Topic: Why I'm reverting to 9.0 (Read 3522 times)

mattsnuts · « **on:** November 09, 2003, 08:03:41 pm »

Because 9.1 is too slow with my Media PC - P2 450Mhz with Win2000.

The skins makes it seem sluggish navigating the Organization Tree. With the skins disabled on 9.0 it's fine.

-Matt
Listening to: 'Pendulum' from 'I Believe You Are A Star' by 'Dimmer'

xen-uno · « **Reply #1 on:** November 09, 2003, 11:13:36 pm »

Are you sure that it's an MC problem? Both of the machines I'm regularly on are 700 MHz PIII's. At best, they may be 1.5x faster than yours...and MC is pretty durn fast on them (actually it's MJ at home, MC at work). It could be that MC was compiled with PIII optimizations, but I think there's something else going on.

R_x

rocketsauce · « **Reply #2 on:** November 10, 2003, 02:55:11 am »

I'm pretty sure it's the skins. I'm on a PIII 733with 256ram. 9.0 without skins is a lot faster and more responsive with things like the program startup, scrolling thru the media library, etc., than 9.1. Even MJ8 was slower with skins turned on.

Rob

hit_ny · « **Reply #3 on:** November 10, 2003, 03:12:43 am »

IF you think its the skins why not try DJ_Hazelwoods set, i think its called Nightlife. Its weighs in at a quarter of the other fancier ones.

NoCodeUK · « **Reply #4 on:** November 10, 2003, 03:46:32 am »

Personally I find all the extras I have gained from having 9.1 far out weigh any apparent speed loss (which I must say on my 1700XP is negligible anyways). I for one will be sticking with 9.1...until 10.0 comes out that is

Thanks again J River for an excellent program...

Adam

nila · « **Reply #5 on:** November 10, 2003, 05:14:47 am »

matts - unfortunately your system itself is VERY old.
450Mhz is so old that most developers will not put a lot of effort into designing for it with new programs otherwise they will be restricting themselves from taking advantage of a lot of features that would really benefit the rest of us.

Systems these days are CHEAP - I just built a 1600Mhz system for around £120 - that's the full system - monitor and hard drive which just came from the old machine.

It might be time to consider a system upgrade?

rocketsauce · « **Reply #6 on:** November 10, 2003, 06:45:48 am »

Quote from: hit_ny on November 10, 2003, 03:12:43 am

IF you think its the skins why not try DJ_Hazelwoods set, i think its called Nightlife. Its weighs in at a quarter of the other fancier ones.

I know it's the skins.

I've tried them all and it doesn't matter. It's the actual "skinning engine", rather than any specific skin, that causes the speed hit. It was the same in MC9.0 and MJ8.

Rob

JimH · « **Reply #7 on:** November 10, 2003, 07:23:59 am »

You might be able to find a cheap but good video card that would solve the problem.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #8 on:** November 10, 2003, 07:37:17 am »

Is 9.0.180 compatible with a library created with 9.1, or do you need to re-import everything?

Can Media Server work between 9.0.180 and 9.1?

Video card?? I can understand a video card helping to speed up the screen drawing operation a bit, but I cannot imagine it will not resolve the reported diference in load between 9.0.180 & 9.1 nor any additional processor lad from the skinning.

I ask about this because I use my old AMD-K6-2- 550mhz as a server and this may improve my system's performance as well.

Maybe Matt's NOT nuts

NoCodeUK · « **Reply #9 on:** November 10, 2003, 02:31:31 pm »

Lisa...I believe you are using the Direct X host are you not (guessing from your thread about DX plugs). I was getting a huge performance hit including ridiculous start up times of like a minute from laod to being able to play a tune...turned out it was the DX Host. once I removed it...no lag at all...just a thought...I guess there is a reason why its unsupported

Adam

LisaRCT · « **Reply #10 on:** November 10, 2003, 04:56:46 pm »

Thanks Adam . . good point, you are certainly correct about the extra hit using the DirectX host.
But currently I am using the DirextX host only on my 2Ghz machine, and then only when listening to some mp3's (using the rgc high frequency stimulator).
I am also playing with the 4Front Headphone plugin, but that does not use the DirectX host, just plain old DSP type software.

Most of the time I use no additional processing at all, avoiding any DSP or equalization functions whatsoever.

The server on the other hand is where I need to conserve resources, and there I run nothing that is not absolutely necessary. . . . it is on that machine which I would possibly consider back-stepping to 9.0.180 if it was beneficial and not cause a loss of functionality.

It was still good to mention that regardless Adam, as on any other day I probably would tend to overlook things like that . . .
and perhaps that tip may help others somewhere along the way.

::: as she writes a note and pins it to her undies for safe keeping- < DirectX = resources hit > :::

rocketsauce · « **Reply #11 on:** November 10, 2003, 05:25:17 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 10, 2003, 07:23:59 am

You might be able to find a cheap but good video card that would solve the problem.

Last fall, I upgraded the 32mb nVidia card that came as default in the system to a 64mb nVidia GeForce4 MX 440. I noticed a pretty good gain in graphics performance for games, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference when it came to running MJ/MC with skins.

Anyway, my system will be 4 years old next June, so I'm looking to hopefuly upgrade sometime this coming spring.

Rob

phelt · « **Reply #12 on:** November 10, 2003, 05:51:59 pm »

While I'm not interested in going back to 9.0, my own experience has been that 9.1 is significantly slower than 9.0 in nearly all of my day-to-day operations. Most significant to me: tag editing and pane navigation.

My system has not changed since running 9.0, nor is it lacking in 'horsepower':
Media Center Registered 9.1.296 -- H:\mp3\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 2 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium 4 3072 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 2096 MB, Free - 1698 MB
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, Media Center runs from a Serial ATA RAID 0 array, music stored on an external Maxtor firewire drive. Again, none of these have changed since using 9.0, nor do I have any CPU-killing tasks running, so the performance difference is strictly between the MC versions. I'll be trying the 300 build later today.

I've tried every tweak that I've seen mentioned in the forums, I've uninstalled and reinstalled MC, but sort and tagging ops are still slow enough that I think twice before doing them. I'm not coming down on MC or J River - if you know me, you know I'm a big supporter. But I think it's important not to lay everything at the doorstep of 'older hardware'.

EDIT: corrected a version number.

mattsnuts · « **Reply #13 on:** November 10, 2003, 06:11:02 pm »

Nila: yep, I know it's an old machine, but hey it does everything I need in a media PC:
Watch DVDs
Watch Live TV
Play mp3s
Download digi photos

I upgraded the vid card and sound card to play DVDs recently. But I can't justify spending $200 on a new motherboard, CPU and RAM for the sake of it.

Lisa: yep, it was annoying, the libraries aren't compatible so I had to re-import everything and lost my smartlists. I wasn't expecting that to happen.

I think the moral of this thread is that it would be nice if you could disable the skins in 9.1.

My gruntier work machine will keep 9.1 on it, although in my music only usage I haven't seen any advantages. The view schemes seem more confusing than they used to be, now that they're iTunes-y.

Anyway, Media Center is still the best, but a little criticism won't hurt anyone.

-Matt
Listening to: 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt.1' from 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' by 'Flaming Lips'

LisaRCT · « **Reply #14 on:** November 10, 2003, 08:25:05 pm »

Well, perhaps MJ9 will strike a nice balance.
With less functions to deal with perhaps it will make up for some of the lost speed.

Drowbe · « **Reply #15 on:** November 10, 2003, 09:36:23 pm »

Interesting...my old machine runs MC9.1 fine...P450, 256MB Ram, GeForce3 64Mb Video, XP.

slikvik · « **Reply #16 on:** November 11, 2003, 04:29:43 am »

I have to say, I'm running on two PC's - my actual HTPC which runs fine and my laptop which did most definately get sluggish with 9.1. It's a PIII850 with 32Mb Geforce2Go and 512Mb Ram.

If I click on a pane, I need to wait for it to filter. Its certainly what I would call sluggish compared to 9 which was lightning.

Just my 2 pence.

Vic

JimH · « **Reply #17 on:** November 11, 2003, 05:33:58 am »

Early versions were slow. Have you tried one recently?

graham131 · « **Reply #18 on:** November 11, 2003, 05:46:43 pm »

Well - my 2 penneth worth.

My laptop in the lounge connected to the hifi is only a P11 266 128Mb and it works fine with MC Media server and wireless metworking to allow me to stream from my main PC.

My main PC (running the library) is a P4 ".53 with 1.5GB.

Graham

mattsnuts · « **Reply #19 on:** November 11, 2003, 09:56:08 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 11, 2003, 05:33:58 am

Early versions were slow. Have you tried one recently?

The version I tried is 9.1.290 so quite recent.

9.0 with no skins seems fine so I'll stick to that. But hopefully you guys will add a disable skins option for future versions so those of us on old PCs can use them happily.

-Matt
Listening to: 'Oh! Darling' from 'Abbey Road' by 'Beatles'

rocketsauce · « **Reply #20 on:** November 11, 2003, 11:55:18 pm »

Quote

But hopefully you guys will add a disable skins option for future versions

There have been quite a few threads on the topic of skins vs no skins in 9.1. Unless they have changed their mind and are keeping it a secret, there will not be a no skin option.

Rob

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Author Topic: Why I'm reverting to 9.0 (Read 3522 times)

nila

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

phelt

LisaRCT

Drowbe