PC still playing Amiga catchup

[stefcep2]

Guys, to be honest some of the technical detail you've gone into is over my head.  You are probably right about how more advanced modern PC operating systems are, in particular how their multitasking systems and memory protection ought to make for a more responsive system.  What i can argue though is what I see in front of me with my machines.

So I got out the 060 A1200 and just had a play with it.  No executive or other speed hacks.  I set up a Real 3D animation render in 640x480 24 bit shadows, reflection, refraction antialias, saving each frame progressively to hard drive, basically all knobs on.  I screen flicked to workbench: it was instantaneous.  On workbech screen (8 colors 640x480 productivity) the mouse pointer moved as smoothly and precisley as if nothing was happening in the background. I double clicked my hard drive partition with 25 drawers, no delay in opening and displaying them in window. I started unarchiving a 10 meg zip file to hard drive with Real 3D still going. I closed the window, the close gadget responded instanteously to my mouse click.  Opened the partition again, no delay.  Opened the games drawer with 28 drawers, no delay in displaying the window contents. Dragged the window, no delay in  redrawing the window.  Right clicked to bring the Workbench menu bar, which has 11 menues, many with submenu. Sliding the mouse pointer along the menu bar, each menu drawn instaneously drawn, no delay, no screen garbage left behind, no overlap of each menu as a new one is erased, no sticking or skipping of the mouse pointer as I slide it down each menu, mouse pointer totally smooth. Don't forget both Real 3D and the archiver are writing periodically to the internal hard drive.

Yes it takes longer to do the render in Real, it takes longer to unarchive the zip, but THE SYSTEM is still very snappy.

Contrast this with Vista on my 2.4 ghhz c2D with 4 gig ram and 7200 rpm hard drive and 256 meg Geforce 9200: The start menu jerks up, especially if I select the orb whenever anything is being read/written to the hard drive. The mouse pointer jerks as well, disappearing and reappearing somewhere unpredictably.  The system cannot highlight each item in the start menu as I move my mouse pointer, so it "jumps", ie it can't keep with the mouse pointer.  I am in Firefox on its menu bar and I move my mouse along the menu bar: I can see momentarily an overlap of the new menu and the previous menu.  Mind you, I have not started any CPU intensive task in the background.  It just feels like the GUI is covered in molasses, a crap user experience. And no its not just MY laptop, I see it on my brothers vista laptop as well. I don't care how many processes it has to do in the bachground that I don't know about, its simply no longer good enough, we should be well and truly past this rubbish with the hardware specs we are running.  So yeah you can argue about all the technical advancements of the modern PC and its modern OS's, at the end of the day, what matters is what I see and feel in front of me.

[stefcep2]

Try running your raytracer at priority 20. And in the case that it uses a separate process for rendering, bump that up to 20.

Why?  I want a responsive system, and I have that be default.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep2

Try playing an MP3 or stream net radio on your A1200, and simultaneously use a web browser, or do something disk related/open drawers. Anything that requires a large chunk of CPU will slow it right down.

I was rendering a 3d animation in a solid renderer, Real 3D, each frame was being saved to hard drive progressively, flicked to the workbench screen, unarchiving a zip file to hard drive, opening and closing a partition on the same hard drive with 30-odd drawers repeatedly, moving the open window on screen, opening the menu bar in workbench and selecting different menus with no perceptible slow down with any of these system functions.  The 68060 doesn't even work up a sweat playing a 128 bit rate mp3.  

I used to listen to mp3's with Ibrowse browsing on an A4000 68060 with a CV64 over a hypercom serial port years ago, basic system functions like opening drawers, menus, mouse movement were unaffected.

[stefcep2]

With several concurrent CPU intensive processes running, the system (while perhaps still usable) will become less responsive. Especially an A1200 with slow IDE/PCMCIA interfaces. While it may be acceptable to you, using the CPU to decode MP3 has an obvious impact on system performance, period. Try listening to a 320k net stream with a DSP card, then switch back to CPU decoding and tell me there's no difference... LOL.

"I can do it without problems" isn't the same as "it doesn't slow down at all"

But don't let me stop you guys from having fun with your magic A1200's.

But thats simply because 15 year old motorolla cpu's are running at 50 mhz not 3000 mhz.  Even so core system functions are extremely snappy, if there is slow down its not perceptible in the example I gave.

Much of what is done on PC's these days boils down to number crunching: decoding/encoding music/video/archives and yes a 3000 mhz cpu will do it faster than a 50 mhz.  Big deal.  Its not the OS that makes your 3000 mhz CPU run at 3000 mhz, but it is the OS that decides if playing back that video is more important than a command you've issued.

[stefcep2]

Btw stefcep2, I have to say I really don't recognise the stutter you're talking about.

The stutter is there on my machine, but I'm certain if i could just get a video card that had 512 MB video ram, or a quadcore CPU or a SSD it would disappear..

Wasn't there a couple of DJ's in the UK that got a top 10 dance hit using two copies of Protracker running on an A500 ans an A1200 plus TV's?  Ultimately having all the technology in the world isn't gonna make your music magically better if you don't have the talent.  People have been listening to and creating fantastic recorded music for a lot longer than firewire's been around.  In fact i read that one of the fastest growing areas in music sales is vinyl records: the sound has more warmth, its more natural, and in terms of playback, valve amps are still the bees knees. All of this is analogue. For a lot of people, despite all the wiz bang PC hardware and software, analogue music is still the benchmark.

As far as video goes, I watch a fair bit of football (soccer) on digital pay TV on a plasma: I hate the way playfield lines/markings have visible stepping  when they are not vertical or horizontal to the camera and the way players have a "halo" of compression artifacts around them as they move on the ground.  Sometimes even the grass appears to move with a slight camera movement as the technology interpolates different regions of grass color.  

Why? Because the real world isn't a digital one. Digital sound, and video will always be an approximation.

[stefcep2]

Are you using Aero by any chance?



Have to say, from my own perspective, digital terrestrial TV (freeview), both in terms of sound and picture quality is very much clearer here then analogue is. Not quite the difference between VHS and DVD, but not far off. Not ever having owned a massive telly I can't comment on artifacts. Perhaps you should have the TV dialed in professionally. From what you're describing it sounds like your contrast, brightness and sharpness levels are set waaay too high.

 i DID have aero on, but even with it off, especially when there is any hard drive activity, there is a delay-albeit slight- in the start menu opening or menus dropping down from the menu bar.  Look its not something that i can't live with it, it just doesn't feel as responsive as what I am used to on Amiga, and IMO with all the raw hardware power, I expect it not to happen at all.  Amy be my expectations are too high.

Digital no doubt is clearer in the sense that you don't get any ghosting, or snow like you do with analogue when the signal weakens.

What I'm talking about are definately digital compression artifacts.  I see the same thing with display TV's at retailers, and Pay TV booths in shopping centres, even with the newest panels with 1080i.  Its due to the way that fast moving objects like football players
are displayed in front of the background grass: there's a lot of quick variation in color between where the outline of the player ends and the background begins, and the system has to interpolate an in-between color or two, resulting in a fringe.  If you also look at the crowd moving past in the background as the camera follows a player, its basically shown as blocky incomprehensible mess, again due to compression interpolation of fast moving regions.  This is also visible on DVD IF you have fast moving action like watching sport.This has been especially noticeable in the Confederations Cup in Sth Africa at the moment.  Initially I thought it was my TV doing the scaling but it happens on all the TV's I've watched on display

[stefcep2]

double check to make sure dma is on on your hard drives. barring that make sure you are using manufacturer drivers and not default ones from microsoft(they suck)

yea this is normal behavior for an lcd tv. it has to do with the responsiveness in color changing. the tv can't keep up with the changes. they are getting better but have not beaten the responsiveness of a crt yet. i personally still use a hdtv crt atm. and just as the leander said upscaling plays it's part in this issue too.

I look at the drivers for the hard drive, thanks, I am using MS ones.

HDTV CRT: Geez you would've paid a packet for that new.  I've read the best CRT can still outdo the best plasma/LCD for responsiveness, color balance and sharpness.  Do tell: what model is it?