Video Card Destroyer...

[Ken Cox]

Dave

see

http://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=36573#post_36573

I had to do the rename trick - my system bogged right down -- had to do some searching to pin it down

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

The configuration of the demo which I originally posted simply wouldn't play right even on my 8800GT so I disabled snowfall inside six of the eight ornaments because they were only visible as a whole from such a distance as to make their simultaneous action superfluous. With only two at a time (per slide) animated, the show played correctly and smoothly on my 8800GT but was jerky on my wife's overclocked 8600 GT. I then substituted the revised edition for the original.

Originally I thought we might learn something from the "Video Card Killer" version, but quickly realized that it really served a quite limited purpose because almost no one would be able to play it. If even one of our members had a really top-end video card, we might learn something. However, to my knowledge, no one really has anything much more powerful than my 8800 GT.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

I have now had a chance to try this demo on my Desktop and also read your post #18.

I must admit to a little confusion since your Title for this Thread (and post #1) and the contents of post #18 seem to be suggesting different things, but I understand.

Anyway, my desktop played the demo equally well (Dual Core 3Ghz Media PC; 2Gb RAM; nVidia 7600 GS with 512RAM).

DG

[Gilio]

Lin, on my new videocard nvidia EN9400GT 512mb works fantastic, no problem at all.

Merry Christmas, in Holland we have a lot of snow at the moment.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Gilio,

And a Merry Christmas to you and your family also! That snow seems to be traveling around the world. A week ago we had lots here in Colorado, but now it's moved East and the eastern part of the U.S. is buried in it. Stay warm my friend!

Best regards,

Lin

Lin, on my new videocard nvidia EN9400GT 512mb works fantastic, no problem at all.

Merry Christmas, in Holland we have a lot of snow at the moment.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Luc,

Thanks for the report - it's a bit taxing on some video cards. I toned it down a bit, but still pretty heavy on the graphics.

Best regards and Merry Christmas,

Lin

Hi Lin,

I played the MAC version on my iMAC 2,7 Hhz 4 G ram ATI radion with 256 mB video.

In the zoom effects the snow falls in short jumps.

For the rest it played fairly well

Greetings

Luc

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

It seems that's part of the issue indeed. There are many variables which appear to react in different ways to complicate trying to unravel this mystery.

Best regards and Merry Christmas,

Lin

Lin,

Is the as yet unconfirmed performance factor related to the fact that some (all?) video cards will, if needed, take some main RAM memory to supplement their onboard memory? My nVidia 8400GS has 256MB on board but will share up to a further 768MB.

So, if it does take some RAM, then the speed of the RAM, the speed of the internal bus, the other activity (if any) in the PC which also wants RAM and possibly even the speed of the main processor could all come into play. And if the system is busy enough and RAM-constrained enough to be very actively paging, then the speed of the paging disk and the data bus it uses will also be factors.

As I'm sure you are aware, PC performance is a minefield because everything interacts together. The only golden rule is that it cannot go faster than its slowest component.

regards,

Peter

[davegee]

Ken,

The reason I was asking about Anti-Virus was that my seemingly "weak" desktop machine does NOT have Anti-Virus of any sort installed - it is not connected to the Internet.

Consequently, I am able to run quite a few programmes without glitches wheras others with much better machines than mine get bogged down. Nik NX2 for instance is a known memory hog but my machine runs it smoothly and quite fast while others with more powerful machines complain about its slowness.

I keep coming back to Anti-Virus and such programmes which, whilst necessary for the Internet, seem to slow things down considerably. Where this is an issue turning it off temporarily does not seem to make a difference. The fact that, on my desktop, it has never been there seems to be a deciding factor.

Just a thought,

DG