Processor Speed and FPS

I am interested in knowing what kind of performance people are getting from systems that include AMD 1+ GHz or P4 processors and GeForce3 cards when using AVS. My system includes a P3 733 and a GeForce 256, but I cannot view the more complex presets without turning down the resolution and doubling the pixels. So, how many frames per second can the fastest systems with DDR system and video memory produce when displaying the more complex presets at higher resolutions? I am interested in knowing how much a person would have to spend on a system to get AVS humming.

FPS of AVS did not depend of your VIDEO car only from CPU. And I think that AVS look perfect and in low res like 320/240 on PII450 so for you CPU 400/300 is perfect resolution. You do not need higer.

Regards Tonic

I have a dual pIII 800 running under win 2k. I can get away with 800x600 resolution and 15-25 FPS depending on the plug-in, and no pixel doubling.

I would really enjoy running at full screen(1024x768 for me) and see FPS as high as 30 or 40... It does make a huge diffrence..

On the contrary.. Tonic, it makes a huge diffrence on resolution.. low res is a joke. I want liquid animation of my AVS.. and low res looks horrible.. almost reminds me of MS's and Real Audio's attempts at visualization.

Could someone offer some hardware guidelines to follow? Eventually, I'd like to purchase a digital projector for even better vieweing.. 480x320 resolution just won't do.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry.. forgot to mention I have 256 MB RAM

Thsi that you have Dual CPU did not help you so much onluy that 10% of CPU needed for MP3 encoding is used from second CPU. Only one of your CPU are used by AVS. Second things I want to say is that I use Digital Projector at 320/200 and it look perfect I project this to 5,0m/3,0m wall and it look cool enought.

Regards Tonic

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble.. but settling for low res graphics is like settling for low low bit rate sound.

What's the point of wasting your time if you aren't enjoying it? Everyone knows that the more detail a song has or a picture has, the more enjoyable it is to that sense.

The point of AVS is to add eye candy to the already very well developed ear candy which we all enjoy through winamp. Now, I don't know where your tastes lie, but wouldn't it make sense that a higher, more detailed image would heighten one's enjoyment of a peticular piece of music?

Now, we've heard your opinions on the subject. What can we do to make these AVS files run faster? It is entirely your right to run them at low res.. 😉 But how do the rest of us, who won't settle for second rate resolutions, go about getting the cutting edge?

It's ok if you don't know..

I'm running a 1GHz Athlon with 256Mb RAM, but even in 640x480x16 fullscreen mode I need pixel doubling on to get things going really smoothly on a preset of average complexity.

AVS has to convert each effect in realtime, instead of being hard-coded like a standard vis plugin, which would slow it down, but I'm sure there must be room for optimisation here.

Oh, and support for 3D as well.

Oh, and programmable hotkeys to control effects.

Oh, and AVI timestretching.

Oh, and random change preset on n beats as well as n seconds.

Ta.

$#!+

Well, I was hoping that someone would tell me that they were getting better performance out of the sytems I described, but it is just as I feared. I am afraid that we are stuck with low resolution AVS presets until somebody finds a better way to code this thing. As far as Tonic's comments... Well, I don't want to be rude, but do you think that 640X480 @ 256 colors looks good? Resolution and the number of colors are the only things that matter when it comes to video. Pixel doubling looks terrible! I can run Q3 at 800X600 32-bit color and get 125 fps(and that is OpenGL accelerated). There is definitely room for improvement with AVS.

Athlon 850

Ok,

Avs ran pretty bad on my old pentium 166, But when I bought my new Athlon 850, I figured I'd be able to milk it. Ok, it runs better (hey, it runs point!), but The best I can do in fullscreen is 320x240 at 32bpp. This gives me 20 frames a second on average, but the resolution leaves to be desired. I want it to look like it does in the window when it's docked in the config. I have 320 megs of ram, yet somehow I get the impression this thing really only eats up raw, brute, processing power taking no notice whatsoever of my 3D prophet II (it works just as well on my ati rage II Mach 64 Tv-out, which I just swapped in to check out the results) this seems a damn shame, run kata fx and you get some really nice 3d fullscreen action.

I don't know, I guess I could just wait for those 200Ghz IBM just announced to run AVS better.

For now it'll do, but I really do wish they come out with a 3daccelerator-friendly upgrade, or any way to get more bang for the Mhz.

?WHy?

Yes, AVS only uses processor power

Mmmm, 320x240 seems a bit low to me I run AVS full-screen, at my P-III 500, at 320x200. I guess more could be get out of AVS with a 850 Mhz processor. Maybe you haven't unchecked the wait for retrace option in your full screen settings. This speeds up AVS significantly so have a look at that. also try to use pixel doubling it give you AVS at much higher resolutions.

well

I formatted my HD and re-installled windows (lot of crap) to see If I could speed it up and it's running faster already (25-40 fps in 640x480 32bpp wait for retrace and pixel doubling on)

I'll probably tweak it t'ill I think I'm getting the max out of it....

What exactly does the fast software bpp button do? I don't notice a significant difference whether on or off..

ParaNoya - Like your pack.. 😉

Turning OFF wait for retrace will speed up AVS with at least 15%

NO NO wait for retrace must be OFF, but I think you already did that seeing your FPS.

Thanks, I think I'll UL my latest pack this weekend. 🙂

Cool, looking forward to seeing it.. I uploaded some presets that are just the beginning. I'm having some problems with the login to upload though.. is this a glitch or just me?

Um, I can't seem to get AVS to respond to my cd music... any special configs I'd need to get it to respond to a line in?

these may seem stupid questions, but I'm just re-configuring and can't quite remember how I had it working last time... heheh

Thanks!

Hey transfrmr, it's very simple. In the sound properties, recording properties, select CD audio as your recording source instead of mic or other thing. If it works, drop me a line to djdatto@tutopia.com.😉

I don't usually test the Fullscreen mode! I usually use the 176 × 176 windowed resolution when I make my presets or view presets made from other authors such as Tonic! But for my upcoming collection, I'll do a Fullscreen test, even though I have a shitty video card (8 MB SiS 620 AGP) ! But I might consider getting a GeForce 2 GTS in the near future! 🙂

But despite that, I also got a 500 MHz Pentium 3, a 30.7 GB Hard Drive, and 192 MB PC133 SDRAM, which greatly increased my PC's performance! Here's my FPS status on 176 × 176 windowed resolution :

For very complex presets (Most AVSociety presets), I usually get 10 - 15 FPS!
For somewhat complex presets, I usually get 20 - 30 FPS!
For simple presets (those that don't have a lot of rendering options), I would get at least 40 FPS!

ummm...

you seem to know what you're doing, but if you think that buying a new graphics card will speed up your AVS, you are wrong. It doesn't use any 3d acceleration. You could use the cheapest, most bare-bones graphics card in the world and it wouldn't make any difference in the performance of AVS.

Don't waste your money if all you want is better AVS framerates, the only way to get these is to get a bigger processor, I don't even think ram makes a diff,cause whether I have 64megs of 320megs it performs the same....

Unless if one were to add an APE which would require 3D Accelleration, of course! 🙂 And thanks for the comment! I might not have the fastest, but I got one that would do me the trick! 🙂

OOoooooo, interesting!

Ok,

You have me very intersted in this whole "APE that requires 3d acceleration" Could you fill me in a bit, other than using the APE's I have, I haven't bothered with them too much, but f i can use them to get AVS to take advantage of the graphics card, that's definitely worth looking into...

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about C++ yet, but when I do, then I'd experiment with such material! Also, the APE's I got are FyrewurX, 3D, VisFrac, and TV! But I'm wondering if there are other APE's out there! But if I knew C++, I probably would have made at least ten APE's by now! 🙂

uh i wonder how meny times we have to go through with this?

yeah yeah yeah...

scarface, I'm guerssing you're all peeved because "AVS doesn't use the graphics card".. Well, I thought that maybe they had deeper knowledge that APE's could be made to take advantage of it.

Since you know more than all of us, are they right or wrong? I'm gessing by your reply that they are wrong, so, I will forget about it..

APEs using 3D acceleration are not a good idea, unless you have an evil video card which can use system memory as output (or at least output to off-screen surfaces which can be copied to AVS's framebuffer with tolerable speed). i think that none of currently available video cards can do that, 'cuz that would be expensive and hardly useful (wish: create pure-AGP video card, w/o onboard memory).

Hmm ... I'd have to agree unless they could create some sort of optimization for the low-end video cards (2 - 4 MB)! Mind ya, my 8 MB SiS 620 AGP is great for most apps, but it won't work in Quake 3 Arena! I might swap that for a GeForce 2 GTS or a GeForce 3 since I know my motherboard can support such video cards!

heh i got a suck ass sis 530 😁

SiS 530? Is that 4 MB VRAM?

yeah. its runs its engine clock at 40mhz 😉

BUT!!

i can always screw the hell out of it with powerstrip to make it run at 43mhz anything more itll burn out 😁

2

I have a 3d Prophet 32mb MX, and an ATI MACH 64 4mb TV-Out.

heheheh..