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[JustinChase]

I have inquired a few times about how slow my machine runs under certain visualizations, and also while running the playing now plug-in.  From that forum, I was pointed to this article...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10037   It's quite short.

Which says basically, if your P4, Windows XP machine w/hyperthreading runs really slow at times "It's the UnmapViewOfFile function that causes the problem."

I wanted to find out if this is something you guys use in MC, and if it might be the problem I've been having all along.  I understand Microsoft will not charge you for the service call if this is the issue.  So I just wanted to find out if you think it might be my problem.

Thanks very much for any help you might be able to provide in this area for me (and I presume others).

PS  v10 is looking great.

[Matt]

We transfer visualization data with a mapped file, so it's a good guess.

Will Microsoft issue a fix?

[JustinChase]

Yeah, they sent me file download info.  I have downloaded it, and installed it (I think, their instructions are no good), not this slowness does not seem any better.  I will try some more testing later tonight.

Thanks Matt.

[JustinChase]

No better.  I'm running a P4 2.8 ghz w/512 ram and hyperthreading.

When using a heavy load vis I created, my cpu shows between 50% and 57% useage, just for MC.  My friend using the same vis, with a mobile P4 1.7ghz processor (w/out hyperthreading) runs at 95-97%, again, just for MC.  I just don't know if  the hyperthreading can be causing all my MC problems.

Does anyone else have a machine with hyperthreading?  Do you have these kinds of issues with yours?

Issues I'm having.

• playing now is REALLY slow to respond.  I have to keep my mouse held over the rating for 5 seconds to have it take
• heavy cpu load visualizations make the navigation bars stop being available in the visualization screen, ever
• the divider bar seperating the vis screen from the list of songs will not redraw itself, instead it shows remnants of the vis as if it was supposed to be displayed where the bar is, but the remnants are fixed (do not move).  If I grab the bar, it will redraw itself, but not until I grab it.
• If I make a selection in MC that requires a new window to be displayed (system info, about, or any menu selection that opens a new window) that window is not visible in MC until I go to another program, then back to MC, where the window will now be visible.  MC will not respond to anything until I go out and back in.
• gereral slowness within MC.  Slow to draw screens, slow to update tag changes, slow to change view schemes

Anyone?

[glynor]

I could be remembering wrong, but wasn't it possible to turn Hyperthreading off in the bios settings (on most good motherboards that is)?  Or possibly in software ...?  Might want to try looking for that, just to see if it makes a difference ...

That sounds horrible.  My poor ol' P3 doesn't even cough up its lung that badly.  Of course, on that box I keep the quality  at "High" rather than "Highest" and its got a god amount of RAM.  Overall, I would say it runs fine on that box.  Hmmm ...

That sounds nasty.  Sure you don't have something else going on?  Are other programs ridiculously slow?

[Matt]

Yikes, I get the same thing on my home machine with the 2D visualizations.  3D visualizations work fine.  It's a P4 with a pretty new ATI card in it.

DirectX vs. Standard mode doesn't make a difference.

It seems like the key is that it only happens on scripts with Super Transforms or Dynamic Transforms.  There must be something silly in those.

We'll dig some more in the coming days.  Thanks!

[Alex B]

This picture demonstrates my Hyperthreaded CPU usage when running standard 2D visualizations. Display size is 1280 x 1024 and the graphics card is Ati Radeon 9600 with recent drivers. Total CPU usage varies between 10 to 60 % depending on the visualization type.

I don't think that visualizations run much smoother than they did on my old P2 400 Mhz/ Windows 2000 PC with MediaJukebox 8.

The graphs are interesting. Much more CPU usage on the other half. There were no heavy tasks running on the background.

Half size image:



Full size image:  ProcessorUsageFull.jpg

I have been afraid to switch HT off in the bios settings, because Microsoft advises to reinstall Windows XP to get things running normally. That is no option for me now.

I'm also worried about the XP activation process. Does a change in the bios settings count as one more item in the list of allowed hardware changes (HT on/off = one more CPU present or not present)?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Media Center Registered 10.0.96 -- C:\Soft\MJB\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2858 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 723 MB  ...

[JustinChase]

Yikes, I get the same thing on my home machine with the 2D visualizations.  3D visualizations work fine.  It's a P4 with a pretty new ATI card in it.

DirectX vs. Standard mode doesn't make a difference.

It seems like the key is that it only happens on scripts with Super Transforms or Dynamic Transforms.  There must be something silly in those.

We'll dig some more in the coming days.  Thanks!

No, Thank You!

Matt, I'm sorry if I didn't specify more clearly, but I'm also talking about 2D visualizations.  I also have these problems with all of the Damaged Layers visualizations also, but not Clean & Tidy, if that helps.

I'm so happy someone (especially at J River) has the same problems.  That sounds bad, sorry, I'm glad theres a chance it'll get fixed, and it's not just me.

I'm running a NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 in the laptop.

I have one Super Transform, and one Dynamic Transform in my cusotm vis (the one I originally wrote about).

Matt, i'm happy to provide anything you guys might need to troubleshoot this.

Thanks again.

Alex, can you try to run Damaged Layers (V) and see if your machine shows any of the same symptoms I described above?

Thanks

[JustinChase]

Matt, the latest build .98, says...

2. Fixed: Visualization Studio > Dynamic Transform wouldn't properly save 'friendly-mode' equation changes.

I'm not sure what 'friendly-mode' equation changes means, do i need to do something in the visualizations to make this better?

Was this supposed to fix the problems we have been discussing here?

If so, I am still having tha same issues.  Are you guys still working on that, or did you get it resolved as far as you can tell, and I need to keep working on my end (i.e. turn off hyperthreading and reinstall windows & all of my software)?

Thanks

[Shady Bimmer]

More and more I see home users flipping out over Hyperthreading.

Does anybody know what hyperthreading actually provides?  Or do they just think it makes their single CPU appear as 2?

Intel has gobs of info (they should, after all) at http://www.intel.com/products/HT/hyperthreading.htm

It is tough to find technical details though.  Essentially Hyperthreading allows the independent units within the CPU to be used independently by unique processes.  In other words one process may use the floating point engine while another uses the integer engine.

It isn't so simple though.  While one process is using one particular engine it may block another process.  That process may have been compiled with an optimizing compiler that assumes it will have exclusive use of the CPU.  As a result, it will likely optimize its code to make the most efficient use of the instruction pipeline, often utilizing multiple units itself within the cpu die with each cycle.  Enabling Hyperthreading can wreak havoc on this, and Intel itself admits that the majority of applications will NOT experience any improvement out-of-the-box with Hyperthreading.

Intel provides toolkits for application developers and integrators to help identify bottlenecks that reduce the effectiveness of Hyperthreading.  Many compute-intensive applications actually experience performance degradation when first enabling Hypterthreading without this code optimization.

For HT use, I honestly can't see a benefit currently.  It is unlikely to provide any benefit and as more and more people are learning (threads in this and other forums show this) actually slows everything down.  When it is a benefit 25% is Intel's own documented theoretical maximum improvement.  Real world numbers are roughly half that value with properly tuned applications.

Marketing is great.  It can get the majority of the buying public to believe almost anything.  With proper tuning of applications Hyperthreading can be a benefit but for home use I just don't see application development teams devoting resources to it.  Intel has devoted tremendous resources on optimizing uniprocessor designs and is a world leader in pipelining and branch prediction.  Hyperthreading is a natural extension but must undergo a bit of maturing and acceptance before personal-use systems will see a benefit.

[JustinChase]

Shady,  Thanks for the primer.  I knew most of that already, but it was a nice succinct explanation.

Now, if only I had been given the option to enable it or not from the start, that would have been nice.  Nicer still, would be the option to turn it off without reinstalling XP.

Oh well, looks like a long software weekend ahead.

[xen-uno]

I would rather have a discrete dual proc machine (HT turned off...at least at this point in time). A dual 933 MHz PIII here renders Rhino models twice as fast as my 700 MHz PIII. OpenGL SS's fly on it as well (helped though, by an NVidia Quadro 2). A dual Athlon 64 (Opteron) would be real nice.

10^-27

[JustinChase]

Well, I turned it off.  I have not re-installed anything.  So far, so good.  I realize that I have Windows files installed that I don't need any more, but, the same could be said for probably 1/3 of Windows XP (too much junk), so we'll see how stable I remain.

As far as the problems mentioned above...

All better.  The vis operates normally (it maxes my CPU to 95+% when in use) and the window control bars appear as normal, the windows that should pop-up do so, without having to leave MC and return to see them.

I guess I don't really need hyperthreading anyway, but it is frustrating that I had to turn it off to get MC to work properly.  Oh, well.  It works now.

Please let me know if you guys get something in place that lets me use the hyperthreading again.

Thanks