Strange Performance observation

[Pinball]

I just got a new computer:

Zotac IONITX - A-U  board    Intel Dual-Core Atom 1.6GHz CPU
& wireless lan

320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive

Windows XP Pro

2 GB PC-6400 DDR2 Memory-2x1gb ddr 800

  I loaded the same 800 albums and videos on that system as my Desk top test system. The Desk top is an old Compaq with and old processor and not a lot of memory.  The Old test system has a 2nd drive that's a Terrabyte HDD that can't be all that fast, where the Music files are held.

Both systems have E-Touch V 5.0.22 installed.

(I just transfered cash from my bank account to PayPal, which should clear by Thursday, so Barry will be getting another DONATION then )

When I double click the E-touch Icon on the desk top system, I start a Stop watch and it takes just 24 seconds for the Album covers to appear.

When I double click the E-touch Icon on the new system, I start a Stop watch and it takes 1 minute and 21 seconds for the Album covers to appear.

I should also say that when I boot up the desk top system it takes a long long time to come up, but the new system is up in a very fast time.

Any thoughts??

[bzpilot]

Anytime you start talking stop watch - you know you got problems!!!

Is this computer going to be strictly a jukebox computer?

Run this and post the results here:
http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

I'm not expecting you have a virus problem, but this program is a quick way for us to see what is running/loading on your computer at startup.

[eist1]

Also may want to do some benchmarking tests on both PC's and see what the differences are. Here is a page that has a few on them

http://www.pctechbytes.com/repair/detail.php?Computer-Benchmark-Tools-3

You may have a RAM issue, I've built a few PC's and have had issues with the RAM and motherboard. Had to go in and tweak the voltage for the RAM.

[Pinball]

One thing I should mention is thaT the old test system has the 70 gb C drive with the software and a F drive with the 800 albums.  The new machine, has everything on one 250 gb drive.

Do you think that having the albums on the same drive slows the Juke Start process up at all??

Anybody w/ 800 or more albums care to say how long it takes from the time you double click e-touch to the time the main screens with the albums appear.  I would be very interested in seeing how others are doing.

Randy

[leeclark2612]

this sounds familiar...the games machines i maintain have had similar issues - they all have 1ghz intel celeron with 512 pc133 sdram (i know, dinosaurs!) and identical software (each machine is a clone) anyhow, clock speed on one had dropped to 100mhz while other stayed at 133...any guesses what happened?

easy to fix, just make sure you have the correct ram timing in bios settings. usually optimising for best performance will do this...hope I helped!

[Barcrest]

It will be down to the config of the PC somewhere not E-Touch.

[kizer]

Make sure your video drivers are up to date as well. It could be taking a lot of time to render the images. You should have a Nvidia GPU in that thing.

As well you could see how much memory in the Bios you are dedicating to video. I know a lot of guys in the XBMC.org world that are running HTPC's are dedicating 500meg of ram to their video cards.

[Pinball]

Thanks Kizer.

I am going to speak with the guy that built this system about this.

Randy

[fordman]

Pinball,

Download PC Wizard

Install the PCWizard and it will tell you more than you really want to know about your system.

Plus it will tell you exactly what drivers you have.

Also if you have anything less than 64mb of video, your videos wont work that well. 64mb of video is the extreme low end. 128mb of video is ideal, but 256mb of video is kinda overkill for a jukebox.



Fordman

[Pinball]

Fordman:

I will try that.  Something is definitely wrong w/ this new PC settings.

When I am looking at my music albums and click on one, then Hit Add All, to the Queue....

I touch the screen to Go back to the Main Album Cover page and an Hour Glass appears and sits there for 5 to 10 seconds.

Sometimes the Hourglass goes away and I am still on the track screen, like nothing happened.... and sometimes I do go back to the main scree,

I was viewing the History items screen and Hit the screen to go Back and it took like 10 seconds.

I'll look at PC wizard Now.. !   Thanks..

Randy

[Pinball]

Fordman:

Here is some PC Wizard info on this Zotac system-

Chipset NVidia Ion
Intel Atom Dual core  330 @ 1600 Mhz
2048Mem
Vid Card VVidia Ion
OS   XP Pro v 5.01.2600   SP3

Direct x   v 9.0c

Cache L1   2 x 56kb

Cache L2   512 kb

Video 800 x 600 @ 60 hz   32 bit True Color

NVidia Cuda    NO
Open CL  Supported (not installed)

Open GL  yes
GDI plus    Yes


GPU Freq  200 Mhz
Mem GPU  1600.0 Mhz

Under the Operating system:

XP Pro

Total Memory  1792  mb
SYSTEM RESOURCES FREE   28%  ?  Why? Nothing running on this system but PC Wizard


Swap File size     323  348 kb

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

I then went to Control Panel Administrator functions and went to Performance.

There was a graph that was plotting Paging and disk activity.

When I had E-touch on and selected and album, Hit Add All to Queue,
then Hit the Back arrow to go to the Main screen, there were 2 max spikes to the top of the chart for Paging every time. It was at 100.

Is there a way to increase the size of the page spaces to reduce the page swaps???

Is there some user friendly ways to tweek this memory I have.  Everybody seemed to think that 2048 was plenty for E-Touch.

Let me know if you see anything here or if I can look for any other info w/ Pc Wizard.

Thanks,

Randy

[Barcrest]

Under the device manager is anything showing as not having drivers loaded?

[fordman]

Also, do as bzpilot said and download HijackThis.exe and run it, make a copy of the report and post it here so we can read it to see what is running along with E-Touch. Just have a sneaky feeling you have spyware or malware running.

You also need to upgrade your DirectX to the latest release. Goto start>all programs then up in the top lft corner there should be a Windows Update selection. Click that and it will take you to the Windows update page. You may have to install a small Genuine Advantage tool first but if your XP is legit than no issue there. Then you will then have your pc scaned and it will tell you priority updates, hardware updates and not so important ones. What you update is up to you but could take up to an hour to do so.

Also I was reading on the Zotac website that maybe you have a bad BIOS that my not be letting you use all of your memory correctly. http://www.zotacusa.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1660-zotac-ion-itx-series-bios-and-update-utility/

Do the hijackthis report first and lets cancel out any software issues before we start ripping the box open.



Fordman

[Woody]

Randy,

That machine has plenty of  power you must have something running that is causing this.
Start the machine in safe mode and then set the screen res. compatible with ET then run ET,
check the performance with only the essentials running. I would also go to Nvidia and download
the latest drivers for the video.   

Woody 

[Woody]

Randy,

Do you have a single stick of memory or dual ?

Woody