SetCPU: Setting your CPU

As the name suggests, it sets your CPU either under-clocking or over-clocking it depending on what you want to achieve. This becomes handy for games that require extensive CPU usage or persons who want to prolong their battery life. This is one of the main advantages of rooting your phone.

There is always a trade off in under/over-clocking that is if your CPU is up and running at high frequency, performance is boosted but nibbles on your battery. On the other hand, setting your CPU at low frequency and you will experience lags but extends your battery life. Good thing for the new version 2.0.2, it automatically calibrates your phone to low setting whenever it’s in idle state or doesn’t need over-clocking.

Upon first opening of the app, it will ask you whether to allow or deny for superuser permission. Just allow it and now you can configure your CPU at your fingertips - which your manufacturer decides. However this depends still on your chipset. Having said that, it is unsafe to set your CPU down the bottom doing so your phone will crash or worse bricked.

Now, what does each scaling governor differs from each other? Below is a description of how each tweaks your phone:

Ondemand: Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed.

Conservative: Available in some kernels. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery.

Performance: Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "max" set value at all times. This is a bit more efficient than simply setting "max" and "min" to the same value and using ondemand because the system will not waste resources scanning for the CPU load. This governor is recommended for stable benchmarking.

Powersave: Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "min" set value at all times.

Userspace: A method for controlling the CPU speed that isn't currently used by SetCPU. For best results, do not use the userspace governor.

Interactive: The 'interactive' governor has a different approach. Instead of sampling the cpu at a specified rate, the governor will scale the cpu frequency up when coming out of idle. When the cpu comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire within 1-2 ticks. If the cpu is 100% busy from exiting idle to when the timer fires then we assume the cpu is underpowered and ramp to MAX speed.

Credits to SetCPU website.

The most helpful is the profile section which lets you tweak within a tweak. Here you can pragmatically set your CPU running at different frequency when your conditions are met. For instance, when your battery level falls on 30% or less you can configure it on a low setting with high priority to maximize the juice of your battery.

The info tab displays all the information about your kernel, battery, and CPU you’d ever need. Also included in the info tab is the ability to run a short benchmark, long benchmark, native benchmark, and stress test.

When it comes to taming your dragon SetCPU sure come handy.