Author Topic: what is the best way to optimize performance?  (Read 4556 times)

Steven Campoli

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what is the best way to optimize performance?
« on: November 07, 2018, 07:55:36 AM »
hey guys,

i have the latest nightly build of AM 2.5.0..

with the built in themes performance is smooth and super fast....when using custom themes i noticed that loading consoles take abit longer....

what is the best way to optimize performance....
i have resized images, shrinked videos ....

on window 10 pro....

verion

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2018, 01:09:50 PM »
I'll assume you running it on RaspberryPi - right?

So just search for the theme that is tested or created with RPi in mind.
RPi is underpowered for heavy themes.

And by "heavy" I mean the themes that:
- displays a lot of media (videos, wheel, flyers) as RPi is slow with loading them, especially if you are scrubbing through the list
- use a lot of calculations (mainly using surfaces)

If you are creating the theme by yourself - stay away from surfaces if you can.

Steven Campoli

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #2 on: November 08, 2018, 06:28:48 AM »
Thanks! And what about for windows. It’s laggy as well with custom themes, built in themes super fast..

zpaolo11x

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #3 on: November 08, 2018, 07:00:02 AM »
Speed of AM may depend on many factors: if you are using surface-intensive themes or themes with a lot of opengl shaders you'll need a good graphics card (my Iris graphics on my macbook pro runs my Arcadeflow theme at 45 fps, my Quadro card on my workstation runs at 60 fps even with a huge number of surfaces). Another issue is storage speed: if the theme needs to load a lot of artwork it can get slower if you are not on a fast SSD. One possible workaround is to create a ram disk and transfer the artwork there. My MAME artwork (screenshots and game names) takes less than 2 GB so I transferred that to RAM but I have 16 GB so it's not an issue. Of course I could not transfer video-snaps to RAM...

verion

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2018, 12:38:23 AM »
Build-in themes are purposely super-simple.

With heavier themes it's all about graphics card.
If you are on old Core2Duo processor with integrated Intel HD it can be laggy.
But anything more modern - you should be fine.

If you need more specific answers you have to be more specific - what hardware and what theme.
And if you are set on specific theme - it's best to ask in that theme thread.

keilmillerjr

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #5 on: November 09, 2018, 11:46:02 AM »
You need to look at all squirrel code executed by active plugins/themes/modules. Reducing the following will help with performance: layers, callbacks, things happening every tick. Animations will do it. Keep it simple if you can.

progets

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2018, 12:16:31 AM »
what is the best way to optimize performance....

Spend money. LOL.

But really, as others have said, use less intensive layouts. AM itself is very light weight compared to other FEs. Some layouts and HQ videos used can tax your system resources. Hardware acceleration can help with video rendering but only if you make sure that your videos (and OS) can use it. Not using videos at all would make for a very light (but possibly boring) layout.

In short, use a layout that suits your hardware or spend money to buy better hardware. In this case money can fix it but is it needed or worth it?

P.S. To put layout performance into layman's terms (how much each of these effect your system will depend on your hardware)
1. if you search the layout.nut and see "surface" entries it will take a performance hit
2. if you look near the beginning of the layout.nut and see a lot of "fe.load_module" or "fe.do_nut" entries there will be a performance loss
3. if the layout.nut contains "shader", "blend", "blur" or "scanline" there's a performance drop
« Last Edit: November 10, 2018, 12:33:02 AM by progets »

Steven Campoli

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2018, 12:30:38 PM »
thanks guys! gonna look into all of this...

Oomek

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Re: what is the best way to optimize performance?
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2018, 12:05:17 AM »
There is a known issue with Attract Mode and nVidia cards. If you have nVidia you need to disable Threaded Optimizations in your driver settings. Enabling Triple Buffering also helps.