Some more info about the devfreq bug. I have tried many possible fixes unsuccessfully. But I have noticed that, no matter what changes I make in the kernel config with the Armbian build script, the file "/boot/config-4.4.119-rockchip" never changes. And, worst of all, it includes the following lines:
# DEVFREQ Governors
# CONFIG_DEVFREQ_GOV_SIMPLE_ONDEMAND is not set
# CONFIG_DEVFREQ_GOV_PERFORMANCE is not set
# CONFIG_DEVFREQ_GOV_POWERSAVE is not set
CONFIG_DEVFREQ_GOV_USERSPACE=y
# DEVFREQ
Alright, I have the issue fixed, Mali frequency is correct per the opp table, and can be changed using the proper echo's.
The culprit, I believe, was the rockchip kernel having mali400 enabled by default. (this was true of the old kernel as well, I disabled it, but it kept showing up selected in other kernels so I left it alone here) In any case, this violated the dependencies of the devfreq driver. I also enabled all the various governors (no powersave, I'll check again): Found it