Benchmark mystery...

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Hey folks, I'm Electrofreak from over at the Epic 4G forums. I'm one of our hardware nuts over there (no, really, I'm not kidding) and I'm trying to solve a little mystery.

As many of you may know, the Quadrant benchmark heavily favors Snapdragon CPUs and also badly skews I/O scores on Samsung's RFS file system. In short, it gives Galaxy S phones a bad score despite their cutting-edge performance.

Since I'm always blathering on about hardware, a friend of mine at work asked me to recommend him an Android replacement for his WinMo phone on Verizon. I explained that the Samsung hardware outperforms what the Droids currently offer (excepting the CPU in the Droid 2 Global) even if software updates have been few and far between.

So he went and bought a Fascinate, and since I've recently been advocating testing a new benchmark application, Smartbench 2010 on the Epic 4G, I had him download and benchmark his stock Fascinate.

The result was pretty dismal; where a stock Epic 4G on Eclair gets a Productivity Index (CPU) score of about 700 and a Gaming Index (GPU) score of about 2400, he was getting like 300 and 500... at most. The I/O test was taking forever, so we rebooted the phone, cleared running apps, and ran the benchmark a couple more times, with the result being the same each time. The CPU and GPU portions of the test actually seemed to complete fairly quickly however, and there wasn't any real appreciative difference in overall performance between our phones when slinging through application menus or using the phone in general. (And damn, while I like having my Epic's keyboard, the Fascinate is so freakin' thin!)

Now, on the Epic 4G forums, we've tested this benchmark app on RFS and EXT4 file systems and the difference has been minimal (usually slightly in favor of EXT4). So I'm pretty sure it's not the RFS file system to blame unless there's something wrong.

Anyone else willing to download Smartbench 2010 from the Android Market (it's free, and designed by the folks at SmartphoneBenchmarks.com) and give it a shot on your Fascinate? I need to find out if it's the app or the phone that's to blame.

In advance, many thanks!

I just ran it and I got this on my fascinate

Productivity Index (CPU) score of about 655 and a Gaming Index (GPU) score of about 2105

Facinate running JT's latest voodoo kernel, mashed together ROM and DJ05.

Results:
Failed at i/o
Edit: Finished this time at Productivity Index of 647 and Gaming Index of 2488

Quadrant score of 1658

Hope that helps,
Sean

Alright I'm running the DL09 Modem and Rom with UL Test 5 1.3 GHz Voodoo Kernal.

Productivity: 963
Games: 3257

Quadrant: 1953

Running a test kernel with voodoo I built from JT's source I got a Productivity score of 746 and a Gaming score of 2576. Quadrant is usually somewhere around 1700-1800.

I ran it a few times on mine (rooted but otherwise stock):

PI GI
649 2072
595 1692

I rebooted and ran again and things got worse but consistent:

PI GI
200 415
202 423
207 432
206 433

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

738 and 2531
Running stock dj05 rom and jt's voodoo 5

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Awesome, thanks for the scores guys! I'm guessing rqdxrocket's score was stock? It's looking more and more like something is wrong with my friend's NAND chip on his Fascinate. (See EDIT.) Maybe we'll drop a custom ROM on it and see how it fares. I'll also run some catlogs to see if it's got bad blocks.

Worst case scenario we'll flash it back to stock and bring it in for replacement. My friend is having a rough time of it; got his Fascinate and then right after someone changed lanes into him and screwed up his car. Now on top of that to have a high-end smartphone producing scores that would make an HTC Hero hang its head in shame has gotta be tough to bear.

EDIT -

Originally Posted by deadcaper

I ran it a few times on mine (rooted but otherwise stock):

PI GI
649 2072
595 1692

I rebooted and ran again and things got worse but consistent:

PI GI
200 415
202 423
207 432
206 433

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Your last scores are about what he was seeing. Interesting... it's looking like something else is at play here...

Ok I got some weird results. Ran two tests then rebooted phone.

624/1898
608/1809
235/491
231/488

I'm not sure why the second set of scores are so bad. Looked like it was mostly the io tests taking too long. I'm running the DL09 leaked rom and kernel.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

627 - 1894
627 - 1844
DI01, stock, binged, and bloated! Hope you figure it out...

Edit: I seen where other people where scoring significantly less after a reboot, so I tried rebooting and these are my results:

195 - 374
195 - 389

Sent from my Stock SCH-I500 using XDA App