WA3 speed
 

I was just fooing around with the beta Winamp 3, and on my 500 mhz computer (not the fastest in the world), it was using up way too much of my system resources to simply play music in the background. Im sure that it isnt just my computer because many of my friends have computers with about this speed and my computer has just had a fresh format, why does it run so slow? :(

duh. u fink dat dis ere winamp cud be a beta version
yuh. dat iz 2 seh dat it is no done yet. will get more quicker soon.

hopefully you newbies should be able to understand it when i say it like this because if you were cleaverer then you would have read the FAQ sticky at the top of this forum.

Speed in WA3
 

I happen to prefer 3 more than 2 because of what is *unique* to WA3 (stuff that isn't even *optional* in WA2).


RAVES:

1. DirectSound support is a one-click option (not in WA2 at all).
2. More standard visualizations (including some not available in WA2 at all).
3. The default skin is not an eyesore anymore! (The default skin in WA2 *begged* to be swapped out; the WA3 default actually isn't bad.)
4. Visualization studio/window docking. (While present in WA2, it is not as tastefully done.)

RANTS: NONE!

NITS:

The "My God! It's Full Of Stars!" visualization (included in WA3) should be *kept* when WA3 goes gold! Yes, it's a resource pig (on my 1 GHz PC w/1 GB of RAM, it chews up over have the CPU cycles, and this is with Windows XP Professional!) but the best-looking eye candy usually is...

You GeForce and Radeon owners can think of it as a way to show off what *proper* graphics horsepower, properly applied, is capable of, even when *not* used in a game.

Winamp3 is SLOW Deal with it.

Runs just fine on a 512 RAM and 1.4 Ghz system for me (actually I would say fast). Then again it runs slow on a 700 Mhz laptop of mine. Well just the visuals for some reason.

I got a 266 mhz celereon and WA3 is kinda slow

But I think it will turn out to be a lot quicker in the final
This is a beta version and a whole lot of stufff just won't work yet also it sometimes just shuts down for no reason
I think yall gotta wait for the final ver. to come out because that's the things they are wokring on right now

damnit, why does winamp 3 keep crashing my car and stealing my women.... there should be some sort of standard disclamer.

/*
S0Be
*/


.... I swear ocifer, I let winamp take over the wheel while I refilled my drink......

???????????????

/*
S0Be
*/

(sorry about the post pump here, I just have NO clue what that means)

hmm... i think its odd that everyone else runs WA3 slower than I. with MP3z playing, WA3 uses only at max 4% of my CPU. (WA2 was only around 1%). This aint bad at all! WMP uses hellz lot more than this!!!

EVERYONE ELSE? I beat ya buddy HAHAHA 3% max hahahahahahaha. That is with Trillian, IE, and outlook all running!

Sorry just have to bragg at somepoint. :D

Running winamp3 with default skin does perfectly on a 300 mhz 64 mb ram (a bit slow, but it works good.)

Running winamp3 with Probe (or other CPU eating stuff) runs not so perfectly

Winamp3 doesnt slow my computer down at all running a P2 350 with 196mb of ram. Mind you I keep my probe loaded up with winshade on so it doesn't slow me down but I love it.

256MB RAM, AMD 1.13GHz, GForce 2MX 64MB, Win2K-SP2

Works fine. Probe or no probe or any other resource eating skin.

SephGX please cut your sig down....its stupidly large

the maximum is 15k and 3 lines I think


winamp3 runs fine for me....probe just kills my computer with the vis

the speed difference between WA2 and WA3 are pretty minimal(as long as im using the unzipped default skin)

This isn't entirely accurate. It runs good enough to use as a player on 300 Mhz systems but not PERFECTLY like you said. Visualizations on the default skin are slow (The main component's visuals that is). Also some things take a little long to respond and the load time isn't too hot. Unfortunately it runs but it isn't ideal for 300 Mhz systems. Bottom line is you need to go to the store and pick up just a 1 Ghz processor or less for that matter and it will run faster and cost not that much at all. Bottom line is if you are a hardcore user or really worry about the way things run, you shouldn't be using a 300 Mhz chip when there are 2.2 Ghz chips from Intel at this point.

I agree with what you stated,

You probably need at least 300 Mhz to use Wa3, you probably need 500Mhz to start using it relatively confortably. I develop on a 733Mhz, and I'm fine with it (in non desktopalpha mode: 0% cpu when playing). Skins like probe are a bit slow I agree (ie 7% while playing, and spike to above 50% when sliding a drawer), but to my taste completely usable, anyway as you said, I should invest in a better CPU (but keeping this one prevents me from assuming people have too much power in their box)

Then there is the matter of desktopalpha, few cards can support that efficiently. nVidia + latest drivers from their website is your best chance that it will work decently.

Beta 3 will come with desktopalpha disabled by default. Most people do not have the hardware necessary to run desktopalpha skins at a usable rate, most video cards actually do not even support it at all (fortunately most _recent_ video cards do), and among those that work, some are way too slow to use as we do. You can try XPBench from stardock (http://www.stardock.com/products/xpbench/), it'll test your video card speed when using transparency and desktop alpha modes.

You will have an option to toggle on in order to activate desktop alpha in wa3. Skins now come with two backgrounds for each layout, a normal (w95/95/ME/NT) background, and a desktopalpha (w2k/xp) background. Switching is automatic given what is inside a window and what Win32 let us do. Old skins that only have a desktopalpha background will have their non opaque pixels dropped in their w95/98/ME/NT version.

Francis.

hmmmm does this mean that rec hardware specs is a 500 MHz Machine - in the final? DOGH! were gonna be rediculed for supporting bloatware :(

only for a alphablending machine

win9x mechines won't need so much power because there's no alpha blending.

future skins will prolly need a 1000Mhz+ processor
e.g probe

desktopalpha can be turned off in newer builds, that cuts down a bit of cpu. i think more config options are coming too.