Video Card issue...help!

[vamparella]

I built a new system ..(my first build) with the following specs:
-DFI motherboard for AMD 754 CPU
-AMD Atlon 64 2800
-Sapphire ATI Radeon 9250 Video card 128MB DDR, 8X AGP
-1 G DDR Ram

I bought the system mainly to support my animation work. I use a software called TOONBOOM for 2D animation.

Imagine a grid or spreadsheet where each row is considred a frame. You create your work frame by frame ... so one column would have frames for a boy walking for example while the next column would have the background sceneray (homes trees etc).

The problem I'm having is this ... when I play back my work at (30 frame per second) standard speed ..as I increase the size of the drawing on the screen it slows down the animation. In addition as it slows down the system hogs my cpu usage percentage. So that when I make the animation size 100% to fill the screen ..my CPU usage is pegged at 100% and the characters move as if I'm playing the animation at 5fps instead of 30fps. (Please note this occurs before the images are rendered).

This situation also occurred when I was using the software on my old Pentium3 ..but since the software called for minimum reqirements of 750MHZ CPU speed and my old machine ran at only 500MHZ with 384MB ram I thought the limitation was my old P3.

My new machine has absolutely nothing on it but windows XP (SP2), Zone Alarm firewall, Panda virus protector ...thats it! In addition I've only been online twice with this machine which is only 3 weeks old now.

I have tried making adjustments to the AGP settings in the system BIOS, downloaded the latest drivers from ATI and Sapphire ..but nothing works!!

The problems I encountered should in no way challenge my new machine ...no way!!

I ran a few example with 200 to 300 frames running in a loop... in real time thats 10 seconds of film! It takes 1,000s of frames to produce 15 minutes of film... so no way do I expect this to be happening!

Also I noticed that the more graphic intensive the frames are the greater chance of encountering this problem. For example ..if I just played the frames with the boy walking ..it behaves as expected ..normal speed with less than 15% CPU usage at full size. But if I run the still frames of the background drawings with homes, hills trees etc.. thats when my system boggs down!! In fact just playing the still background images cause by CPU usage to increase to 90+% despite the fact that there is no movement...just frames of the same picture running in succession.
In addition, if I play the frames in a continuos loop blow it up full size my CPU usage pegs at 100% ..if i minimize the drawing (while still playing) ..the CPU usage is less than 5%!

ATI and Sapphire wiill not respond to my e-mails, and the software vendor is confident that this is my system problem.

I think it is a video card issue, can anybody help?

[jimmy5k]

someone else is wildly more qualified to answer this, but here i go.

ATI cards have specific instruction sets in them so the applications that come with ati products run really well. this "toon"animation application is 2d and probably not geared for ati products.

and most cards nowadays focus on speeding 3d graphics, not 2d. i think you're stuck with your cpu being the bottleneck when running this program.

"so how'd i do?"

[Paleo Pete]

I'll move this to Multimedia, probably more appropriate there.

Get us soem more detailed system specs, I'm sure the guys here will want to know more.

The first thing I would do is back off the XP graphics, XP hogs about 30MB of your system and video RAM just displaying the garish XP start menu (I HATE that) and desktop. Get rid of wallpaper and use a solid color. The video card redraws the screen 60-72 times per second (refresh rate) and the more graphics it has to deal with the more it's going to slow everything else down.

Settings are at:
Taskbar- Right click the task bar and click Properties. Uncheck "Hide inactive Icons" so you can se everything that's running. Click the other tab, don't have XP in front of me and can't remember...and I Just did this setting yesterday...anyway at the bottom section click the "Windows Classic" button.
Desktop- Right click an empty area of the desktop and click "Properties". The first tab [Themes I think] open by default should have Windows Classic also listed. Check it and click Apply.

You can also shut off menu animations and a couple other things like that, but the ones listed here are the ones that hog the most resources.

You just freed up 30-40MB for the rest of the system to play with. Now go to the "Settings" tab in Display Properties. [See, that's why I didn't say click OK up above...hehe] in the Settings tab you want whatever desktop rresolution you like - mine , for example is 1024x768 on a 17" monitor, (but I'm running Linux, not Windows, my Windows98 machine is set the same though) and set the color depth to 16 bit True color at highest. Your eyes can't tell any difference at any higher color depth.

Some of the more media inclined folks wll have other suggestions, but just getting the basic settings "dumbed down" will help some. XP grabs all the memory you can hand it and seems to usually want more, personally I would run Windows 2000 for any graphics oriented usage. Then again I'd run Win2000 anyway, I've hated XP since the day I first saw it...but for graphics intensive usage, XP already hogs way too much of the system's horsepower. Win2000, win98 or Linux would be lots better.

[vamparella]

I did all the moves you suggested and guess what? It made matters worse ...much worse! Now even when the picture is small the system is crawling ..WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

I appreciate your help ..but with 1G ram and absolutely nothing on my machine even with XP hogging the memory there is no way this should have challenged my system. If it did then there is no way my P3 at 500mhz with 384M ram and running XP with every application known to man kind loaded on would have been able to run this software.

(*^$(&*^#($) I bought this machine ...JUST TO RUN THIS APPLICATION!!

I have Windows 2000 ....in fact I loaded this first then upgraded to XP and loaded SP2 ..what is the best way to get back to Win 2000? And with Win 2000 on my system am i now more vulnerable to viruses if i go online with this machine?

[i an not a nerd]

Well, windows XP is basically a user frendly version of win 2000. The security patches with a decent firewall/antivirus should take care of security threats.

If you've installed Windows XP over Windows 2000, you may be able to uninstall it using Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. Unfortunately, the uninstall feature typically doesn't work or leaves the computer in an unusable state.

Since some new versions of Windows install new file systems, in addition to replacing most, if not all the program and support files, I would recommend that you simply reformat your hard disk in order to completely remove XP.

[gary_hendricks]

I agree with Mike, try reformatting your hard disk and remove XP.

[i an not a nerd]

Yay, someone who calls me Mike!

[vamparella]

At least Reformatting works. I am now on Win 2000 with the latest SP4 upgrade and guess what? THE APPLICATION STILL DOES NOT WORK!! I have gone to AMD downloaded their suggested optimizing utilities for my CPU ..and no luck.

This STINKING APPLICATION INSISTS ON MAXING OUT MY CPU USAGE to play just 3 ...JUST 3 STINKING FRAMES!! :o :mad:

The application vendor has bailed out on me ..the video card vendor also is running scared ..making some cop-out suggesting to buy a new card. What are the odds that the card in my new system and my old system are both damaged ..since both system has the same problem with the application?

The application is bought online after given a code you will be able to down load it ..but in the forums ..no one else seems to have the same problem!!

[bassman]

Vamparella,
Before you spend money on another vid card, I think we need figure out why you can not install the proper drivers on this system. I think THAT is the root of all your problem.
You have enough system resources to run a full video editing/production program with other things in the background. With the two different threads going, it is difficult to figure out exactly where you are in this. Let’s try to get to current status ;)
Correct me if I am wrong on any of the following:

You are trying to run a medium graphics intensive animation program.
You have run this program slowly but successfully on a less them optimal machine.
You built a new machine based on DFI/AMD 64/1 Gig ram
You are currently running a clean install of W2000
You are unable to install the proper motherboard drivers, (video, modem, ? )
You are unable to install the drivers for your AGP card
You are getting no response from any vendors.
You have not found any reference to a similar problem in software forums

I can’t think of anything else now so if there is other pertinent info, please let us know. Lets get a point of full understanding and disclosure before asking more questions ;) I can certainly understand you frustration but will ask that WE ALL keep our cool and let’s get this thing figured out :D ;) One thread, all questions answered, detailed recounts of messages you get from the computer, and as much detail as possible on what you have tried.

[ski]

Also, make sure that your video card's acceleration setting is maxed out, and disable antialiasing and anisotropic filtering in the video card's software.

Another thing to consider is that your video card is a 'value' card, i.e., it has a very slow chipset, which can slow down rendering rates.