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Home ? Tech Help ? Excruciatingly slow when editing.

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05/09/2012 11:14:25

herseem
herseem
Posts: 9 		Hi, I was recently given an old computer minus hard disk for me to upgrade to, with 3GHz Athlon 64 and I have 2Gb of DDR400 memory installed. The graphics card is an 8x AGP Radeon 3600 with 400MHz clock and 512Mb of DDR2 memory on board, and has shader 4.01. I'm running Windows XP Home. On most other software everything is pretty zippy, even editing video, but Muvizu is so excruciatingly slow it's virtually unusuable. It's as if I get one frame every 2 seconds, meaning that the mouse just won't even respond for at least 50% of the time. It's as if I'm trying to control the software by pulling on bits of string. It's really painful and difficult.rant

I'm just wondering what the heck I can realistically do to improve the performance without having to upgrade to a new motherboard as I've just gone through the painful process of upgrading to this one. Surely the performance doesn't need to be that bad on hardware that is really quite fast on everything else I do? What could be the cause? All suggestions gratefully received.

Mike
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05/09/2012 12:20:30

jamesriley
jamesriley
Posts: 69 		Hi Herseem,

Sorry to hear you are having problems with running Muvizu.

If you can, you should try and get more RAM. The graphics card you have installed already eats up a lot of memory before Muvizu has even started.

If you haven't already, you should also install the C++, .NET framework and the DirectX 9 from our site.

Turning off the lights in Muvizu will provide some short term help, but in the long run it would be advisable to pick up some RAM.

I hope this helps.

Jim
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05/09/2012 12:45:19

herseem
herseem
Posts: 9 		Hi Jim,

Unfortunately this motherboard won't take more than the 2Gb of RAM it's already got, and the graphics card doesn't allow for any RAM to be added at all. I've just reinstalled Muvizu (for the first time on this computer) last night, and that has all the latest C++ and NET framework. I notice that the website recommends installing directx 9 even if later versions are installed, but I just tried and the installer refuses to install directx 9 when it says a later version is installed.

So how much memory is required to run muvizu at a half-decent speed then? I find it hard to believe that it requires the absolute most tip-top up to date machine with 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of memory on the graphics card, because that would eliminate the majority of the population. And I'm not talking about rendering a whole scene, I'm just talking about the staggeringly slow response when trying to move the camera or the view, or even just change attributes of a character.

Surely I can't be the first person to have some serious performance issues with just basic functions?

Mike
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05/09/2012 13:05:55

glasgowjim
glasgowjim
Posts: 698 		Hi Mike,

Unfortunately PCs of that age will have major difficulty running any program made with the Unreal 3 engine - what I would recommend is downloading the latest drivers from ATI, this can provide a major performance boost. There is also a program called AMD Fusion which can provide some gains, but that is not guaranteed.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/CatalystAGPHotfix.aspx
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/fusion-for-desktops/Pages/overview.aspx

Also remember to close down any unnecessary background programs which may be hogging ram.

Take care,
-Jim
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05/09/2012 15:49:25

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		herseem wrote:
The graphics card is an 8x AGP Radeon 3600 with 400MHz clock and 512Mb of DDR2 memory on board, and has shader 4.01.


Pretty sure that's your problem right there. An ancient AGP video card is not much cop for running a game engine. And worse still, there's no upgrade path - you can get a slightly faster AGP card, but it's still going to be slooooow. I know you don't want to hear it, but you need a new(er) PC with a fast video card. Damn Computer..
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05/09/2012 21:36:55

herseem
herseem
Posts: 9 		That's very disappointing to read about the graphics card / motherboard combination, especially when everything else runs pretty quickly. I've previously had much, much older PCs with built-in motherboard graphics cards, where the graphics chip only had a small heatsink to keep it cool and no fan (ie, very slow in comparison to the HD 3600), and they ran 3D graphics games much faster than muvizu can even open a menu.

My movie editing program, Serif MoviePlus, has different resolutions that can be used for editing, so you can edit at a realistic speed on only a low-powered machine, and then leave the final render to bake overnight. Why can't muvizu do that?

Fusion only works on Vista or above, not XP, and I've downloaded the latest graphics card drivers from AMD, that made no difference. I've just discovered that making it full screen rather than in a window speeds it up a small amount though.
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06/09/2012 00:23:47

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		Muvizu and all these movie making engines are all real time deals so it holds all the info in memory. I personally would have not even thought that the software would even load let alone allow you to use it a little. I dont know the age of the games your running but i would assume any games that are more modern like say skyrim would give that pc a meltdown.

I'm sure there are people out there doing it but I would not run anything like muvizu without at least 4 gig of ram and a newer card that can process things quickly.
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06/09/2012 08:56:14

herseem
herseem
Posts: 9 		Ok, I've effectively solved the problem. Simply closing down Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Chrome does the trick. It now runs just fine.

I'm a bit surprised because I always thought that the purpose of virtual memory was so that the operating system could page out applications that aren't currently doing anything in favour of those that are, and I wouldn't have thought having them running would make THAT much difference, but it really does make a huge difference. I'm not going to have to upgrade yet after all.

Thanks for all the tips and comments.
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06/09/2012 10:03:37

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		herseem, Once Windows starts swapping (i.e. it has run out of physical memory and starts using virtual memory) the machine will pretty much stop - the speed of your hard disk just won't be up to it. Windows XP was fine when you bought the machine , but with all the updates, service packs and AV downloads 2GB is now pretty much the minimum. The AV you use will have a big impact on an older machine - lots of the "Complete home security" editions are really bloaty.
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07/09/2012 13:22:56

glasgowjim
glasgowjim
Posts: 698 		Glad to hear that it is working a bit better - I tried to run Muvizu on a similar machine a while back and it took a lot of effort but it did eventually start working well.

If you go to the task manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) you will be able to see if there are any other programmes hogging ram that you can close.

P.S. Chrome is a notorious memory hog for older machines, as each tab runs as a separate process.
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