Have a slow system? Angry cause Winamp3 doesn't cater to your mhz needs? read me..

[SNYder]

note: if I made any obvious factual mistakes, let me know. I wrote this strait through so, although I doubt their are any, if one slipped by, lemme know and I'll fix it.


Have a slow system? Angry that Winamp3 doesn't cater to your mhz needs? read me..

This is my response to the anger shown towards Winamp3 over at Betanews.com in the RC2 release reviews. I will quote the original post which got me started writing all this, but believe me there were plenty more angry customers which inevitably drove me to continue writing so in depth.

(click here to see the reviews I speak of)

posted by kreisw at betanews.com

Has Nullsoft forgotten?! Winamp is (was?) an MP3 player.. not some sort of stupid platform for countless numbers of useless plugins and features. WA3 is garbage and nobody will use it! I won't use WA3 because of the ridiculous amounts of resources it gobbles up. I just want something to play my mp3s so I'll stick with WA2! (btw, for all of you who *think* Winamp sounds good I suggest you try Sonique. ..but I hate its interface so I won't use it.)

yes it sucks up a lot of resources in comparison to WA2. Nullsoft knows this. But Nullsoft also knows that as we enter this new age of computers, we need a new audio player built on a new coding engine/platform that will accommodate people (future and present coders/developers/& listeners) well down the road. Winamp2 is great, but it is beginning to show it's age and limitations, and with computers increasing with speed ever few months, suddenly what the average computer user considers slow and or resource hogging is dropping dramatically. A 500mhz computer is now considered very slow to the average computer user.

With a 533mhz PC, WA3 runs slow, and even slower with a complicated skin. With a 800mhz PC Winamp3 runs a average, and a little bellow average with a complicated skin. And on a 1.2ghz, Winamp3 is fast, and runs just a little under fast with a complicated skin. Of course graphics cards come into play, so lets assume all are running nice average Radeon 7500 32MB PCI crards or GeForce3 MX 32MB PCI Cards... whatever... you get my point so far on speeds.

With the average American computer speed, not including schools/libraries/etc, now at at about 1ghz (2 years will 2+ ghz), why would Nullsoft build a faster but less powerful (more importantly, less expandable) player when WA3 as it is will be considered very fast by the average user in a few months give or take. 2 years from now, Winamp3 will be considered as fast as Winamp2 on a 533mhz by nearly everyone... that is, if they can remember what a mhz is.

On my friends 1.6ghz PC, I can't tell a difference between Winamp3 on his system and Winamp2 on my 533mhz system (which I purchased 3 years ago for $900, plus an upgraded last year to a Radeon 7200 32mb PCI card). Shit, I multitasked on my friends 1.6ghz computer with Winamp3 running WHILE I rendered an effect in Photoshop 7 AND surfed online in Mozilla (which is mega resource hogger compared to IE) and only then felt like I was running Winamp3 on a 1ghz pc.

Yeah I talk a lot, but don't you see my point. In a year no one will have a second thought about Winamp3's speed. And in 3 years when you say , "we talked about what?", you'll realize that because of this new engine that Winamp3 is built on, Nullsoft won't have to make a completely new player in 4 years; they will just be able to alter Winamp to keep up with the ever growingworld of technology, something Winamp 2 has finished being able to do. Just ask Peter aka PP (the coder of a good number of the audio plug-ins currently in Winamp2 and Winamp3) He will tell you that there are a lot of things that he's wanted to do to improve his audio input plug-ins but couldn't in Winamp2 but now can in Winamp3. The possibilities are endless with Winamp3, for all kinds of coders, skinners and thinker uppers.

And don't worry, Winamp3 won't become an all in one app like Windows Media Player 7 became. Even if it DID include more things beyond audio and the tiny video addition, anything you don't want in Winamp3 is removable. Nullsoft built it that way purposely. A lot of things you can simply choose not to install when you open the installer (like video capabilities or future POSSIBLE addon's like CD Burning capabilities). But Bigger components like the Media Library or the Thinger are removable right now but require more advanced knowledge to carry out. But I guaranty you, soon after Winamp3's release, small apps will emerge by 3rd party developers, or maybe even Nullsoft themself, that will allow people to easily remove various components not directly removable from the installer. Not including these options in the installer is for the benefit of novices who have low knowledge of Winamp. We don't want to loose possible Winamp users by making the installation loaded with complex options that will scare and confuse them, now do we?

Anyway, I hope I've made it clear to anyone who is still upset about Winamp3 needing more resources that we need to think about the future to know what we gotta do now. Hmmn, why didn't I just say that instead of writing all this. ah fuck it.

Peace.

p.s In a few weeks I will be purchasing a $1,499 2.26ghz PC with a GeForce 4 Ti 4600G... so ha! :P


------------------------------------


hmmm... did I spell cater wrong or am I going insane. that ever happened to you were you look at a word like MILK and for some reason think it is spelled wrong? I did that today with the word WELCOME.

HEY! it's my thread! and I'll go off-topic if I want to! go off-topic if I want to! go off-topic if I want to! you would go off-topic too if it happened to you! da da da da da!

wankers!

[cmisker]

I definately agree with you! And for me, WA3 is just as fast as WA2, only for start up, which takes a little longer, but hey, who cares, you only start it up once anyway and then keep it playing. And I have a *slow* system according to you (P3-500, 356MB RAM, XP). Winamp 3 is the future.

[Lepre41]

I'm guessing that the reviewer who was complaining about all the useless stuff might have been referring to the 'Mad' skin. Hehe... I must admit.. that skin is one of the ugliest and most annoying skins I have ever seen However, that is just one skin, many, many others are simpler, consume less recources, and don't have any annoying add ons.

I agree with you. Even on my slow 750 mhz duron W3 works quite fast. Even the stupid blimp going around Mad's head was moving at a smooth 30 fps.

[theancient]

I'm at 500 MHz Athlon -- startup times are 2 secs vs. 7 secs (default skin.) A system this speed is still good enough to run every other app (even games), so there is no need to upgrade any time soon. Microsoft Word loads faster, even Windows Media Player loads in 2 seconds.

[fragility]

i'm running a p4 1.9gHz with 768ddr and 64mb GeForce2MX and you're right, there is no difference at all between how winamp2 and winamp3 run. it isn't even noticable, even with that ugly mad skin applied.

[SNYder]

Thanks for the comments guys... feedback and personal experience can only help make my point clearer.

[Bizzeh]

i tryed wa3 on my m8s P233mhz with 64mbram.. and if i just got main, eq and Plist open.. it runs without any trouble

[ProneaX]

"With a 533mhz PC, WA3 runs slow"

Well, on my 4 (5?) yr old 266mhz PII 192mb ram pc w/ an ISA sound card and 8mb video card, I can multi-task running Windows ME, Winamp 3 (with 200x200 vis running smooth), Mozilla, Trillian (both of which run through a software proxy on my newer 866mz pc to RoadRunner), and Microsoft Word 2000, and I must say that It's as fast as it could be. Loading time is about 5 or 6 seconds but after that operation is instantaneous.
I'm not sure how ppl think that it's slow. If you're talking about the load times well I think that's been discussed to a full extent. I'm running Beta 3 Days, so I'm not sure about the newer releases, but I know Beta 3 was as stable as RC 1 and 2 if not more so. I mean I am using the base skin so I'm not sure about other skins. SNYder I don't mean to attack your theory I'm just saying it doesn't fit with what I'm experiencing.
Cheers

[JBDude]

I'm a 850 Mhz Duron machine with 256 meg of SDRAM ..and the only reason the earlier alphas and betas wouldn't work for me is bugs ..and as he builds kept coming and fewer bugs decided to raise their ugly heads the less it crashed and the faster it started and the faster it ran ...oh btw i'm prolly the only one that like the new MAD skin ...::shrugs::

[cmisker]

Originally posted by JBDude
I'm a 850 Mhz Duron machine with 256 meg of SDRAM ..and the only reason the earlier alphas and betas wouldn't work for me is bugs ..and as he builds kept coming and fewer bugs decided to raise their ugly heads the less it crashed and the faster it started and the faster it ran ...oh btw i'm prolly the only one that like the new MAD skin ...::shrugs::

I don't really think the MAD skin is that great, no... and not functional AT ALL!

[JBDude]

Version Reviewed: RC2 Build #479 MAD Bundle
Reviewed by: davieb
Date: June 26th, 2002 12:20 PM

Looks nice, sounds GREAT - memory usage is wayyyyy too high! 32MB on my Win2k system - I have quite a lot of memory, so I'll keep the thing installed, but its quite bad for memory usage! Ah well, maybe this is the way we can expect things to go in the future, as standard "requirements" increase

I saw this on the forum link that was posted....

memory usage is wayyyyy too high! 32MB on my Win2k system + I have quite a lot of memory = stupid dumbass

in my opinion 32 meg isn't even enough for Win9x much less 2000

and this guy had a few more wa3 basher posts too ..what an ID-10-t

[ProneaX]

"Looks nice, sounds GREAT - memory usage is wayyyyy too high! 32MB on my Win2k system"

I think he meant that Winamp alone took up 32 megs. Or is that what you meant too?......I'm tired.......

[SNYder]

agreed, ProneaX. That's what I figured.

Originally posted by ProneaX
"With a 533mhz PC, WA3 runs slow"

Well, on my 4 (5?) yr old 266mhz PII 192mb ram pc w/ an ISA sound card and 8mb video card, I can multi-task running Windows ME, Winamp 3 (with 200x200 vis running smooth), Mozilla, Trillian (both of which run through a software proxy on my newer 866mz pc to RoadRunner), and Microsoft Word 2000, and I must say that It's as fast as it could be. Loading time is about 5 or 6 seconds but after that operation is instantaneous.
I'm not sure how ppl think that it's slow. If you're talking about the load times well I think that's been discussed to a full extent. I'm running Beta 3 Days, so I'm not sure about the newer releases, but I know Beta 3 was as stable as RC 1 and 2 if not more so. I mean I am using the base skin so I'm not sure about other skins. SNYder I don't mean to attack your theory I'm just saying it doesn't fit with what I'm experiencing.
Cheers

there can be a very big difference between various peoples definition of what 'slow' is. Also, Trillian and Word aren't big recource hogs.

if you do get acceptable speeds with Winamp3 (by what I would consider acceptable), then you are a rare lucky bastard.

and you not attacking my theory. my stands tall either way. your just suggesting that from your experience that I my calculations on system speed in comparison to WInamp3 speed is off.

[Supremacey]

I think that people just get a bad impression of 3. They find out about a new public release (without reading ANYTHING about it) they install it... hoping for it to work perfectly. Chances are, they currently run the 2.xx version. So, they're just not used to the resource-hogging. Then when they find out that it is aresource-hogger, they jump up and down and cry about it. Without even considering that by the time 3 is released, most computers should be able to handle the puppy. This is the case with some people who just don't get it (or don't want to read anything.

Remember, this is what I think. So, don't come swearing at me if you we're one of those people.

[bluekeydesign]

you cant say "winamp uses 32 megs" cause thats not comparable with anyone else's computer.
the ram usage for a program depends on how much ram you have available.
You take a program put it in 128 megs and it uses a lot less ram then on a computer with 512.
the more available the more the program uses.
startup time is a tad slower than wa2, but once its playing, who really cares.

[Supremacey]

Exactly.

I have 192 MB of SDRAM (not the best) But it does the trick, takes about 5-7 seconds to load. And it only takes up about 10 megs of my memory. No problem here.

[rhys26]

I am currently on an athlon 1.4 GHz with a really old Diamond Viper V550 and WA3 runs great, except for the bugs that people have already mentioned in this forum. This computer is not mine (I wouldn't use a Viper card if it was the last video card on Earth), but mine is currently awaiting the parts for my big upgrade, which will include dual 1.9 Athlon MP's and a geforce4. I think I will have plenty of power to handle winamp then, wouldn't you agree? LOL....

[whiteflip]

everybody should shut the hell up and buy a mac

[thepyr0x]

wow I feel so very out of it
go P2 350 mhz with 192mb ram w00t w00t! (please take into consideration I got mIRC, AIM, IE*3 or 4, ICQ, msn, kazaa, memturbo, getright.....uhm...and a whole lot else running constantly)

personally, I do definately see a bit of lag in wa3 compared to wa2, but in RC2 that just came out that gap is beginning to close. I stick to WA2 just cuz stuff does start to go slow when I load up the nice skins (like boom) and there's no reason to run WA3 over WA2 with just the base skin.

I'm slowly building a new computer (piece by piece) by putting each new part into this computer and then building a new puter with the leftovers....I'm buying a GeForce3 TI200 with 128mb DDR this week....that should speed things up (over my intel 8mb)

[steve]

I think that everyone forgets that when Winamp 1/2 were out, playing back an mp3 took up 50% of the processors time. As processors got better, and Winamp's code became cleaner and more optimized, the ammount of resources Winamp2 sucked were completely nominial.

All I'm sayin is, yes, Winamp3 takes more resources, in a year or so, it won't be noticable seeing that computers today are already fast enough to not make it matter.

This is the price you pay for being next-generation. You try installing Windows XO on a machine that's older than a year or two, you get the same issues. It's just growing pains.

That's just my 2 cents.

-s

[steve]

Also, to address the issue of bloat. We're probably only going to include new major features into the default install if it will be useful by all users rather than some. For example, we probably won't include CD-Burning into it cause not everyone has a CD Burner, but most likely add a CD-Ripper/Encoder since there are a ton of people out there who want to take their music collection onto the PC.

Also, we'll always offer a Full, Standard, and Lite. Those will focus individually on the specific types of people there are. If all you want to do with Winamp3 is listen to MP3's, then get Lite... you get the gist...

Anyway, talk amongst yourselves...

-s

[rhys26]

It may be considered bloat by some, but I still believe there should be an option in the basic install to share the AVS window with the Video playback window. Mainly because I don't rightly know how a plug-in could accomplish this, but it would be a nice feature. Then when you play music videos, it automatically turns off the AVS.

[rhys26]

This is kind of unrelated to my last comment, which is why I didn't just edit that one.

I believe I have just experience what some would call a crash bug. I was using WA3 to play video files from the hard drive and the computer froze up with that typical audio looping which is common during a crash. I hit the Esc key and the computer rebooted itself. I had several windows open, including gnucleus and several browser windows, so I'm not exactly sure if there may have been other factors involved.

[JBDude]

Originally posted by rhys26
This is kind of unrelated to my last comment, which is why I didn't just edit that one.

I believe I have just experience what some would call a crash bug. I was using WA3 to play video files from the hard drive and the computer froze up with that typical audio looping which is common during a crash. I hit the Esc key and the computer rebooted itself. I had several windows open, including gnucleus and several browser windows, so I'm not exactly sure if there may have been other factors involved.

Are you runnin' XP ?? ... if so go into your system properties and take that check outta the box for rebooting after a blue screen.Then when the blue screen comes up you'll know what's causing your system to crash ...it might be a lousy solution but it works for me...only on XPee

[rhys26]

Actually the system this crash occured on was running 98 se, but my personal system which is currently getting a brain transplant (upgrade) has xp installed. But thanks, that XP info might be useful for me to know down the road anyways.

[excaliborg]

it doesn't seem any different than winamp 2 to me, i still play games, render stuff, use mozilla... loads of stuff. no problem!

*pats dual athlon 1600*

[JBDude]

Originally posted by excaliborg
it doesn't seem any different than winamp 2 to me, i still play games, render stuff, use mozilla... loads of stuff. no problem!

*pats dual athlon 1600*

damnit why don't Nullsoft rename this forum to .. "C'mon in and brag about ya killer PC while ya at it !!

Just kiddin'

[rhys26]

bragging is cool...

[Green Manalishi]

Originally posted by bluekeydesign
you cant say "winamp uses 32 megs" cause thats not comparable with anyone else's computer.
the ram usage for a program depends on how much ram you have available.

No it doesn't, the ram usage on a program depends on how much ram it asks for, nothing more. (EG, I've got a 623 item playlist, and WA3 is using about 23MB, I have 640MB in total.)

You take a program put it in 128 megs and it uses a lot less ram then on a computer with 512.
the more available the more the program uses.

Not true, otherwise there'd be no reason to ever buy more memory. The only thing that should take up more space is the memory mapping tables. (well, probably a few OS buffers too, but what the hey, you get the point.)

startup time is a tad slower than wa2, but once its playing, who really cares.

Exactly, Looking at previous work, the guys at nullsoft seem to be fairly efficiant coders, so once WA3s done and dusted it should be as small as it can be.

If you really want to bitch about memory usage, moan at windows..... (2MB to open a file open box is disgusting...) Anyway, I'm rambling now so I'm going....

[Green Manalishi]

Originally posted by bluekeydesign
you cant say "winamp uses 32 megs" cause thats not comparable with anyone else's computer.
the ram usage for a program depends on how much ram you have available.

No it doesn't, the ram usage on a program depends on how much ram it asks for, nothing more. (EG, I've got a 623 item playlist, and WA3 is using about 23MB, I have 640MB in total.)

You take a program put it in 128 megs and it uses a lot less ram then on a computer with 512.
the more available the more the program uses.

Not true, otherwise there'd be no reason to ever buy more memory. The only thing that should take up more space is the memory mapping tables. (well, probably a few OS buffers too, but what the hey, you get the point.)

startup time is a tad slower than wa2, but once its playing, who really cares.

Exactly, Looking at previous work, the guys at nullsoft seem to be fairly efficiant coders, so once WA3s done and dusted it should be as small as it can be.

If you really want to bitch about memory usage, moan at windows..... (2MB to open a file open box is disgusting...) Anyway, I'm rambling now so I'm going....

[rhys26]

Actually, when you have more ram, a program will call on more memory. It is a system called "memory management." More RAM available means that each program can use more. The reason to have more RAM is simple. The more RAM each program has access to, the faster the programs run, because they can go longer before they have to free up more memory.

Plus, the memory management feature in Windows will try to limit the amount of RAM that a program can use based on how much is avalable. Without memory management, your computer would run out of RAM and crash every 5 minutes if you tried to open more than 1 or 2 programs at once.

[Green Manalishi]

Wow, I managed to post my last message 3 times, how stupid am I.

Originally posted by rhys26
Actually, when you have more ram, a program will call on more memory. It is a system called "memory management." More RAM available means that each program can use more. The reason to have more RAM is simple. The more RAM each program has access to, the faster the programs run, because they can go longer before they have to free up more memory.

But that's just silly, a program should allocate the amount of memory it needs for it's resources, and no more, obviously this will grow with time in some programs, but if you have less physical ram you'll just end up with more on disc.

A well written program will allocate and free memory as required, holding everything in memory does not always make things faster as data structures become more complicated, etc. (plus on low memory systems you'd be paging all the time.)

Plus, the memory management feature in Windows will try to limit the amount of RAM that a program can use based on how much is avalable. Without memory management, your computer would run out of RAM and crash every 5 minutes if you tried to open more than 1 or 2 programs at once.

Yeah, but it will do that by paging out unused/older pages more on systems with lower physical memory. As to your second point, I would argue that without memory management your OS would be fairly limited.

Cheers

[Rovastar]

By the time WA3 gets finally released we will all have P6 6,000Mhz processers, 8Gb of memeory and GF7 GTS cards so it will not be a problem.

[whiteflip]

most programs suck at memory management. they take ram and keep it and dont give it back up. its stupid and it sucks. programs make request for ram and windows gives them what is available and uses the disk for virtual memory.

wait till the day when our operating systems are run from flash memory say a hard drive of a few terabytes and a gig or so of flash ram and of course you need working ram so 8 gigs of that because its faster.

[spanky]

Windows will always try and allocate more memory for an application than it actually needs to avoid memory fragmentation.

The WinNT memory management is nice. The Win9x memory management sucks. (but then again, anyone still using win9x should be shot. heh, jk!)

Anyway, back to the topic...

I just want something to play my mp3s so I'll stick with WA2! (btw, for all of you who *think* Winamp sounds good I suggest you try Sonique..

I must say.. I agree. True, WA3 is more capable than WA2 but WA3's new features don't interest me a bit. WA2 is faster and uses less resources - it's also been around for a long while so most of the bugs have been fixed.

Sonique does sound better. It will be nice to see SQ2 and WA3 battle it out once they are released. Maybe it will be like the IE and Netscape war... hehe
Competition is good.. glad to see the SQ2 development active again.

[rhys26]

I'm putting in my order for the new 5 THz processors and GeForce9 video card with holovid capabilities right now!!! I'll probably have to get at least 256 TB of RAM to use it though.

[cmisker]

Originally posted by rhys26
I'm putting in my order for the new 5 THz processors and GeForce9 video card with holovid capabilities right now!!! I'll probably have to get at least 256 TB of RAM to use it though.

I guess Winamp 3 will run pretty smooth on that.

[HellBound]

I have a 550mhz
10 gig HD (soon to be a maxtor 40 gig 7200rpm)
256mb ram
geforce 2 mx 200
and you know what.
I'am only 14 I don't have enough damn money to buy a new computer you beep. My parents don't even use a computer let alone probably have enough extra money to buy a new one. I can run Counter-strike , quake 3 , RTCW and i can run winamp 3 if I havem ore windows open on winamp 3 then jsut the normal 3 tho my system starts to get alittle bogged down but only winamp 3 does I can run a millionp rograms and all of thme will run fine at the same time except for winamp 3. All they are saying is tone down the resources winamp 3 takes up because its uselesss no matter what you do to it a mp3 is still gonna sound the same unless you get a plug in or something which takes up way less resources. All the resources winamp 3 uses is a waste of space. I wish you woukld all stfu about oh just go buy another computer because MOST PEOPLE DON"T HAVE THE MONEY YOU F00KERS!!!
I would love to get a new cpu but if I get a new cpu I have to get a new mother board at the same time and if I want that I need a new power supply and a new case to accomedate a new cpu and mother board which means thats over 500 bucks in upgrades. I'am canadian so it makes it even hard cuz prices are higher due to stupid exchange.
There now ilet that all out I feel better now
Also I would overclock the cpu if I could but HP's stupid bio's don't allow that --;;;
BTW yes I did just register to post this because I read this and wanted to tell people what i think tnot to mention its 40C here in a heat weave and I have a really short tempour due to it.

[cmisker]

Well.. if you have a 550mhz with 256mb RAM, Winamp 3 should run fine! I have a 500, 364mb RAM and XP and it works great, just the little bit slower start up. You might want to check if you have all the latest video and soundcard drivers and see if you have enough space left on your harddisk. Winamp should really run fine on your computer.

[HellBound]

I did. It runs fine sometimes and goes screwy other times.