Default Most efficient setup IMHO
I know these forums are getting less and less traffic but I thought I would bring up a thread that would spark some discussion on best configuration.

Let me first thank all the cooks that have contributed personal time into developing some great ROMs, without them the Athena would be only a shadow of the capable phone it is now. Let me also say I'm not a programmer at all and the following observations are just from my personal experience with some conjecture thrown in.

I think the development of ROMs have almost reached its apex in that I don't think we will get any more performance out of these devices until someone can implement the use of the ATI graphics chip. The reason I say this is because of the ROM I have settled on. After testing EVERY ROM (6.1 and 6.5)that is available on this forum I have settled for Michy RO clean 6.1 ROM. Out of all of them this one gives me the most available program memory (70 to 71 MB) and smoothest responce. In my experience because of the lack of the graphics drivers the more free program mem there is the smoother this device seems to run - same true with how well multiple programs will run. My current configuration is:

Michy RO 6.1 clean ROM (all items unchecked in "Today" so totally blank screen save for the task bar. gsensor turned off - thought with it on i see only a small decrease in program mem of about 250KB and still no lag. email set up and running)

SPB 3.5 Mobile Shell loaded (3.5 runs faster with smaller footprint than 3.0 and has a great new widgets implementation) - weather set up to auto update - works great btw!!

Small tweaks to the task bar icons (no effect on performance..just visual enhancements)

A handful of programs installed:
Pandora, Opera, google maps, WMtorrents, wmwifi, XM&Sirius radio player.

everything else is already installed with the ROM or from mobile shell like Adobe reader, MS office etc...

Performance is great, smooth transitions and fast as anything I have tested to date...carousel spins around smooth as butter with 0 lag. Program Memory is at 61MB (with SPB MS loaded and over 70MB with nothing loaded) and I have had 0 issues with bugs. I have found Opera 9.7 build 35541 to be the best running browser..its very fast (especially with turbo turned on) and almost gives me the same experience as the iphone one (my wife's phone). Only down side is that i cant take advantage of the hardware acceleration that SPB 3.5 mobile shell can use for extra eye candy.

Keep in mind i keep my phone in portrait mode almost all the time. I have found no matter what ROM is used if you go into landscape mode everything lags again because of the lack of hardware acceleration.

As far as the newer 6.5 ROM's, i have tried them all as well but as good as they are they still are not nearly as fast as my setup and wind up using more program mem then my configuration.

Please contribute to this thread if you feel moved to do so. Id like to see if any others have found a better setup that give great response and as much or more program memory than I have been able to set up.

Thanks...