal?

The full 1gb is avaliable to the phone. Works out to about 800 lb with the rest allocated to system/graphics.


Sent from my MB860 using DroidForums App

Source? Not saying you're wrong, but would like to see the source.