Explicit render calls using RENDERMODE_WHEN_DIRTY, performance gain for games?

Question

In the process of creating a game for android, I stumbled into a bit of uncertainty. When creating the drawing of the graphics for the game, would it be best practice to implement explicit calls to rendering the graphics (using OpenGL ES) in the gameloop?

Calling setRenderMode() with the RENDERMODE_WHEN_DIRTY constant, will in my understanding disable the auto rendering of content, enabling control over skipping frames etc. But is this only advised for creating apps, giving no performance gain in games and is mostly just suited for apps with graphics content not necessarily updated each frame?

Is there any answer to this or will it come down to the implemention and discussion?

I should also mention that the game is developed for the ouya giving me only one point of reference in terms of hardware (As of now).

Answer 1

Real-time applications (such as games) benefit greatly from having a smooth framerate (i.e. consistent frames per second AND consistent render time per frame).

For this reason it is usually best to use a render as fast as possible approach, and Android should sync everything up nicely to it's refresh rate. I would not recommend trying to do a better job of synching the rendering than Android does internally, even though you are developing for a single target it could change in the future with OS updates.

See this (non-programming) article for some more info about how frame rate and frame time influence perceived smoothness.