On 14 Aug 2006, at 4:17 AM, Tyler Turner wrote:
Oh, one more question...
I don't believe you ever specified, but all along
I've been assuming
that the computer with the Radeon X600 is
outperforming the computer
with the Radeon 9000 (in Finale, with the hardware
acceleration
slider up). Do I have that right?
No, it went the other way. The 3.0 GHz machine with
the Radeon 9000 was significantly slower than the
3.2GHz machine with the X600 with the acceleration
off. After turning on all of the features, the 3.0GHz
machine outperforms the 3.2GHz machine. This is the
reason I believe that we're seeing the effect of more
features being enabled for the X600. It's not a
dramatically faster card than the 9000 (especially in
terms of memory speed, which that article told us is
the critical factor for 2D performance), and the
PrintMusic file I tested has a ton of material on the
page that would make any extra work being performed on
a particular object be performed a great number of
times.
Okay, so what you're saying is that the *slower* video card (Radeon
9000) is actually outperforming the *faster* video card (Radeon
X600)... that's a pretty pertinent point, don't you think?
According to this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Radeon_9000#Mobility>, the Radeon 9000 Mobility is based on the R200
core, has a fillrate of just 800 MT/s, its clock speed is 200 MHz and
its memory speed is 250 MHz. (I'm assuming you have the 9000 and not
the 9000 Pro). Whereas the X600 Pro is based on a more powerful
chipset (R300 core), has twice the clock speed and (from what I can
tell) 2.4 times the memory speed, and twice the fillrate.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units]
So if the slower card is dramatically outperforming the faster card,
it would appear that something very screwy is going on. I think
you're right that more features are being enabled via the slider. But
this is why I wanted to know what those features *were* -- the slider
should (theoretically) be smart enough not to swamp your video card
with a bunch of unnecessary extra work.
Since you said there was no difference in image quality from having
the graphics acceleration slider down vs. up, it sure sounds like
*something* (badly written driver? Some quirk of SmartMusic?) is
causing a massive and unnecessary slowdown on your X600 -- so much so
that it's getting spanked by a much slower graphics card. If the
extra work being asked of your X600 is killing performance and not
actually improving image quality, to me that sounds like a software
problem and not a hardware problem, especially if the slowdown is
only in selected applications. (You did mention that other apps on
your computer required the hardware slider to be all the way up for
maximum performance.)
When I did my own Googling on this, I found lots of references to
people who found that backing off one notch on the graphics
acceleration slider dramatically increased performance in selected
applications. According to these user reports, in some cases, an
update to the application fixed the problem; in other cases, an
updated driver did. I know you have the latest ATI drivers, but of
course that's not to say they are necessarily 100% bug-free.
Cheers,
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://secretsociety.typepad.com
Brooklyn, NY
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