Slow graphics

Ricardo · Post by **Ricardo** » Wed Jan 09, 2002 6:09 pm

Can anyone help me? Recently I installed a new Matrox G550 graphics card. Now all runs well until I load Cool Edit 2000, on top of Pulsar 3.01 and Cubase 2.7r.Everything becomes really slow on the screen making mixing impossible. I don't know if it's the new card, Pulsar 3.01 or if I need to upgrade my pIII 500 to cope with all the new software. I already have 384 Mb RAM.
P.S. Using dual screens makes no difference.
Thanks

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Wed Jan 09, 2002 6:32 pm

Check for the following:
-set G550 busmaster off
-screen to 16bit (and high frequency, relax your eyes)
-video hardware acceleration to full
-disable screensavers, (rotating) wallpapers
-desktop effects: optimise for performance.

These might not sove your problem, but maybe...

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Thu Jan 10, 2002 1:09 am

i have this problem too, but only in pulsar window, and when my cpu goes over 65%?! then start clicking sound too - only in pulsar window.
when i go in cubase everything is normal - picture and sound!?
sandro

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: sandrob on 2002-01-10 01:10 ]</font>

Signal X · Post by **Signal X** » Thu Jan 10, 2002 3:48 am

Same problem here.
Pulsar 3.01, Win 2K, Matrox G550, ASUS P4B 1G RAM.
While Cubase CPU performane goes up to 30%-40%,
Pulsar graphics go very slow.
I checked the same situation under Win98 and it worked perfect.
Is it Win 2k? graphic driver? Pulsar software?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Thu Jan 10, 2002 9:09 am

You can get extremely high CPU usage if you drag the graphics around in Pulsar. Put the synths where you want them, and make screen sets; avoid dragging anything around with your mouse. Assign hardware knobs/faders to the knobs you keep mousing around with and save these settings. Control Pulsar only from your sequencer, keyboard, and fader/knobs.

I have heard some abnormally high CPU usage with Win2k a few times now. To be honest if you want to run an NT operating system, you should really run WinXP it is a lot better for music.

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Thu Jan 10, 2002 12:57 pm

what is extremely high CPU usage?!
sandro

Ricardo · Post by **Ricardo** » Thu Jan 10, 2002 5:15 pm

Thanks to all who answered.
Atomic-setting bus master off actually made things worse! I don't know why.But the the other things helped a little.Thanx.
Subhuman- I understand what you're saying but don't know how to assign keyboard commands to things like faders etc. Any good resources you know of?
Cheers Pulsarians

bigBadWolf · Post by **bigBadWolf** » Thu Jan 17, 2002 2:46 pm

Up until recently, I have had hardware acceleration at maximum. But after reading a few bits and pieces from various GOOGLE searches on system crashes, I tried setting it to lowest ( i also tried second lowest ). Dunno if it is connected but I am getting fewer (ie none !) system hangs/ blue screens.

....continuing the search for the perfect system set-up

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Thu Jan 17, 2002 3:12 pm

Hmm, you should have no problem with "Graphics Acceleration" at full (I had a completely stable CUSL2+G450 AGP machine with this on Full), provided you have an AGP video card... but if it helps you, go with it.

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Jan 17, 2002 3:13 pm

what is extremely high CPU usage?!
When I control Pulsar via Remote Desktop (only Pulsar has it) my cpu on the BX board goes way up, to 50-60%! On the local machine, this is not the case. The difference is the Hardware Acceleration. On a LAN, my Matrox G450me doesn't perform the acceleration, but all the work is done by my cpu.

I have had hardware acceleration at maximum, which saves me BSOD's
Hardware Acceleration will assign more tasks to your Video card's processor. If you encounter crashes due to that, you could reduce the Acceleration. But that's not ideal: now the cpu does the calculations, instead of the video processor.

Your video processor (=dsp)can do tasks just like Creamware dsp's boost your sequencer's capabilities. Of course, Creamware's DSP's are more dynamic

Using more DSP to reliefs your CPU.

Because DSP's are dedicated, they often offer way better performance than cpu's. To compare: 1 Sharp DSP (on Creamware card) has as much audio processing power as a Mac G3 450. And the DSP's run at only 66MHz!

If you encounter video problems, you can play with that Acceleration slider. But if you don't encouter problems, set if to full.

You can relief your video DSP and it's RAM by disabling backgrounds, animations,... you know the list.

Enjoy Pulsaring!

the atom.