Odroid C2 performance

**wrxtasy** · August 2, 2018 at 11:03 AM

I'm using the USB to barrel connector - power cord running from a USB port on my TV.

Only USB dongle added is a CSR v4.x BT receiver.

Sometime a USB WiFi receiver for the MINIX A2 lite remote. Never had any issues.

TheWojtek · August 2, 2018 at 6:11 PM

Quote from kimbaz

Well two cores stopped after I was updating some of the movies fanart. I thought it was related to the temp but it looks like the board is always below 70C. I'll see if switching to a DC barrel jack and removing the J1 jumper helps in keeping the cores active.

I'm running my C2 this way with stock Hardkernel power supply and still my cores got shut down. Apparently this (the more or less unpredictable scaling_governor behavior) is a bug of the C2 that is mitigated better or worse by various operating systems. The "performance" setting just doesn't stick as it should (all cores always enabled), but somehow when the CPU load drops suddenly - in your case right after you updated the fanart - the cores got shut down no matter what the scaling_governor is set to.

kimbaz · August 2, 2018 at 7:20 PM

TheWojtek so switching to another power supply (even the official one) does not fix the issue with the CPU. I think I'll use the approach you suggested setting a cron task that runs every 12/24 hours to switch between scaling_governors.
wrxtasy maybe in your case your C2 shutdown with the TV so you might haven't noticed it since the board gets rebooted quite often.

Jeff · August 6, 2018 at 8:36 AM

kimbaz I must say that I shut it down after use and almost never let it run more than a few hours

kino13 I'd love to help you, what is your need ?

Here is my complete answer:

I use the HDMI for audio as it is the only connection able to provide HD sound (having all the matching hardware behind it)

I move away from optical a few years ago now when I upgraded my system to HD compliant

Before that I was using a usb to optical dongle on a Chromebox

I can look for the dongle infos in my archives if you want

wrxtasy Waow your TV USB provides enough power for the odroid !!! Nice

When I had my RPi 1 connected that way I had bad side effects of power on/off

Now I have an HD sound bar between the 2 devices and I doubt it will offer enough power

I'll try tonight, could be fun !!!

kimbaz · August 6, 2018 at 1:25 PM

TheWojtek Jeff I had the C2 running for a couple of days and so far all CPUs are still working fine. I added a menu option to kodi to reset the governor in case it will happen again. I actually noticed another strange behavior; The gpu of my C2 is overclocked to 792 MHz but the other day when I checked the clock it had been lowered to 666MHz. I wonder if anybody else experienced the same issue.

TheWojtek · August 7, 2018 at 6:53 PM

Well I just overclocked my C2 two days ago and... so far, so good. All cores still active and a much better UI response. Temperature difference is neglible (~2 deg C compared to non-overclocked settings).

kimbaz · August 7, 2018 at 8:21 PM

TheWojtek I also overclocked the CPU (as wrxtasy suggested) to 1752. Actually I did not notice too much difference compared to the stock clock; the GPU overclock seems the one that provides some extra performance in the UI. I'll keep the CPU overclocked anyway (if it's stable enough).

TheWojtek · August 7, 2018 at 9:07 PM

Oh yes, I did CPU (1656), GPU and memory overclock. Don't really know how to check my GPU clocks, though

kimbaz · August 7, 2018 at 11:35 PM

TheWojtek to check the GPU clock you can type in the console:

cat /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq

TheWojtek · August 8, 2018 at 4:23 PM

Hmmm. While I did the

Code

echo "echo 5 > /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

This command shows me "500", even though I'm playing a 4K file right now... It's not right, is it?

Ok, did it again as

Code

echo 5 > /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq;

And it shows "792" properly. Probably my bad.

kimbaz · August 9, 2018 at 7:21 PM

TheWojtek the first command adds the 'echo 5 > /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq' line to the 'autostart.sh' config file. This way every time the board gets restarted the gpu will be overclocked.
The second command you posted is the one required to set the GPU clock.

pelukessss · September 11, 2018 at 7:25 AM

Quote from kimbaz

TheWojtek the first command adds the 'echo 5 > /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq' line to the 'autostart.sh' config file. This way every time the board gets restarted the gpu will be overclocked.
The second command you posted is the one required to set the GPU clock.

Hi, I tried this command to overclock my GPU, it shows "792" properly. After a couple of days (sometimes even after a couple of hours) it returns to "500" (I noticed that because the scrolling was stuttering), often when I scroll fast between movies or tv shows. Is that a thermal throttling problem? The first time I noticed that the temp was 75°C

Thank you

kimbaz · November 8, 2018 at 2:27 PM

pelukessss

I was having the same issue with my C2. After a couple of hours/days one or more CPU cores were shut down and the GPU was down-clocked to a lower frequency (so they had to be reset). Also temperature was around 75C scrolling the library or doing CPU intensive tasks. After I switched from micro usb power to the DC jack one, the board runs around 10C cooler (odroid-c2:hardware:otg_power_enable [ODROID Wiki]) and I the issues with CPU/GPU seem to be gone.

Odroid C2 performance

Similar Threads

Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide