Dual cores, clock skew and odd behavior

Cham · Post #21by **Cham** » 05.12.2007, 12:13

ElChristou wrote:but let's not forget that multicore will become the norm very soon

NOT very soon, IT IS already the norm now since about two years.

danielj · Post #22by **danielj** » 05.12.2007, 17:43

It??s the norm since 2 years in USA and Europe;in Brazil and other non developed countries,it??s only beggining to be.
I??m very irritated in this absolute emphasis in video cards.Why don??t you understand that IT??S NOT POSSIBLE to change the video card every year.I did a change last year,buying a 7600 GT and now NO ONE wants this card,because 8600 GT/GTS is the cost/benefit of the moment.Can??t YOU understand that it??s much more difficult to sell a video card and in most times,you have to buy another power source,TOO!I was expecting Celestia to be LESS dependable on the video card,but it appears that there is no interest concerning this...

Post #23by **chris** » 05.12.2007, 17:54

ElChristou wrote:
chris wrote:...But, performance tuning effort is probably better spent on optimizing for a single processor, as there are some fairly simple (or at least simple when compared to spawning threads) things to do to speed up processing of solar system objects....

Chris, I must thrust you here, but let's not forget that multicore will become the norm very soon, not only with dual but with quad and more. It would be a pity to not take advantage of such extra power...

Agreed. It's just that there are some fairly easy performance gains to by making some optimizations that happen to affect single core systems as well. So, I'm going to prioritize those things over the more challenging problem of parallelizing the algorithms used in Celestia.

--Chris

danielj · Post #24by **danielj** » 05.12.2007, 17:59

I??m not talking only about me.Several people like BrainDead buy computers of brand and in several cases,the video card is not that good.It??s not fair that YOU MUST buy a 8800 GT/GTS or equivalent EACH YEAR to have a reasonable perfomance...

danielj wrote:It??s the norm since 2 years in USA and Europe;in Brazil and other non developed countries,it??s only beggining to be.
I??m very irritated in this absolute emphasis in video cards.Why don??t you understand that IT??S NOT POSSIBLE to change the video card every year.I did a change last year,buying a 7600 GT and now NO ONE wants this card,because 8600 GT/GTS is the cost/benefit of the moment.Can??t YOU understand that it??s much more difficult to sell a video card and in most times,you have to buy another power source,TOO!I was expecting Celestia to be LESS dependable on the video card,but it appears that there is no interest concerning this...

Post #25by **chris** » 05.12.2007, 18:27

danielj wrote:I??m not talking only about me.Several people like BrainDead buy computers of brand and in several cases,the video card is not that good.It??s not fair that YOU MUST buy a 8800 GT/GTS or equivalent EACH YEAR to have a reasonable perfomance...

Celestia at its basic settings should be no more demanding of graphics cards than it was in 2001. Since then, there have been many enhancements to improve the appearance of planets: ring shadows, eclipse shadows, new atmospheres, normal maps, etc, all of which are optional. The entire reason that some of these improvements are practical now is because of faster and more capable graphics processors. If you don't care for them, then please switch to the basic render path, put that old Rage 128 card back in your system, and STOP TALKING TO ME.

--Chris

Post #26by **t00fri** » 05.12.2007, 19:55

danielj wrote:It??s the norm since 2 years in USA and Europe;in Brazil and other non developed countries,it??s only beggining to be.
I??m very irritated in this absolute emphasis in video cards.Why don??t you understand that IT??S NOT POSSIBLE to change the video card every year.I did a change last year,buying a 7600 GT and now NO ONE wants this card,because 8600 GT/GTS is the cost/benefit of the moment.Can??t YOU understand that it??s much more difficult to sell a video card and in most times,you have to buy another power source,TOO!I was expecting Celestia to be LESS dependable on the video card,but it appears that there is no interest concerning this...

I still use a ooooooooooooooooooold 5900FX (256MB) ULTRA card , which is the "grand-grandmother" of your present card! Yet, I am at the forefront of hires texture development and displays and get perfectly smooth rendering.

I could certainly afford to change my graphics card more often than once a year ;-)

, but I don't see any need for this. My card renders all features of Celestia and is sufficiently fast.

In my desktop (that I use most often) I also don't use a Core2Duo processor, but a simple 3.2GHz P4 which is by a large margin fast enough, since I have 3GB of RAM.

One reason for being happy is of course LINUX instead of an unstable and resource-eating VISTA.

So what are you whining about???

Bye Fridger

BobHegwood · Post #27by **BobHegwood** » 05.12.2007, 20:27

danielj wrote:I??m not talking only about me.Several people like BrainDead buy computers of brand and in several cases,the video card is not that good.

What the hell does THAT mean? I am VERY happy with my new
graphics card thank you very much, and it displays Celestia in a mode
which is simply incomparable to my previous machine.

Who told you that you "have to have" an 8800?

Confused and Brain-Dead Bob

Boux · Post #28by **Boux** » 05.12.2007, 21:17

danielj, I am sorry to have to tell you once more that you have no clue.
Celestia runs as good on my everyday 2 years old Dell workhorse laptop with an Intel integrated graphics chip and a mobile single core processor than on my main home system which is one of the fastest in town.
It does not matter at all for a piece of software like Celestia to run at 10, 30 or 300 fps.
Thanks God, Celestia is not a first person shooter!
And what is the point about rendering a nice planet texture at 100 fps rather than at 10 fps?
And yes, I have some 6 Gigabytes of textures and various addons on both.
You seem to have a very decent machine but what is obvious is that you do not understand how to operate it for what it is good at.
Your only contribution to Celestia is persistent negative comments and crybaby whining - read editorial/emotional/hormonal, pick up your choice - instead of adult rational analysis and problem solving attitude.
And please do not mess with the devs.
They brought to you this jewel for free.

danielj · Post #29by **danielj** » 05.12.2007, 22:37

I??m not talking about Celestia in general.I??m talking about very high resolution models like Mars2,Huyghens Landing Site(that it is even more demanding than Mars2) and huge addons like Ran III or big models,for example.One year for now,a FX 5900 or even a 6600 GT WILL NOT BE ABLE to run the program in all its glory!Maybe even in 6 months...

danielj · Post #30by **danielj** » 05.12.2007, 22:46

I rather PAY than waiting SEVERAL MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS to have some significant update.There is more than 2 months,that even ONE decent non-fictional addon,that is not a data addon appeared in Motherlode.Even after Chris return,NOTHING CHANGES!For exeample,was about time to have a new model and texture for Epimetheus(at least,a partial one) or even new textures for some of the larger saturnian moons ands no one even is working with IT!We still don??t have ANY Normal Map larger than 4k,and even knowing that we have a lot of missions to the Moons and the sattleite is almost entirely cartographed.
My emphasis in hardware is only a consequence of this lack of news!
Unfourtanetelly,the paid versions are NOT AVAILABLE in my country,so I don??t have choice.Or they are too expensive...

Fenerit · Post #31by **Fenerit** » 06.12.2007, 00:44

Just few months ago you were unsatisfied of the your personal computer. Now you have a more powerful computer of the previous. I suspect that even with ten thousand of CRAY 2 or APE in parallel as graphic card attached to a 1000" plasma monitor with a resolution pair to an omega number per inch, you should find something to say.

cartrite · Post #32by **cartrite** » 06.12.2007, 19:50

danielj wrote:I??m not talking about Celestia in general.I??m talking about very high resolution models like Mars2,

danielj,
This model was created while using a FX5500 card and a 900mhz k7 processor. If you got slow frame rates with video cards you have, imagine what I got. At the time I created the model I could only see still shots and navigation was almost impossible. But I wanted to see it so ..............
I like to see planets in 3d with the best detail possible no matter what the performance. If the performance is a problem for you, don't use it. These models I'm experimenting with now are being built on a better system with a 8600. If this is a problem for you, I suggest you learn how to build your own and optimize them for your system.
cartrite

Boux · Post #33by **Boux** » 06.12.2007, 21:25

Fenerit wrote:Just few months ago you were unsatisfied of the your personal computer. Now you have a more powerful computer of the previous. I suspect that even with ten thousand of CRAY 2 or APE in parallel as graphic card attached to a 1000" plasma monitor with a resolution pair to an omega number per inch, you should find something to say.

Lol! That's the best summary ever.
The problem is with the human operator, not with the machine.
The machine shows pretty good specs.
It should load and run anything Celestia as smooth as a baby's bottom.
Real world: no fancy latest gen gpu on my laptop.
And I make a lot of marketing communications presentations with it, in front of rather smart electrical and electromechanical engineers from all over the world.
Everytime I run Celestia in between two serious ppt business shows, just to give a breath to them, I get the "Wow... wtf is that thing?"

Fenerit · Post #34by **Fenerit** » 06.12.2007, 22:22

Infact. I'm unable to find myself in Danielj's complaints, since I've a 750 Mhz with 440 MX 128 with which I build the interiors of the planets. Just one months ago for my birthday one of my friends gift to me your "old" AMD 2400 1gb ram + motherboard. For me this computer it's "new". The Christmas is at finger tips and there are, as tradition, lot of "electronic fest" in which is easy to find HDD and graphic cards at nice price. I'm waiting, I didn't run fast; for what: should be forced to re-install all things on the new computer with the risk of lost all because the new hardware will go in registry's conflict or to stand still in modelling until ready? Now it's 5 years that go ahead with this stable configuration, I've a lot of customizations, models bank, etc, etc. Also my friend which doesn't knows Celestia when see it (with 2k textures!) doesn't believe at your eyes and all the time I tell yours: "think... and yours computers are more powerful of this!".