Forum - Tech Help - Very slow on moderate PC wih basic graphics - Messages

Message from glasgowjim

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:26:13 GMT

Hi Anthony, I am glad you got Muvizu working well, and thanks for letting us know which GPU you are using.

These charts can be quite useful for seeing how a new card would perform - I have chosen Arkham City as that is based upon the Unreal 3 Engine (I chose the chart with the DX11 and Anti-Aliasing options turned on too, as they do make a difference in video output)

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/10-Batman-Arkham-City-DirectX-11-B-Performance,2959.html

Anything that is over 30fps should be usable, but obviously the higher the performance the more that you can fit on screen without your PC grinding to a halt. The 7750's are all 60fps+ in that test so should be able to handle Muvizu quite well - so I would say you made a pretty good choice.

Message from aberglas

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 23:56:59 GMT

I should complete this by saying that I went out an bought a medium card and Movizu reneders perfectly. Actually got

Power Colour AX7750-2GBK3-H HD7750,2G DDR3,128Bit,800MHz,PCIE3.0,DVI,HDMI,VGA @$79.00

Which seems OK. Supposedly twice as fast as the $60 card, which is twice as fast as the $40 one. No need to spend any more that I can see.

Anthony

Message from glasgowjim

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 12:59:52 GMT

That is a pretty good deal - although if I really wanted to push the boat out these ones are very, very shiny:

http://www.ebuyer.com/364207-corsair-fan-af120-120-mm-x-25-mm-3-pin-low-noise-co-9050001-ww

Message from MrDrWho13

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 12:15:35 GMT

That's the one I was looking at a while ago: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arctic-Cooling-AFACO-12000-GBA01-F12/dp/B002KTVFTE/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=86Y055SF0RM9&coliid=I10J1QYJ9ZXKE9
On amazon, it's an add on item, so any qualifying order over £10 with this in gets this free!

Message from glasgowjim

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 11:52:59 GMT

Just in case anyone is curious, I am a big fan of these (hehehe):

http://www.ebuyer.com/340971-arctic-cooling-arctic-f12-120mm-case-fan-afaco-12000-gba01

Relatively cheap, and if you stick one at the front and back of your PC it can make a huge difference to your PC's internals - but this is just my personal opinion rather than that of Muvizu HQ.

Oh, these ones aren't the quietest you can get, but considering they are only a few pounds you can't really go wrong with them.
edited by glasgowjim on 30/07/2013

Message from MrDrWho13

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:28:25 GMT

glasgowjim wrote:

MrDrWho, if you are worried about your card only having a heat sink you could use after-market cooling, such as new case fans, to improve airflow over your cards - and the bigger fans make hardly any noise at all as they don't need to revolve as much.

Thanks Jim,
I might get a fan if my pc starts getting too hot (I have a short attention span, so Muvizu doesn't stay open for long periods of time), But for now, I'll just stick with this.

Thanks

Message from glasgowjim

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:12:08 GMT

Whew, you had me worried there for a sec! Yea, artefacts showing up is unfortunately a side effect of pushing a card to its limit. (I may have overclocked one or two in the past). I also experienced artefacts on my old GeForce 8600M on a regular basis as it had a design flaw meaning that it could not cool properly - if you were playing a game on it and wearing shorts you got nice pink legs!

MrDrWho, if you are worried about your card only having a heat sink you could use after-market cooling, such as new case fans, to improve airflow over your cards - and the bigger fans make hardly any noise at all as they don't need to revolve as much.

Message from urbanlamb

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 22:41:57 GMT

ukBerty wrote:

It was probably me - my card started to show random white pixels. Coming out our Muvizu and back in stopped it for a while. Muvizu is the only graphical thing I do - I'm not a gamer.

I have a new card now (GTX 660ti) and the problem no longer happens.

Whenever I run Muvizu the card's fan does power up and a lot of heat is pumped out of the system, but I am caning Muvizu to the max so pretty much expect it.

Yes I think it was you I saw that tearing on the screen that is typical overheated frying card I have burned some cards up over time by pushing them so I know its possible. I have a 560ti and was going to upgrade to a 660ti but changed my mind as I was planning to replace the entire pc in 12 months at the time. I might change my mind again anyhow the 560ti holds up well under the demands of the unreal engine. I remember it was someone who had mogul on their name and was working on something so that is a pretty short list. I also remember speaking up at the time and saying "looks like your card is starting to get a bit cooked" (speaking from personal experience on that one haha )

Message from MrDrWho13

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 21:57:26 GMT

ukBerty wrote:

Whenever I run Muvizu the card's fan does power up and a lot of heat is pumped out of the system, but I am caning Muvizu to the max so pretty much expect it.

Yeah, I get worried about that because my card doesn't have a fan, I have one with a heat sink instead!

Message from ukBerty

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 21:03:27 GMT

Message from urbanlamb

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 20:08:01 GMT

frying cards was probably a bad way to put it hehe i mean stress out graphic cards. I have seen some people (awhile back now) show artifacts which reminded me of what happens when graphics cards start to go from overheating one to many times. This is what I meant.

I can't remember who posted the info on it, but it was not a new user. I chalked it up to him needing a new card and muvizu or well unreal engine basically making it work too hard one too many times.
edited by urbanlamb on 29/07/2013

Message from glasgowjim

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:34:34 GMT

Sorry for any frustration caused, but as Muvizu is based upon the Unreal 3 engine it is very resource intensive - so even doing things like "drawing a simple cube" requires a relatively powerful PC.

I have raised an improvement for our website to include our recommended specs, or at least a link to the following page: http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/52/recommended-computer-specifications

On thing you can do is use the website "can I run it" - it uses a plugin to determine if you can run certain games, and the closest that I have seen to Muvizu is Mass Effect 3: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/Requirements/mass-effect-3-earth/11402

Urban, I have never heard of Muvizu frying cards - did this happen to you? If so could you please provide me with details as that is a pretty major issue.

Take care,
-Jim

Message from aberglas

Sat, 27 Jul 2013 02:25:49 GMT

I tried it on a laptop with better video and it ran a lot better.

I am still surprised. To draw a simple cube on a background should not stress any video chip, even the CPU should be able to do that much easily!

I had seen the System-Requirements page, and it is useless. It actually demonstrates what is wrong with using Muvivu style demos. All the work went into the movie, no work at all went into the content. So the useless static content was just made into a useless movie which just wastes peoples time. Better to just delete the page.

There is scope for something decent on this page, especially as graphics cards and chips are so hard to really understand. Do I need the $200 one to run Muvivu or will the $50 do? "It all depends" is not a helpful answer.

One idea is to at least provide a quick 3D benchmark people can run. I found the following useful, barely ran on my desktop.

http://3d.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=3d&cdn=gadgets&tm=4&f=21&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=3&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//chrysaora.com/

Message from ziggy72

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 20:33:07 GMT

Although your video card does meet the shader requirements, it would be at the slow end of the performance chart. It should work (with bootcamp and all that) but it wouldn't be a slick experience, to put it mildly. I'd save up and get a decent PC (not laptop!) if I were you.

Message from urbanlamb

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 20:32:26 GMT

I think you will have more then a little lag but you can try to do something small with it. I think for me the delay and lag would be unbearable as I would imagine it would take a very long time to get anything done, but its up to you

Message from SterlingHolobyte

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 20:16:10 GMT

So, based on the minimum specifications, would I be able to run Muvizu with little lag on my iMac(with Bootcamp Windows partition of course)?
I have 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory, and for graphics I have NVIDIA GeForce 9400 with 256 MB VRAM.

I am not that "up" on how Macs work with Muvizu, so would this be even worth downloading this or should I wait until I get a more powerful computer(if I do)?

Message from urbanlamb

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 19:27:13 GMT

ziggy72 wrote:

(Muvizu HQ, I'd recommend adding something about recommending a more Gamer's spec setup in the system reqs for the program. So many people are on the forums trying to get this running on their (business spec) laptops - they just don't get it. It would save a lot of hassle to be a bit more realistic about the minimum spec (as opposed to hopelessly optimistic as it is now )

Yup i second that. This application can fry cards as well and then people get mad at the developer when in fact its them using a pc that has to work super hard to run the software.

minimum settings is fine but a "recommended setup" would help a lot. I have seen a lot of people trying to run this on pc's that i feel they shouldn't because its pushing the hardware too hard and then they have no pc to do their wordprocessing etc on. People see minimum specs as often meaning the software should work properly when all they mean is that the software will run and that is where it ends

Message from ziggy72

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 18:48:11 GMT

aberglas wrote:

Just mother board graphics, NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a. Win 7 rating 3.2. 256 meg ram.

Just so you know, The Windows rating refers to the PC's ability to run the Aero interface, that's all. And the minimum pass is, I believe, 2. Since your onboard graphics can barely scrape over that, you'll really struggle running a game engine, which is what Muvizu is built from.

(Muvizu HQ, I'd recommend adding something about recommending a more Gamer's spec setup in the system reqs for the program. So many people are on the forums trying to get this running on their (business spec) laptops - they just don't get it. It would save a lot of hassle to be a bit more realistic about the minimum spec (as opposed to hopelessly optimistic as it is now )

Message from Lev_Dynamite

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 10:33:42 GMT

aberglas wrote:

Also, can Muvizu run at all on laptops that are not very high end?

Our minimum specs can be found here: http://www.muvizu.com/System-requirements <--- these details may be a little outdated now and we'll probably revise them soon, but as of last time we checked you should be able to run Muvizu:Play on any machine which meets these requirements. Obviously if you are bang on or not much better than those requirements, though, the app may run slowly or encounter problems than if you were a good bit better than those minimum specs.

Message from Mike_Num_5

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 08:33:42 GMT

Hi aberglas,

Is the slowness issue you are experiencing on a PC with the specs:
'mother board graphics, NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a. Win 7 rating 3.2. 256 meg ram'?
Or
'Athlon 4 core 3 GHz with 4 gig ram. Win 7'?

Whats the graphics card in the fairly powerful PC you mentioned?

Muvizu can run on laptops that are not kitted out to be top spec, we have a few in the Muvizu HQ that run it fine. So it just depends on what the internal parts of the laptop are like.

-Mike.

Message from aberglas

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 08:03:16 GMT

Muvizu looks great but is unusably slow on my machine.

Just mother board graphics, NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a. Win 7 rating 3.2. 256 meg ram.

I do not expect super fast games etc. on such a machine. But an empty scene with a single cube takes a full second per frame. And it seems to be missing mouse input which is surprising. So I am suspicious that it is *that* slow. Does one really need a high end graphics card to run at all?

The machine is a fairly powerful Athlon 4 core 3 GHz with 4 gig ram. Win 7 cpu rating 7.3. Is not thrashing according to res monitor -- no faults. CPU abuot 15% continuously while Muvizu is open, regardless of what it is doing. (Thats 15% of 4 cores.)

Also, can Muvizu run at all on laptops that are not very high end?

Thanks,

Anthony