Topic: Resource Usage/Management (Read 4996 times)

Philethius · « **on:** September 13, 2003, 10:13:29 am »

Disclaimer: If this topic has already been dealt with, I apologize beforehand...

Anyway, has anyone had issues with the resource usage and management of 9.1? I understand it is still beta, but before it goes into full release, is it possible to drop the resource usage? I notice that on my WinME machine (yes I know the resource mananger already sucks) that running 9.1 will eat like 10-20% of my available resources. Not only that, but upon exit, these resources aren't released (59% available is a common number). Yes I can reboot, but if this is used for say a public event where resets are a big no-no mid-way through, well you get the picture.

Anyway I'm just curious.

- Philethius

WinME, Athlon XP 2600 (barton)
TI4200-8x
SB-Live 5.1

escaflo · « **Reply #1 on:** September 13, 2003, 11:24:53 am »

I am not too sure of how come your resource is so high. When you mean resource, do you mean CPU or memory usage?

I am using WinXp. MC usually use about 1%-2% of CPU usage (if I am running MC at the background). It uses also about 10MB of memory. I have about 7000+ songs in my library. Maybe that's why.

My Specs.
P4 2.26, 512mb ram
WinXp
Philips Acoustic Edge
Ti4200 8X

Used to be AMD 1700XP. Which have about the same amount of CPU usage.

Philethius · « **Reply #2 on:** September 13, 2003, 11:33:13 am »

I'm not talking CPU usage, I'm talking System Resources...
(right click My Computer, choose properties, performance tab, System Resources [percentage] in WinME)

Win95, Win98, WinME are horrid at managing memory and freeing up resources after programs have been shut down. XP does a much better job but I don't have XP right now, nor can I really afford it, yet anyway. It's probably a good idea to get an upgrade but I'll have to wait. I just wondered if this was a common issue with other people.

By the way, to further illustrate the horrid use of Resources in WinME I'm at 34% right now, running only Netscape 7.1 (and the normal stuff I boot with, I boot with 83% or so, but I've been running without reset for a few hours now and used several programs in that time)

escaflo · « **Reply #3 on:** September 13, 2003, 11:40:35 am »

Oops.

You are right about Windows 9x series having a horrid resource management system. Without you reminding me, I have also forgotten about the Windows 9x system resource percentage.

Been using Win2k/Xp ever since it came out. Never look back since.

If I am not wrong, there should be some Win98 user here that maybe can help with your question.

KingSparta · « **Reply #4 on:** September 14, 2003, 06:05:44 am »

WinME Is Crap, Atari Had A Better OS

nameless · « **Reply #5 on:** September 14, 2003, 08:36:26 am »

All the Win9x-kernel operating systems are pure crap. Complaining about resource usage on those horrible platforms is like complaining that your 2-cylinder car is too slow when you have passengers.

dragyn · « **Reply #6 on:** September 14, 2003, 10:36:54 am »

Geez you guys are hard on him.

MC right now is using 40MB of RAM on my system. 40MB?

Sometimes it will be over 100MB of RAM!!!! That's just physical memory. I'm not even talking about the virtual memory it uses.

So acccording to this, WinXP must suck then too.

JimH · « **Reply #7 on:** September 14, 2003, 11:31:28 am »

dragyn,
You may have something "special" going on. I wonder if it may also have something to do with the speed issue you've had.

I've been running MC 9.1.251 in mega-me for 3 hours, playing APE files and 3d Visualizations, and Mem Usage is at 27.4MB.

Minimized, it's at 10MB or less.

Jim

Philethius · « **Reply #8 on:** September 14, 2003, 12:29:36 pm »

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I know know WinME is a piece of crap, but this is what I have, nonetheless.

My main thing was either trying to streamline the program to use the least amount of resources possible. If that is what is currently happening, so be it. I just wish Media Center freed resources better. Just keep that in mind.

Also if anyone knows of a good free memory manager for WinME, that would be appreciated...

nila · « **Reply #9 on:** September 14, 2003, 02:59:16 pm »

Phil, I'd recommend giving Win2k a try - I'm sure copies of it can be picked up pretty cheap now as it's 'old' and XP is the current OS but it's sooo much better than ME in every way imaginable.

It'd totally be worth a small upgrade fee.

Philethius · « **Reply #10 on:** September 14, 2003, 05:06:53 pm »

I've yet to see a version of Windows "on sale," except for specials you'll find every-now-and-then online or something.

Pathetic enough I've seen some stores still saling Win98 for 99 + dollars. I know I need to upgrade anyway. The rest of my computer is running fine, and I just recently upgraded to an XP Processor and a newer motherboard. My OS is probably the oldest thing on here anyway. I just wanted to inquire about program optimizations and trying to streamline resource manangement. I mean hey even if Windows was good at managing memory and resources, it wouldn't hurt to be on top of everything.

I guess I'm just "up the creek" for now...

NanjingGuy · « **Reply #11 on:** September 15, 2003, 05:52:01 am »

Well I have XP.
A P4 2.66 GHz
1 Gb RAM
etc, etc.

I don't know what others are using to determine their resource usage, but mine is much higher than some have reported here.

This is after about 30 minutes of play.

Curr Dir = C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\Data\
Path = C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\Media Jukebox.exe
User Name = ABIT-IS7-G \ Gary
PID/Parent PID = 2928 / 300
Started by = C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Virtual KB Curr = 94,716 Peak = 95,720
Working Set KB Curr = 4,428 Peak = 23,236
Page File KB Curr = 17,912 Peak = 18,760
System Pool KB Paged = 66 Nonpaged = 13
Private KB = 17,912
Handles Count = 323
Faults Count = 309,278
Objects = USER = 157 GDI = 489
Windows = 91
Reads = 27,461 Read KB = 48,851
Writes = 560 Write KB = 3,041
Other IOs = 133,194 Other KB = 2,675

c1c9k72 · « **Reply #12 on:** September 15, 2003, 11:01:05 am »

I've also found that MC9.1 seems to have slowed appreciably, especially compared to the earlier versions. Simply redrawing the Mega-Me screen, bringing it up from minimized, spikes the CPU use to 100%. Also moving the window seems to cause a spike as well.

I'm using a P4 1.7 GHz processor
383 MB of memory
Windows XP

JimH · « **Reply #13 on:** September 15, 2003, 12:01:22 pm »

There are all kinds of things that can affect performance. Here's an example:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1063251204

Marko · « **Reply #14 on:** September 15, 2003, 12:51:38 pm »

Quote

Media Center Registered 9.1.251 -- C:\Program Files\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1610 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 607 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.71 (0001) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0001)

Ripping / Drive P: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive Q: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive R: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive Q: TDK DVDRW0404N Addr: 2:0:0 Speed:16 MaxSpeed:16 BurnProof:Yes
Drive R: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W1610A Addr: 2:1:0 Speed:16 MaxSpeed:16 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: Yes / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None

Upon opening, mediajukebox.exe immediately takes circa 80 mb of memory, and it's entry in the virtual memory tops the list at circa 92 mb. the VM figure remains pretty constant, though peaked at 105 mb when I clicked on the video node of the tree. These figures are taken with MC displaying playing now, minimised to tray, 37 tracks in the list, display plugin is set to none.

Seems kind of high to me. I only began to investigate because when running MC, XP will regularly pop a "low on virtual memory" warning. My page file is set to a Max of 500 mb.
Apart from the low VM warning, MC runs quite nicely here under an AMD athlon XP 1900+, I would have thought that rescource figures as high as those I'm getting would cause problems on some machines though.

escaflo · « **Reply #15 on:** September 15, 2003, 01:33:41 pm »

Just did a quick check on my current resources usage after open MC for about 1 day without shutting down. There are 2146 songs in my playlist. No visualisation or dsp.

Current mem usage: 6308k
Peak Mem usage: 17,240k

My computer specs is:

Pentium 4, 2.26
512mb ram

It was also about this amount when I was last using a AMD Athlon 1700Xp.

I have no idea why your resource usage is so high. Maybe you got a large library?

KingSparta · « **Reply #16 on:** September 15, 2003, 01:44:13 pm »

I am Currently At 145,376K, Media Center 9.1

Minimized Is went down to about 3 megs then jumped to around 81,512

no music playing

Media Center Registered 9.1.249 -- D:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 3047 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 172 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1226 / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive G: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive H: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive G: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GMA-4020B Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:1 MaxSpeed:12 BurnProof:Yes
Drive H: HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8481B Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:48 MaxSpeed:48 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None

jleerigby · « **Reply #17 on:** September 15, 2003, 01:54:30 pm »

Playing for a couple of hours now - no visualisations. Mem usage at 7924. I have 20200 in library - 4929 in current playing now. I have 40 custom view schemes.

Win XP Pro. Athlon XP2200+. 1524 Gb PC2700 RAM.

nameless · « **Reply #18 on:** September 16, 2003, 07:29:12 am »

Quote

Geez you guys are hard on him.
MC right now is using 40MB of RAM on my system. 40MB? Sometimes it will be over 100MB of RAM!!!! That's just physical memory. I'm not even talking about the virtual memory it uses.

So acccording to this, WinXP must suck then too.

No, you misunderstood. I wasn't being hard on him, unless his name also happens to be "Win9x kernel".

I was being hard on a Microsoft product.

The reason the Win9x kernels suck is that they use tiny 16-bit storage areas for certain critical "resources" (which is an almost-meaningless, generic term). You have a very fixed amount of resources available, and when they're used up, your system bites dirt.

To make matters even worse, these miniscule 16-bit storage areas don't get housekept properly, either by applications or by the OS itself, and so you have to either (A) not run much of anything in the way of applications; (B) reboot constantly; or (C) put up with frequent crashes. These are irrefutable, well-known facts.

No user of the Win9x kernel should take criticism of it personally. I suffered with it for years myself. I know that not everyone can afford to upgrade (hardware and software).

KingSparta · « **Reply #19 on:** September 16, 2003, 07:33:34 am »

Quote

No, you misunderstood. I wasn't being hard on him, unless his name also happens to be "Win9x kernel". I was being hard on a Microsoft product.

Diddo's

Philethius Could Be A Fine Gent

Philethius · « **Reply #20 on:** September 18, 2003, 10:27:59 am »

Haha, I hope I'm a "fine gent."

WinME is kicking my butt all over the place now. I'm half a heartbeat from gritting my teeth and going ahead and upgrade. Of course this is hard for a college student dependent on his computer for class work.

Ah the irony...

KingSparta · « **Reply #21 on:** September 18, 2003, 10:51:08 am »

Quote

Haha, I hope I'm a "fine gent."

WinME is kicking my butt all over the place now. I'm half a heartbeat from gritting my teeth and going ahead and upgrade. Of course this is hard for a college student dependent on his computer for class work.

Ah the irony...

Look at it this way Windows XP is free When You Buy A New Computer.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Resource Usage/Management (Read 4996 times)

nameless

dragyn

nila

NanjingGuy

Marko

jleerigby

nameless