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Comment by yapcguy | Hacker News Reader

Devil's advocate here.

>"the Note 3 CPU locks into 2.3GHz mode, the fastest speed possible, and none of the cores ever shut off."

Good! I want to know what the maximum performance is from a benchmarking app.

I don't know why regulars apps are unable to get the Note 3 to use all 4 cores. Perhaps they're not multi-threaded or they haven't enabled the right settings? Surely 3D games will access all cores?

At the end of the day, Samsung wants the benchmarking to show the theoretical maximum. Other manufacturers may not be too bothered and are happy to show benchmarking of normal usage. It's like reading the specs on a car, you're never going to drive at 160 mph, but at least you know you could.

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> It's like reading the specs on a car, you're never going to drive at 160 mph, but at least you know you could.

It's like testdriving your car on the manufacturer's track, seeing it go to 160 mph, then taking the car to race day and you hit a 90 mph limiter they built into the car for fuel efficiency.

Ironically, there's a Nissan car that does enable and disable the limiter based on the GPS detecting it being on a race track or not. But they're transparent about it.

> Ironically, there's a Nissan car that does enable and disable the limiter based on the GPS detecting it being on a race track or not. But they're transparent about it.

It's the GT-R, and it's only on the Japanese version: [trigger warning: gadget blog] http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-disables-spee...

Because the OS is trying to balance performance and battery life.

Saying I want to see the maximum performance is fine but they should also be forced to show how that impacts other elements of system performance.

Personally I think it would be good to see two sets of benchmark typical and maximum, but the most important thing is that whatever scores are being shown are clear and honest and I think it's hard to say that these are.

I don't expect a benchmarking app to be throttled by the OS under any circumstances--ideally the benchmarking app would run on the raw hardware, with no second-guessing by the OS about whether it should be throttled because the battery is down to 10%, or because some other process would like some network or CPU, etc.

The way this probably should work is that the benchmarking apps themselves have a flag telling the OS they want all cores at full power all of the time, instead of having to hardcode this list into the OS. (Perhaps this could be one of the permissions you have to accept when installing the app.)

Ironically, even without the benchmark boosting, the Note 3 is still faster than the LG G2.

Sure, but this thread is about Samsung's routine use of deceptive practices - not whether they beat a particular other device.

Is that really the best thing for a typical user to understand what they're getting? Shouldn't they get it the way the OS will treat an application under normal circumstances as that's what they'll see day to day.

As I said, I don't mind if they put it flat out for the benchmarking, so long as they do the same for the battery tests too.

looks at a mobile phone with a 2 hour battery life

>I don't know why regulars apps are unable to get the Note 3 to use all 4 cores. Perhaps they're not multi-threaded or they haven't enabled the right settings? Surely 3D games will access all cores?

That doesn't explain why the exact same app performed worse (or normal, rather) when renamed .

The customer is buying a complete product, not a cpu. Maximum cpu performance without context is not meaningful. A 500 horsepower engine is pretty awesome, until you drop it into a cargo freighter. Then it's worthless.

> At the end of the day, Samsung wants the benchmarking to show the theoretical maximum. Other manufacturers may not be too bothered and are happy to show benchmarking of normal usage. It's like reading the specs on a car, you're never going to drive at 160 mph, but at least you know you could.

And they should be vilified for re-interpreting preconditions that would usually guarantee valid relative comparisons and are used like so. ("Theoretical maximum" is a problematic end to work towards, though - why shouldn't clock-speed specifications suffice, then? I presume you're talking about stock speeds sans the software stack - but cranking up frequency scaling isn't much of a meaningful hop and skip away from just running the benchmark.)

Which is great. And I totally agree with them - if they had disclosed it at least to the tech community.

After all when Nvidia 6xx and 7xx series self overclock when there is room in the power envelope available this was disclosed and taken into account by the reviewers.

Your comparison with a sports car is very appropriate.

Many cars have "race" modes which allow the computer to use the maximum power an engine has while not trying to force it into an "efficient" mode.

99% of the time you want your car to be as efficient as possible while others you want to see what it's capable of.

The Nissan GT-R does this automatically when you're located on a track:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-disables-spee...

This is nothing like that. The note doesn't have two modes that the user or the software can choose from. The adjustments are made secretly, and only when specifically named benchmarks are run.

I think the key idea here is transparency. There's nothing wrong with showing theoretical maximums, but be transparent about it!! Otherwise it looks like you're trying to get away with something .

There is very little that is transparent about Samsung and their relatively recent history is pretty seedy. High level corruption, bribery etc. That the culture of deception flows down the company into actual products doesn't surprise me.

Yeah. This is why I don't want to give them _specifically_, the benefit of the doubt.

In this case it's not the theoretical maximum. It isn't available to regular apps because the OS and CPU don't allow it, for good reason - to conserve power. The reason benchmarking apps can do it is that Samsung added code to specifically detect them.

Your car spec analogy is a good one. If the car maker removed the seats and carpet as well as inessential engine components before testing, that would be the equivalent of what Samsung have done here.

It would also be fraud.

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