RR Slow Screen Changes...

ThunderStick · 09-13-2009, 09:37 AM

RR is not known for super fast screen changes. This I know. But it seems to be getting slower. It is very noticeable on my carpc. There is a 1 second or more lag between button press and command processing. I don't have a lot of plugins running and Really don't do much else with it besides listen to music.

My specs are...
Compaq Laptop N610C
New Age Skin
P4 1.8 ghz
500 mb ram
40 gb HD
Windows XP

Any ideas would be helpful.

agiorgitis · 09-13-2009, 09:45 AM

Try making your screen jpgs smaller or preload the screens you use more often

guino · 09-13-2009, 10:06 AM

This is virtually inevitable as more features are added to the skin support. A lot has been improved from the start, but a lot of skin objects/features have also been added. Preloading screens is a good idea, smaller image files may also help. RR still way faster than Mediacar which uses the same type of skinning. I have thought of making some sort of background caching of images, but there's no telling how well that would work.

Sonicxtacy02 · 09-13-2009, 10:24 AM

are you using transitions? turn em off they only delay screen loads. RR is no slower than any of its competitors honestly... well unless you're comparing it to RevFE.. then its dog slow lol

justchat_1 · 09-13-2009, 12:05 PM

Its written in vb and uses text commands...how fast do you think its gonna be

toyotatyrant · 09-13-2009, 01:37 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by ThunderStick

RR is not known for super fast screen changes. This I know. But it seems to be getting slower. It is very noticeable on my carpc. There is a 1 second or more lag between button press and command processing. I don't have a lot of plugins running and Really don't do much else with it besides listen to music.

My specs are...
Compaq Laptop N610C
New Age Skin
P4 1.8 ghz
500 mb ram
40 gb HD
Windows XP

Any ideas would be helpful.

Yo Thunder. There is not really anything you can do about your processor speed, BUT I really think you should absolutely upgrade that memory to 1 gig (which is the max that laptop's motherboard will accept).

Windows XP running 512 MB of RAM is like giving a man just enough food and water to survive and expecting him to run a 10 K marathon at the same time, especially because that memory is also shared for video. Plus newer program versions demanding higher amounts of memory make it worst because you have several memory hungry mouths to feed in the OS, Video rendering demands, RR, and Winamp not including whatever else runs in the background that you may not know about.

You won't believe the number of customers of mine that avoid or greatly delay buying new pc's because I convince them to max out their RAM. I've seen computers written off as unusable come to life like a phoenix with a ram upgrade. I think the memory upgrade will do your system a huge amount of justice. Now is the perfect time to do it because RAM is cheap at the moment. A 1 gig stick for that laptop is currently running between $33 to $42 bucks on newegg.com as of this post. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...21113&name=1GB I think it will help.

drewbp · 09-13-2009, 01:57 PM

Make sure your laptop is running at full speed all the time. In my limited experience, even when the system power options are set for always on, or desktop, the cpu speed is throttled by speed step to use only what is needed. I use a small utility called speedswitch xp which allows you to set processor speed to max all the time. Not good if you are using battery power, but if you are drawing external power like when you are in the car, there is no harm.

justchat_1 · 09-13-2009, 02:45 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by drewbp

I use a small utility called speedswitch xp which allows you to set processor speed to max all the time. Not good if you are using battery power, but if you are drawing external power like when you are in the car, there is no harm.

The only time a cpu will throttle (aka run at a lower speed despite cpu load) other then from power settings is from a thermal condition. I don't know about you but I would rather have a cpu slow down then just cook if overheated. And while yes CPUs have a thermal trip that should shut the pc down immediately when it hits critical temp its not something you want to rely on.

JohnWPB · 09-13-2009, 02:52 PM

Also, check out THIS FAQ I did quite some time ago. There are some great tips collected from the forums, as well as experience from my own tweaking.

ThunderStick · 09-13-2009, 07:12 PM

Wow thanks for all the help.
Recently I stepped down system wise. Went from a Dell with a P4 2.8ghz and 1gb of ram to my laptop. The dells I was using kept popping capacitors and it gets annoying after a while. Once a month I was replacing caps on the stupid things.
Anyway.. I know ram will help just wondering if there were any other tweaks or ideas.
Ive been pouring money in to my car lately and just need to slow the spending.
Preloading screens would probably help a little, ill keep working on this seems like a me issue.

JohnWPB · 09-13-2009, 08:46 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by ThunderStick

Anyway.. I know ram will help just wondering if there were any other tweaks or ideas.

The link in my last post is full of "tweaks & ideas"

toyotatyrant · 09-14-2009, 03:41 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by ThunderStick

Wow thanks for all the help.
Recently I stepped down system wise. Went from a Dell with a P4 2.8ghz and 1gb of ram to my laptop. The dells I was using kept popping capacitors and it gets annoying after a while. Once a month I was replacing caps on the stupid things.
Anyway.. I know ram will help just wondering if there were any other tweaks or ideas.
Ive been pouring money in to my car lately and just need to slow the spending.
Preloading screens would probably help a little, ill keep working on this seems like a me issue.

Thunder,

Another thing you can try that may or may not help, is to make a memory dump shortcut. What it will do is release any used memory from any idle processes that may be running. It is sort of a band-aid for slower systems but it might help some.

to make one...

1. right-click on your desktop and click "new"

2. then click "shortcut"

3. Next a dialog box will come up asking for a location. Type "%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" (leave the quotes out).

4. Click "next" and name your shortcut. For example I name mine Memory Dump.

5. Click "finish" and a new Icon should be on your desktop with the name you gave it.

As a side note you can change that icon's appearance to suit your tastes.

From there whenever you think things are getting sluggish, you can click that icon and the computer will clear the memory from all the idle processes running on the pc hopefully freeing up a little ram that RideRunner can put to use.

justchat_1 · 09-14-2009, 04:17 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by toyotatyrant

Thunder,

Another thing you can try that may or may not help, is to make a memory dump shortcut. What it will do is release any used memory from any idle processes that may be running. It is sort of a band-aid for slower systems but it might help some.

to make one...

1. right-click on your desktop and click "new"

2. then click "shortcut"

3. Next a dialog box will come up asking for a location. Type "%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" (leave the quotes out).

4. Click "next" and name your shortcut. For example I name mine Memory Dump.

5. Click "finish" and a new Icon should be on your desktop with the name you gave it.

As a side note you can change that icon's appearance to suit your tastes.

From there whenever you think things are getting sluggish, you can click that icon and the computer will clear the memory from all the idle processes running on the pc hopefully freeing up a little ram that RideRunner can put to use.

Check your sources....It actually does quite the opposite. Theres an article on this that microsoft pulled when they stopped distributing bootvis.

processidletasks sends a system wide event that the processor is idle. Any programs that do things while idle will then load up and perform their task (aka memory usage will increase). Many of these functions run hourly or every other day...and do so at a lower priority so it really has no effect.

ThunderStick · 09-14-2009, 05:23 PM

I figure pre-loading screens is probably the best option..
Thanks for the help

Blue ZX3 · 09-14-2009, 06:12 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by toyotatyrant

Thunder,
Another thing you can try that may or may not help, is to make a memory dump shortcut. What it will do is release any used memory from any idle processes that may be running. It is sort of a band-aid for slower systems but it might help some.

Hehe...my RRMedia has this builtin and been there since the begining, every ~5mins it dumps unused mem...

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