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+---- Forum: Aeon MQ (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=68)
+---- Thread: On performance (/showthread.php?tid=48252)
- quebert - 2009-04-05
jmarshall Wrote:It's simple: If you can't render a frame in the time it takes to display one (i.e. one frame per 50 seconds or whatever) then VSYNC enabled means it'll drop by half. After that, it'll drop to 1/3 the FPS and so on. Turn off vsync and it won't drop as much.
Aeon has an insane number of controls onscreen simultaneously (around 1200 last time I checked whilst in media views). This increases the CPU load significantly.
Sluggishness moving between items (i.e. while scrolling and the like) is more disk-based slow down than anything else.
Cheers,
Jonathan
this is good information Jonathan I'm glad you posted this, question I have read this somewhere but I can't find it again (of course lol) not sure if it came from an XBMC team guy or just some random dude spouting. Converting all my backdrops to BMP improves performance right? My large JPG collection went to a huge BMP collection when I batch converted them, but if it bumps up the speed of a skin a bit more it might be a good thing for people in here to try. If this isn't accurate feel free to chime in
- roeroe - 2009-04-05
AMD 780G Chipset with 3200 onboard Graphic card
Low Power AMD 4580e (Dual Core)
4 Gig of RAM
Windows XP SP3
Samsung Series 6 HDTV Running 1080p
5TB NAS all media store on here Access via SMB and NFS
XBMC SVN 01/04/2009
Dedicated HTPC nothing running in the backgound except cacheman util
Performance:
Everything played fine even 1080p video
but interface with AEON is slowed, it's not very responsive, sometimes it hangs for a few seconds and buffer all the key press sequences so when it comes out it's gone
nuts as if it doesn't has enough grunt to process real time on screen rendering..
could be an issues with some tweaking programs I have running in the background like Cacheman but havent really look into it.
- jmarshall - 2009-04-05
It may improve the load time of images. This is all. It doesn't make one iota of difference once they're loaded. The background images _should_ all be using largeimage controls, so that won't matter.
Some of them are probably using multiimage controls though, so using BMPs there will make them snappier loading on transistion from one to the other.
Unfortunately multiimage using the background loader didn't make it in time for 9.04.
- quebert - 2009-04-05
So basically, Stark might be the first skin ever where you need to upgrade your PC to use it in all it's glory. lol I've upgraded for games, for an OS, but never for a skin
I want to wait until it's better known what's really needed system wise to run this smoothly before I go upgrading. Seems like most people with a system similar to this one are struggling with it so it's safe to assume maybe a HD3200 isn't powerful enough. If a new cheapy video card will remedy this I'm all for it.
- Nazgulled - 2009-04-05
quebert Wrote:So basically, Stark might be the first skin ever where you need to upgrade your PC to use it in all it's glory.Well... I for one refuse to believe such a thing.
It just doesn't make any sense...
jmarshall Wrote:It's simple: If you can't render a frame in the time it takes to display one (i.e. one frame per 50 seconds or whatever) then VSYNC enabled means it'll drop by half. After that, it'll drop to 1/3 the FPS and so on. Turn off vsync and it won't drop as much.I don't think it matters... My point with that was that if I could possibly run my TV at 100Hz I would get 100fps at the main menu and 50fps at other screens and that would be enough to make it smooth.
I just tried to disable vsync at all and it produce better results. Besides the main menu where it's always around 50fps. All other screens were a little smoother around 25fps (showcase, wall view) where it was below 20 before. But this produced a little tearing (I think this is how it's called) and increased a bit the CPU usage (I think, not sure about this though).
I still think there's something wrong on my system or something in Aeon conflicting with my system somehow that is cause of this jerkiness. Something is triggering this...
- quebert - 2009-04-05
Nazgulled Wrote:Well... I for one refuse to believe such a thing.
It just doesn't make any sense...
My pc can play Crysis, one of the most graphical games ever with no problems. Yet I can't play Guitar Hero III without a crapload of stuttering. GH *SHOULD* be able to run on a very low end PC, but it requires a retardly high end computer to play correctly. All the horsepower in the world doesn't matter if the program's not optomized for it. I'd be willing to bet our FPS's are typical here, 30 would be higher end. Everyone I've spoken to who doesn't have a higher end PC has stuttering problems in flow mode. To process graphics in 1920x1080 isn't a simple task. Hell if I made a Stark look-a-like in Adobe Flash, if I was lucky it would run about 8FPS on my system. People are saying if they run it @ 720p it goes a lot smoother, it's definitely not CPU limited so it has to be the GPU that's holding it back.
- Nazgulled - 2009-04-05
The guy on post #19 is the one with most similar system to mine in this topic. His computer is not that high end (nor mine) but they are not that bad either, they are powerful enough to play HD content and with lower energy usage, which is perfect for an HTPC.
He states that it runs "smooth like butter, including showcase mode with cover flow and contextual fanart".
He didn't gave any more details like resolution and such, so I'm going to PM him to ask for more details and go from there.
EDIT:
I just changed my resolution to 720x480 @ 60Hz (the lowest possible I can get) and the skin couldn't handle it very well either. Don't tell me this is normal, this resolution is very very low. On the main menu, I still got 60fps, in all others, no more than 30fps. Showcase with flow was only smooth if I changed from cover to cover really slowly, if I changed quickly between covers, it would slow down and the fps would drop a lot. If I keep pressing left (or right) to quickly loop through all the covers, the fps drops to as low as 5fps and of course the movement is very jerky like this.
- Crewone - 2009-04-05
As I reported on page 1, my HTPC isn't capable of running Stark very smoothly.
But I have a desktop PC, which has more or less the same specs, that can. Both have a 3Ghz Core2Duo, but the desktop PC has a ATI 1900XTX whereas the HTPC has an integrated Intel G35. That seems to make all the difference, as the HTPC never reaches 30fps and the desktop PC easily sustains 60+FPS and is at 80+FPS most of the time, even during movie view with the 'flow' layout.
So I guess I'll have to get myself a 9400GT or something
- quebert - 2009-04-05
Crewone Wrote:As I reported on page 1, my HTPC isn't capable of running Stark very smoothly.
But I have a desktop PC, which has more or less the same specs, that can. Both have a 3Ghz Core2Duo, but the desktop PC has a ATI 1900XTX whereas the HTPC has an integrated Intel G35. That seems to make all the difference, as the HTPC never reaches 30fps and the desktop PC easily sustains 60+FPS and is at 80+FPS most of the time, even during movie view with the 'flow' layout.
So I guess I'll have to get myself a 9400GT or something
if you do post back, I'm curious to see how much of a an improvement a dedicated video card will be.
- Hitcher - 2009-04-05
quebert Wrote:So basically, Stark might be the first skin ever where you need to upgrade your PC to use it in all it's glory. lol I've upgraded for games, for an OS, but never for a skin
Nazgulled Wrote:Well... I for one refuse to believe such a thing.
It just doesn't make any sense...
jmarshall Wrote:Aeon has an insane number of controls onscreen simultaneously (around 1200 last time I checked whilst in media views). This increases the CPU load significantly.
That makes perfect sense to me.
- Ayla - 2009-04-05
My GPU gets extremely hot, so there's definately a lof of GPU use also, besides CPU usage.
Someone mentioned an "Open GL bug" with XBMC and Aeon Stark possibly making this worse.
I hope Stark can be fixed, so it runs as smooth as MediaStream on my system (posted earlier in this thread).
PS. us with small HTPC cases would be very happy to avoid buying large videocards just to run Stark. I like my onboard one, 9300M
- smcnally75 - 2009-04-05
Ayla Wrote:PS. us with small HTPC cases would be very happy to avoid buying large videocards just to run Stark. I like my onboard one, 9300M
Oh, come on...You can still run stark just fine. Change your fanart to 1280x720 and it will run smooth and still look beautiful. I was wondering why people had all these performance complaints and then realized that I had never replaced my fanart files (I was running them at 960x540 for my xbox). I swapped them out for 1080p fanart and did notice some navigation slowdown so I just resized them to 1280x720 and it is just as smooth now. Not only that, but the back drops don't look any worse to me than when they were 1080p on my 42" LCD.
I'm running a MB with an on-board GeForce 7150 and I'm happy with it.
- nitio - 2009-04-05
smcnally75 Wrote:Oh, come on...You can still run stark just fine. Change your fanart to 1280x720 and it will run smooth and still look beautiful. I was wondering why people had all these performance complaints and then realized that I had never replaced my fanart files (I was running them at 960x540 for my xbox). I swapped them out for 1080p fanart and did notice some navigation slowdown so I just resized them to 1280x720 and it is just as smooth now. Not only that, but the back drops don't look any worse to me than when they were 1080p on my 42" LCD.
I'm running a MB with an on-board GeForce 7150 and I'm happy with it.
I have the same results with all fanarts turned off so this might be related but it's not the root cause unfortunately.
- Nazgulled - 2009-04-05
Hitcher Wrote:That makes perfect sense to me.It doesn't to me...
Stark can increase the CPU load more than we are used too, but why do I always get a CPU usage around 30%-50% (no more than 50%) when I run it? Why doesn't it use more CPU and provide a smoother experience?
I would understand this jerkiness if the CPU was always at very high load, but that's not what's happening.
smcnally75 Wrote:Oh, come on...You can still run stark just fine. Change your fanart to 1280x720 and it will run smooth and still look beautiful.Wrong! That maybe the case with you, it's not with other people. It seems you didn't read one of my posts before... The only library I'm currently using is the Music one and all my cover art resolution is 500x500 (sometimes 600x600, but no more than that), way smaller than the 1280x720 resolution you are suggesting.
As for Videos/TV Shows, I use file mode for the time being and if I open TV Shows or Videos in showcase with flow, it's still slow and it doesn't have any fanart or posters to deal with.
So no, that's not the root cause for the jerkiness some of us are having.
If I had tor resize all my fanart and posters to make it smooth, I would, but I don't have fanart, and my posters/cover art are way smaller than that, so...
- warwon - 2009-04-05
HTPC
Windows Vista SP1
2 GB of 833Mhz dual channel RAM
2 GB of Readyboost
Quad Core at 2.4Ghz each
ATI 2600 XT PRO
2 TB of Disc space
Windows is strip to the bones as this computer only does HTPC.
Peformance is great unless I goto all movies, and then it takes a small hit for a few seconds when reading the 1000+ movies
