Windows XP Home edition/SScreen causing 100% CPU usage?
 

Have had SS for quite awhile now...(registered user)...but am having some
>problems with overheating of my new Sony Vaio Laptop /ATI mobility Radeon
>7500 card...SS looks great and the fish and bubbles are smooooth......but
>when I leave SS on for more than 5 mins....my CPU ends up running at 98-99 %! according
>to the Windows task manager.... and gets warm......... then the fans kick in...is
>this normal and is it ok? I have read some of the posts concerning this,
>but don't see a fix for it and wonder how healthy this can be for the cpu?
>
>Also, why can I only get 59-60 fps? I can only get that when the box is
>unchecked to keep it at 60 fps..if I check that box..it then drops down to
>50 or less. Running Windows XP/home version...1024/768/16bit/Refresh is
>set at 200hz. This is a Sony Vaio GRX-520 w/1.60 M Pentium 4 Mobile chip.
>

Thanks,

jdc

The limit to 60 will generally drop it below if you are already at 60.

The limit to 60 is supposed to cut down on CPU usage, but I haven't seen one system yet that did not run at nearly 100% CPU with the SS. No matter how much memory or CPU or what you check.

You can't run anything as intense as the aquarium on a laptop for a long period of time without asking for trouble either immediately or in the long run.

It's not that it's so intense (my P2 266 here at work gets ~37fps at 1152x864 after I added an old Voodoo3 from home) so much as it isn't as optimized as it should be. It'll always keep trying to do more, even if you limit it to 60fps, it eats CPU cycles for breakfest, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack! :) IMHO, this problem should be addressed before anything else...

It runs the video up and pushes the CPU. That's intense for system resources. The programming reasons are irrelevant. That's hard on any PC, but down right destabalizing on a laptop.

You're right, I just meant intense to mean that it doesn't require that much power to look its best. I don't think the programming reasons are irrelevent though, as they are the reason it's so "intense." A screen saver that doesn't need to be such a resource hog shouldn't be, that's all.

Prolific has been working on this for some time. It might help if anyone knows of any realtime 3D apps which do not use all available clock cycles. All of the Micosoft examples do.

They are irrelevant to the original question. Thats all.

Jim, the app just needs to give up the cpu for a millisecond or two. the OS will then allow a context change to the next cpu-intensive app, if there is one, or just idle if there isn't. there are a few ways to make that happen. Sleep and WaitForSingleObject calls for Windows come to mind off-hand. you can use Sleep if the "next frame to be displayed" calculation is time-based. WaitForSingleObject is used in a DirectX 8 SDK sample called DM Boids. the app uses it to sync the video with the audio and as a result of the WaitForSingleObject call the cpu usage goes from 100% to just a few percent, depending upon your system of course.

That's exactly what I do.

When the "Limit frame rate to 60" option is chosen, the Aquarium goes to sleep if 1/60 second has not passed, returning control to the OS.

A side note: After returning control to Windows, the Aquarium has no idea when it will get some more clock cycles. It has very low priority, so all other apps are allowed to take all the clock time they need before the Aquarium gets any. That's why "Limit frame rate to 60" seldom results in 60 fps.

sorry for stating the obvious Jim. i should have known that's what you had used. it's kind of hard to help w/o code to look at.

one thing i did notice is that the kernel processing percentage for the SS goes from about 1/2 to 3/4 when selecting the "limit framerate to 60" option. so the app is doing "something" many more times "inside" the os with the option on than w/o it. if that's the Sleep call, then something must be causing it to stay inside the api code but not actually "sleep".

now i can see why you say Prolific has been working on this for a while. weird!

Have any of you noticed any bad affects it has on your pc by running the screensaver all day? Apart from getting warmer.

Steven,

Mine has ran for 2+ years 24/7 when I am not on the computer. I haven't had any ill effects from this that I can find. :) For about the last month I set it to sleep after 1 hour, but before that it was continious, and no problems.

We realize this is an old thread, but worth revisiting.

The next major update to the Aquarium, which is expected in about a month, will address this issue. How's 8-10% CPU usage sound? :)

One month you say? really? is there another message thread talking about this update?

Thanks.

Once everything gets sorted out and detailed, the "Update" button on the header will carry news about upcoming events and immediate things on the horizon. It will make it much easier for people to just check there for info and then post about it elsewhere. :)

GREAT NEWS, been along time since any updates? What will the major improvements be with the new release?

The answer is nothing major.

As much as it might cause gastric distress to our forum members, the Marine Aquarium is not the focus right now.

Prolific's contributions to the Marine Aquarium, namely:

• Crystal Aquarium
• Marine Aquarium Time
• Unified Codebase allowing Regular, Widescreen, Dual Monitor, Crystal, Time, German, Japanese, etc. Aquariums to be supported without duplication of efforts.
• A complex (perhaps a bit overwhelming) new development platform allowing realistic physics, collision avoidance, individual fish behaviors, etc.
• An artistic and development partnership with Jim to help the Aquarium and other products move forward as quickly as is humanly possible without sacrificing quality. Jim has approval on all changes Prolific makes to the Aquarium.

are what should accelerate things this year. There is no question that 2002 was the doldrums for the Aquarium, but that was not idle time.

Regardless of all the booing and hissing Prolific might get here, the corporate involvement is really helping Jim accomplish his goals which are (contrary to popular belief) not to create the best damned Aquarium around but to invest in the production a future CGI film.

Jim proved that the best approach to a realistic Aquarium was not to program it to death and then let the art be an afterthought, but to create the art and then try to create an Aquarium with intuition instead of long division.

Now Prolific has taken what Jim created and, without losing anything, added complex programming to it which resolves issues people have been concerned about for a long time.

I think some people are going to have to eat their words when the Goldfish Aquarium comes out. Already, Prolific's Flag-themed screen saver is surprisingly realistic.

I hate to keep adding these bits of info at the tail-end of different topics. And I'm sure you guys hate having to read every topic thoroughly to figure out what's going on. The forthcoming News/Updates system will resolve this. Every new bit of info about the Aquarium and other products will be in one cohesive place again.


There will hopefully be more info about Marine Aquarium 2 in the next few days. I've been told to expect more than just "new code" and "a new Queen Angel". :D

Is this done by Prolific or by Jim?



Also took a look at the Flag screensaver, the flags could use some bumpmapping or whatever to give it a more realistic feal, I realize its still in beta and the flag movement looks really good.

Everything under "Prolific's contributions to the Marine Aquarium, namely:" was written/created 100% by Prolific.

The way it's been described to me (I admit I am extrapolating a LOT from it which may be inaccurate) is that there are now a set of behavior modules available to Jim, including 'tank region affinity' and 'fish speed'.

Plus there is the ability to write many more behavior modules even for just 1 fish (for instance the Percula Clownfish 'wiggle') or things that we haven't even thought of yet.

The tank region affinity settings would allow regions of the tank to be marked as 'preferable' to the fish and other regions to be marked as 'not preferable'. With such a module, making certain fish bottom-feeders or making a percula clown rarely stray from its anemone (even so far as assigning different anemones to different clownfishes) would be possible without months of work.

1.0 will apparently have bump mapping so you can see the stitching, etc. And the randomness is being worked on.

I can't wait for some sound effects, hopefully generated in real-time rather than being 2-3 samples.