Freeparty

18th November 2005 15:30 UTC

AVS Performace Confusing
Hey all, My problem baisically is that i get really low framerates in AVS when running fullscreen (about 13 or below). I have a Dual-Core Athlon 64 4400+ and 4GB of OCZ Platinum 3200 DDR memory running in Dual-Channal and a Geforce 7800GTX using DirectX 9.0c(i am aware the graphics card does very little to improve performance). I have tried using the multiprocessor support but that makes no difference and when I look at the performance graph in task manager both cpu's are only getting about 60% usage. I have tried loads of different resolutions and they all stick at roughly the same framerate.

Ive had quite a few high performance pcs and allways had this problem with AVS am i doign something wrong?

Also the Alpha Blending option is greyed out yet my system supports it?

Tuggummi

18th November 2005 15:47 UTC

No matter how state of the art system you have, AVS will never run at resolutions beyond 640x480 it's safe to say i think. (unless the preset is a very specific one designed for high-resolutions)

hornet777

21st November 2005 06:07 UTC

AVS I call "the great equaliser" for the reasons Tuggummi just mentioned. I like AVS relatively low-tech approach, if for nothing else than its elegant simplicity. Kinda makes ya think twice about the motivations that made ya step on the technology merry-go-round in the first place, huh. The rest is left as a philosophical exercise for those inclined to do so.

PAK-9

21st November 2005 22:37 UTC

Huh? Me just like pretty colours

StevenRoy

21st November 2005 23:38 UTC

4 GB of memory? I'm not even sure Windows (prior to the new 64-bit version) correctly supports that much yet. I think 2 GB is the limit. (I've got 1 GB and even that's more than plenty.)

Perhaps it may be a good idea to check some of the Fullscreen settings in AVS. I've got two computers with WinAmp on them, and, on both of them, I've had pretty good results with the 640x480@32BPP mode with pixel doubling enabled.

I usually leave "Wait for retrace" and "page flipping" turned on for smoother animation, but you can turn them off for a slight performance gain. "Fast software bpp conversion" should probably be turned on, but I'm not sure if it even makes any difference when you have a 32-bit screen mode selected.

Note the "Rendering performance" slider. You probably want that all the way to the left.

Slightly less obvious is the options in WinAmp itself that can affect AVS performance. For example, in "General Preferences", you'll find an option called "Priority class". If you changed that to something other than "Normal", consider changing it back. Also, click on the "Plug-ins" category and look at the "Visualization plug-in priority" option. I have that set to "Normal" too, but you can try adjusting that to see if it makes any difference.

Hope this helps.

JFASI

22nd November 2005 01:27 UTC

I use the fullscreen overlay mode, on account of how the alternative just crashes for me. It is faster, and it loads quicker. It's great at 800x600 32 bit with pixel doubling, but why doesn't the other one want to work.

hornet777

22nd November 2005 23:59 UTC

Coz ur either not living right, or not holding your mouth right.

JFASI

24th November 2005 03:52 UTC

What is this, some Feng-Shui? (Runs to look up speeling of Feng Shui) Should I be more holistic? (Runs to look up spelling of holistic)

hornet777

25th November 2005 06:33 UTC

no, its called humor

StevenRoy

25th November 2005 07:41 UTC

Ah, sarcasm, my old arch-nemesis, we meet again.

...Or were video driver problems my old arch-nemesis?

I've got too many arch-nemesi, that's the problem. It's easy to get them confused.

Ah, confusion, my old-- See?

hornet777

26th November 2005 07:21 UTC

cool avatar tho :-)

JaVS_v2.5

26th November 2005 07:27 UTC

Originally posted by hornet777
cool avatar tho :-)

JFASI

26th November 2005 17:51 UTC

Its...good...I guess...

JaVS_v2.5

27th November 2005 09:32 UTC

Originally posted by JFASI
Its...good...I guess...

JFASI

27th November 2005 18:30 UTC

In a strange, bene gesserit way, I suppose...

jheriko

30th November 2005 07:42 UTC

Originally posted by StevenRoy
4 GB of memory?

JFASI

30th November 2005 22:30 UTC

And I thought 1GB was impressive...

Maybe it is, FOR A DELL!!!

MWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Seriously, though, I have a dell with 1GB and it's super.

StevenRoy

1st December 2005 01:33 UTC

Okay, here's one for you...

I boot up...

I start WinAmp and AVS, and watch one of my presets for a while. I check, and I'm getting around 30 FPS, which isn't that bad.

Then I start up my instant-messaging program. (Trillian.)

Suddenly I'm getting 50 FPS instead, for no apparent reason. Go figure.

As much as I'd like to think that there is some deep technical reason for this, it's probably more accurate to simply say: Windows is weird sometimes!

JFASI

1st December 2005 04:07 UTC

Here's mine:

I boot up, I watch some presets of mine, about 74 fps, which is really good. I can't figure it out... It always used to peak at 64 fps, even on like, ssc x=2*i-1. Now its like huge.

BTW:

Normal programs slow down AVS, I don't get your case at all.

hornet777

2nd December 2005 02:56 UTC

maybe we should all try Trillian, and if it works, call it an AVS accelerator

JFASI

2nd December 2005 21:57 UTC

That would be good, but my computer's a speed demon, I have no background processes except for Windows itself :D

jheriko

3rd December 2005 13:46 UTC

Originally posted by JFASI
Here's mine:

I boot up, I watch some presets of mine, about 74 fps, which is really good. I can't figure it out... It always used to peak at 64 fps

---

JFASI

3rd December 2005 15:49 UTC

Hmm... That would explain a bit, if I turn Wait for retrace on, it hovers around 75, my refresh rate, according to DxDiag... Otherwise, It just soars to 124 on a simple preset.

MaTTFURY

17th December 2005 13:00 UTC

I know by experience the higher CPU L2/L3 cache in your cpu is the quicker it will be...(because it has a lot more room to put things ...instead of cramming them all together), although you kill any process that runs with windows (except for SYSTEM) and set winamp as Real-time ...?

PAK-9

17th December 2005 15:32 UTC

You know by experience? You mean you've tried avs on seperate computers with exactly the same specification bar the CPU cache and noticed a difference?

Could it possibly be that you tried AVS's on different computers where one of the differences in specification happened to be CPU cache and you characterised the performance difference by it? no, it cant be that, because that would be a logical fallacy and Matt is far too smart for that.

Tuggummi

17th December 2005 16:13 UTC

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