Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / These forums have magical powers!

Author
Message
shockedfrog
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: Scotland
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:35 Edited at: 30th Apr 2005 05:36
Link
Probably not actually magic, but I'm completely lost as to how this happens. But for some reason, if I run a DBPro program while a IE or Firefox window is open, at a page on the forum.thegamecreators.com website, then it runs at a good speed, but without a browser window at that address, it goes slower. For an example, http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=46626&b=4 - pizzaman's second sample runs at 166FPS if I have a browser window at forum.thegamecreators.com, but if I change the browser address to a different site such as www.thegamecreators.com, or if I close the browser altogether, then it runs at a far slower 65FPS. While I'm happy that I seem to have found a way to make things run at a decent speed, I'm seeking a more sensible explanation for why this might be happening and ideally, a better way to deal with it rather than having to keep IE or Firefox open.
Back to top
Profile PM
Mike P
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 11th Dec 2004
Location: England
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:39
Link
Probably because not all websites use mySQL and Asp like this 1. Therefore TGC Forums will require more computer power to run than a normal HTML site!

[center]
Worship Me OR DIE - http://www.ibse.r8.org
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Benjamin
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Nov 2002
Location: France
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:42
Link
Or because of the memory used by the HUGE signatures some people have.


"Lets migrate like bricks" - Me
Back to top
Profile PM Email
shockedfrog
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: Scotland
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:42
Link
But... wouldn't that cause a slowdown, rather than the speed increase I'm getting?
Back to top
Profile PM
fasdfsdaf
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 17th Jan 2005
Location:
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:45
Link
Technically, no because it frees memory on the ram. but because everything from this site is compressed neatly, more memory is reserved than used, so DBPro is able to use the rest.

[me]"My throat froze!"
[other person]"Force quit it next time..."
A.K.A Death Stalker
Back to top
Profile PM
shockedfrog
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: Scotland
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 05:49
Link
Can't say I really understood that. Why, when so many things advise you to close all applications you aren't using, do DBPro programs run faster when I have a useless browser window open than when it's not?
Back to top
Profile PM
shockedfrog
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: Scotland
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 06:34
Link
Here's something that makes equally little sense, but expands on what's going on - I noticed that the forums used flash for the little thing at the top, and tested running DBPro programs while other websites were running flash applets. The programs ran at the fast speed I mentioned before, so it now seems that having a Flash applet running causes DBPro programs to run faster.
Back to top
Profile PM
Cryptoman
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Nov 2003
Location: Utah Mountains
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 06:42
Link
It would seem that this could be a bug with the windows timer, as when I use the processor counter this does not happen. Maybe somehow flash is messing with the timer.


Back to top
Profile PM
Clueless
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 16th Feb 2004
Location: Corbin, KY, USA
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 08:23
Link
@Evil God of Hell:
Quote: "probably because not all websites use mySQL and Asp like this"


ASP and mySQL run in the context of the server(s), not the client machine running the web browser, so that wouldn't make a difference either way (but if you're saying both are cool products, I will agree 100% )

@shockedfrog:
Quote: "it now seems that having a Flash applet running causes DBPro programs to run faster"

This is a stretch, but I wonder if the folks who wrote the Flash applet might know some optimization trick for your particular video card, and they're taking advantage of it (and your fps test rides happily along?)

Hey, I said it was a stretch...
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Not Gavin
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Apr 2005
Location:
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 09:41
Link
Here's a "stretch" for you, shockedfrog is an idiot, how's that?

shockedfrog you are a moron, a retard if you will and you live in a magical fantasy world where the Happy Flash Gang scurry around the internet sprinkling their magical pixie dust on servers and processors alike and this magical pixie dust miraculously takes hold of the fully optimized DBPro and codes the compiler to somehow be faster, why? Why do you think this? Well I'll tell you why, start again at line 1.

shockedfrog is a backwards reject.
Back to top
Profile PM
Neofish
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Apr 2004
Location: A swimming pool of coke
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 11:08 Edited at: 30th Apr 2005 11:10
Link
Quote: "@Evil God of Hell:
Quote: "probably because not all websites use mySQL and Asp like this"

ASP and mySQL run in the context of the server(s)"

Even more importantly this forum runs on PHP not ASP (with MySQL)

Also I did a test, using the click and push scroll function mice with wheels have, I discovered it scrolls up to 80% slower over that fscking huge sig

"OC192...that's like the speed of light"
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
JerBil
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th May 2004
Location: Somewhere along the Z axis...
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 11:15
Link
@Not Gavin, He's getting better results than you are...


-JerBil

Ad Astra Per Asper
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Nicholas Thompson
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 11:40
Link
this thread is complete bull.. How can browsing a site make anything quicker... It only EVER going to make things slower!
Flash is a well made language and probably doesn't update when its not shown.. I've used it and, althought the IDE I think is a little "clunky", it seems pretty efficient!

ASP is not used - Neofish hit the nail on the head..

MySQL is serverside - so ZERO effect here..

The increase in speed is probably a combination of luck, an inbalance system (eg 3Ghz CPU with a TNT2 or 6800Ultra on a 486), or some other stupid piece of software running...

The only peopel talking sense here so far are Neofish, Jerbil, Not Gavin and clueless.. Ironically, all the people who posted before me!

My Website:
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Ace Of Spades
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Mar 2005
Location: Across the ocean
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 11:42
Link
Quote: "The only peopel talking sense here so far are Neofish, Jerbil, Not Gavin and clueless"


So why should we listen to you if you are not talking sense?

Digitalmodr
Coder_David
[Apolloed ]
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Nicholas Thompson
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 11:49 Edited at: 30th Apr 2005 11:50
Link
Quote: "so far"


at that point, so far implies till I had posted..

EDIT: Feel free to ignore me - but I'll be impressed if you can prove that devoting more of your processor to another task can improve the performance of another task that often requires 100% of the CPU..

My Website:
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
G Man
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 17th Nov 2004
Location:
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 12:01 Edited at: 30th Apr 2005 12:02
Link
I suppose you could consider this thread debunked... Observe if you will, the attached image:

Intel Pentium 4, 3.4GHz, 1280MB RAM, NVidia Quadro FX3000/256MB, 240GB HD, XP Pro

Attachments

Login to view attachments
Back to top
Profile PM
Nicholas Thompson
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 12:02
Link
G Man: HOW DARE YOU PROVE MY POINT!!! Hehe...

My Website:
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
shockedfrog
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: Scotland
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 12:05 Edited at: 30th Apr 2005 12:08
Link
Sheesh. Wtf is with you people? First a few people who don't even read the topic before replying, then a load of people saying "This obviously is fake, because it doesn't happen to me!" The topic states 'I', not 'you', and thus you cannot assume that I was referring to everybody.
BTW, Not Gavin is actually Gavin! But none of you know who Gavin is, so that doesn't matter.

Anyway, I've gathered that this problem is limited to me, at least in the scope of these forums, but when millions of people end up downloading DAVE, I know there's going to be at least one with the same problem, and I'm still no nearer to finding out why it acts like this so I don't have to tell that guy to go and run a flash applet for no good reason. I'm not saying having the Flash thing open is increasing my speed - rather, not having it open decreases the speed.

Clueless's theory makes some sort of sense - I was thinking that flash perhaps changes some display setting when it's running, but I have no idea where to start to work out what it is.
Back to top
Profile PM
geecee3
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 25th Feb 2004
Location: edinburgh.scotland.
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 13:42
Link
hi all,

never doubt the wierdness of computer hardware, writing off what shockedfrog has said is pure silly. if computers never had these oddities then the demo scene would be very lame indeed. strange interactions between hardware and software are known to happen under certain conditions. the atari st could display 16 out of 512 colours, how come it had demos with 4096 colours? or how come you can put 10 sectors on a floppy and improve the performance by tricking the interleave. does anyone here know what a ULA is? your computer just happens to be full of them. and 9 times out of 10, it's those little blighters to blame. you see a lot of the gates that go into chipsets are undefined logic arrays that have no real definition or defined purpose. with the right values in the right memory locations these logic arrays can do unexpected things while remining pefectly stable. it's like improving the performance of your computer by flashing the bios. you ain't changed the hardware, just the way the software accesses it. having 2 programs running at the same time can speed up your machine if certain windows processes are suspended or their priority level gets changed on the fly by another piece of non OS code.

it seems to me that people here know their software, but knowing the hardware is a different kettle of fish. and here the knowledge of computer architecture is lacking badly.

as the most simple example i can think of:

you have the worlds fastest most advanced graphics card that has a 30MB driver install, but your running it using a simple VGA SAFE driver that uses much less resources. will your computer be faster? I think not. and how come the efficiency of a of a graphics card can be changed just by updating the driver?

really people, come on.
personally I think shockedfrog deserves an apology from everyone.

geecee3.

ps. i happen to know a fair bit about computers and how they are put together, and just how strange the hardware can behave with the right conditions set. I was overclocking my TANDON AT back in 1987 and found that with the correct mouse driver installed i was getting increased performance right across the board. and by overclocking i mean using a soldering iron! not tweaking some silly bios setting.
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Cryptoman
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Nov 2003
Location: Utah Mountains
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 14:10
Link
Yes, I so wished many years ago that the pc had not went the way it has. Everybody and their brother makes an IBM compatable. They only can run the same software because of BIOS interp.

I mean, look at what the Xbox can do, and it only has 733mhz cpu.

The software engineers can exploit the hardware to the full extent, because every xbox uses the same hardware and will react the same.

But on the pc you have to be so generalized on everything then cross your fingers that it will work among all the available hardware.

Instead of speed or bit wars, there really should be more standarization. Or drop the old z80 instruction set and move on.

The 68b09 instruction set was very powerful, but never made it to much more than computer tire balancers and the COCO.

The compatability war should just end and move to a whole new era, drop the old, move on to new, and only be compatable with older machines for a set number of years.

There is my load of crap.


Back to top
Profile PM
Coding Fodder
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 25th Sep 2003
Location: Somewhere in my cerebralcortex
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 16:09
Link
Amen mr monkey!!

(now for the not so serious)

We should start a community project to design our own architecture and get the gamecreators to bank roll the production of a couple thousand motherboards.

Personally I would be content to clock back to the max speed of memory for simplicity. 1024 bit sound ok? so I can address 1.8*10^308 bytes.

Sorry getting off track

Something really catchy that makes people stop and think about the meaning of life and say to themselves "My but thats clever"
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
JerBil
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th May 2004
Location: Somewhere along the Z axis...
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 23:39
Link
How 'bout if TGC burns DBP onto a chip and makes it
a hardware option for pc's?


-JerBil

Ad Astra Per Asper
Back to top
Profile PM Email
IanG
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 25th Sep 2004
Location: Cyberspace
Posted: 30th Apr 2005 23:55
Link
that would be more buggy than a bug

Used to be Phoenix_insane registered in september 2003 despite what the date says to the left <--
PC - amd athlon 2.0ghz, 512mb, GeForce FX 5200 128mb, 200gb, xp pro sp2
Back to top
Profile PM
Richard Davey
Retired Moderator
23
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Apr 2002
Location: On the Jupiter Probe
Posted: 1st May 2005 02:34
Link
Quote: "While I'm happy that I seem to have found a way to make things run at a decent speed, I'm seeking a more sensible explanation for why this might be happening and ideally, a better way to deal with it rather than having to keep IE or Firefox open."


Far more likely is that the Flash or some element on the page is corrupting the sync rate. Some other people reported this happening with various versions of Media Player a while ago, so no you're not going mad and yes it does happen. BTW ignore the comments from "Not Gavin", who seems to have a serious issue shoved tightly up his arse.

Cheers,

Rich

Two Worlds and in Between
Hot Metal and Methedrine
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Osiris
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Aug 2004
Location: Robbinsdale, MN
Posted: 1st May 2005 02:38
Link
Everyone....its magic.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
IanG
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 25th Sep 2004
Location: Cyberspace
Posted: 1st May 2005 03:03
Link
and magic is just an illusion

Used to be Phoenix_insane registered in september 2003 despite what the date says to the left <--
PC - amd athlon 2.0ghz, 512mb, GeForce FX 5200 128mb, 200gb, xp pro sp2
Back to top
Profile PM
heartbone
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Nov 2002
Location:
Posted: 1st May 2005 03:09
Link
Quote: " How 'bout if TGC burns DBP onto a chip and makes it
a hardware option for pc's?
-JerBil"


If the "chip" is substituted by a CD-ROM
(which physically looks more like a chip than an IC)
then your suggestion.... it has already been done!

Peace, the anti-Bush.
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Neofish
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Apr 2004
Location: A swimming pool of coke
Posted: 1st May 2005 03:20
Link
Quote: "The only peopel talking sense here so far are Neofish"

We'll soon see about that!

Quote: "ASP is not used - Neofish hit the nail on the head.."

DIE EVIL NAIL SCUM

"OC192...that's like the speed of light"
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
JerBil
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th May 2004
Location: Somewhere along the Z axis...
Posted: 1st May 2005 04:53
Link
Quote: "If the "chip" is substituted by a CD-ROM
(which physically looks more like a chip than an IC)
then your suggestion.... it has already been done!
"


You're right. I spent hours soldering connections to that cd-rom.
Never could figure how to access the data, though...


-JerBil

Ad Astra Per Asper
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Clueless
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 16th Feb 2004
Location: Corbin, KY, USA
Posted: 2nd May 2005 05:42
Link
@Gavin:
Quote: "Here's a "stretch" for you, shockedfrog is an idiot, how's that?"


Totally inappropriate posting, which tells me a lot about your lack of experience dealing with people as well as computer hardware.

... as Richard Davey said:
Quote: "Far more likely is that the Flash or some element on the page is corrupting the sync rate"


Weirdness like this happens all the time. The cause may not be what shockedfrog suspects, but obviously something is happening there. Go through your computer career afraid of being called an idiot because you point out strangeness and things that seem impossible, and you're going to have a very short career.
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2025-06-02 13:51:45
Your offset time is: 2025-06-02 13:51:45