More AVS crap - AVS Forums

More AVS crap
I've searched the forums high and low, but everybody keeps saying the same thing about AVS. Run it in a low resolution, because it has nothing to do with 3D accel cards and everything with floating point ops on the CPU. But I'm not buying it.

I have two identical computers (one being for my parents), and the other for myself. The Voodoo 3 3000 (16Mb) outperforms my GeForce2 Ultra hands down at 1024x768x32. Where I can barely get a sustained 20fps, the other computer rips out 30-45. To add to it, it's even UNDERCLOCKED 200MHz for heating reasons! :eek: Where does this make sense in everything? What might the slower computer be doing with the lesser vid card that mine isn't? To give an idea, the better machine is a T-Bird 1400@1200. I'm currently running a T-Bird 1400@1500.

There must be something I can do to improve it, but it doesn't seem anyone on this forum has the real answer other than "buy a better CPU." This is one example where the old arguments clearly don't stand up.

Edit: Even docked in window mode with the config menu, I can't break 100fps. Clocked at 200MHz slower, the other computer gets over 300!

Your case is not at all that surprising... AVS's speed isn't 100% defined by CPU Mhz. You have to take other things into account such as software running in the background, driver speed, etc.
Perhaps you have "wait for retrace" checked?

I also noticed that on my PC (GeForce 2 MX, TBird 1.4Ghz), AVS tends to stick to certain fps numbers when it's maxed out (50fps, 100fps)... this might be related to drivers. In any case it's silly to be comparing fps when they're above 30fps, because at that point your CPU is no longer the bottleneck. Maybe one of them is using fullscreen overlay mode and the other isn't? Maybe one of them is a different AVS version?

Try checking out all the details, I'm sure you'll spot a few differences. It doesn't surprise me though that one is faster than the other: the Voodoo3 might have better 2D drivers, and all your videocard is doing when AVS is running is putting the image on screen, nothing more.

If you don't believe me, download the APE SDK and get a programmer (or yourself, if you know C++) to look at it :)

(PS: The AVS code actually has nothing to do with slow floating-point cpu instructions. Everything is done using integer operations (which allow handy usage of MMX instructions) for speed reasons)