I am starting to fear that my Powerbook 5,8 (1,67Ghz 2 GB of DDR2) goes slower than how it should go.

I hear of people that play 720p movies smoothly and that have excellent responsiveness of all the system, while here even moving/resizing windows is totally far from smooth, so I did some test to have a comparsion and got different results from what I read here (see PowerBook G5 1,67GHz):


http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2012-02-00011-EN.html



In the LAME TEST my same machine takes just 15s to complete the conversion, while mine took 19s:


MorphOS:> lame DOWNLOAD:AKsack.wav
LAME 3.98.4 32bits (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 16538 Hz - 17071 Hz
Encoding DOWNLOAD:AKsack.wav to DOWNLOAD:AKsack.wav.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (11x) 128 kbps qval=3
Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA
10529/10529 (100%)| 0:18/ 0:18| 0:19/ 0:19| 14.607x| 0:00
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kbps MS % long switch short %
128.0 100.0 76.1 13.4 10.5
Writing LAME Tag...done
ReplayGain: +0.5dB





In the MPLAYER TEST my same machine takes just 69,8s. Here are my results:

MorphOS:> mplayer -benchmark -nosound -ao null -lavdopts skiploopfilter=none "DOWNLOAD:Prometheus - Trailer.mp4"
Port "MPLAYER.1" already exists!
MPlayer SVN-r34869-4.4.4 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
192 audio & 399 video codecs

Playing DOWNLOAD:Prometheus - Trailer.mp4.
libavformat version 54.3.100 (internal)
libavformat file format detected.
[h264 @ 0x2c4f7c08]Warning: not compiled with thread support, using thread emulation
[aac @ 0x2c4f7c08]Warning: not compiled with thread support, using thread emulation
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang eng
VIDEO: [H264] 1920x816 24bpp 90000.000 fps 6828.3 kbps (833.5 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
major_brand: mp42
minor_version: 0
compatible_brands: mp42isomavc1
creation_time: 2011-12-23 08:24:51
genre: Trailer
artist: 20th Fox
title: Prometheus - Trailer
encoder: HandBrake 4344svn 2011111001
date: 2012
Load subtitles in DOWNLOAD:
VO: [cgx_overlay_gui] Hello!
VO: [cgx_overlay] Hello!
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 54.14.101 (internal)
[h264 @ 0x2c4f7c08]Warning: not compiled with thread support, using thread emulation
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
Unsupported PixelFormat 53
Unsupported PixelFormat 81
Movie-Aspect is 2.35:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [cgx_overlay] 1920x816 => 1920x816 Planar YV12
VO: [cgx_overlay] Window mode.
VO: [cgx_overlay] : window size: 1432x612.
VO: Disabling blanker
VO: [cgx_overlay] : cgxvideo.library >= 43.6 detected, using doublebuffer
VO: [cgx_overlay] : using draw_slice_420p (PLANAR) primitive


BENCHMARKs: VC: 94.068s VO: 25.035s A: 0.000s Sys: 1.534s = 120.636s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 77.9763% VO: 20.7522% A: 0.0000% Sys: 1.2714% = 100.0000%
VO: Enabling blanker

Exiting... (End of file)


What's wrong with my machine?

Just perform the test in RAM:. Harddrive is slow and fragmented.

The reason you cannot play 720p is that it depends on the used codec, bitrate and so on, too.

Geit

I performed again the test from ram: and nothing changed.

After than I performed the tests booting from MorphOS CD and got a bit of improvement. Lame result is 16/17 s while mplayer test results are:

BENCHMARKs: VC: 88.068s VO: 25.035s A: 0.000s Sys: 1.534s = 112.000s

Can some MOS developer explain this behaviour and why there so big difference with the test results in the linked page (probable performed buy some developer before 3.x was out) Can the graphic drivers difference (internal beta VS public version) interfere with the test results ins some way?

You also need the very same lame version supporting altivec. Just using a different version can give other results.

Also check the performance settings as you powerbook may be configured to run slower when battery powered.

Its quite imposssible your system got slow due some hardware failure.

Geit

Did you install any 3rd party software recently? Meaby your machine is overheating?

It's not overheating and the software installed is the same I use since years.
The fact is that even booing from a clean MorphOS installation (MorphOS CD) the results are worse than the one in the link.

@ geit
I did the tests with AC supply fitted. About the hardware failure I was thinking to the ram. I have 2x1GB modules and I remember something about morphos having problems with more than 1,5GB of Ram. Moreover if I do memtest it gives everytime different values, much different. Isn't this strange?

Another thing: the lame version is the last one with altivec support

> I have 2x1GB modules and I remember something about morphos having
> problems with more than 1,5GB of Ram.

I think you've misunderstood something. It's true that MorphOS can't use more than 1.5 GiB RAM but more physical RAM installed doesn't hurt as anything above that 1.5 GiB barrier is simply ignored basically.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8756&forum=3&start=1

Miky060,
Quote:

But what do you have in Laptop settings in MorphOS Preferences for AC power profile? Checkmark in "Adjust CPU frequency..." or not? There should be checkmark to get full speed.

Hi Miky060,

A few things spring to mind:

1) Anything running in the background (eg OWB?)
2) Anything starting from wbstartup when booting from hdd?
3) Are both your source and destination set to ram: for the lame test?
4) You missed the "-vo null" option from your mplayer command compared to Piru's benchmark comparison.

Quote:

With Powerbook 5,6 (1,67GHz; 1GB DDR Ram; 128MB VRam) I get:

Lame test:
Quote:

MPlayer test:
Quote:

@boot_wb
You're right, I missed -vo null parameter!! Now the mplayer test gives much better results:

BENCHMARKs: VC: 93.817s VO: 0.011s A: 0.000s Sys: 0.732s = 94.559s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 99.2151% VO: 0.0111% A: 0.0000% Sys: 0.7738% = 100.0000%

Now I want to try it again booting from MOS CD so I am sure nothing can interfere. About the tools I launch at boot I have these apps in my WBstartup drawer:

- Mixer
- Clonck
- MMKeyboard
- Poly_Net

About lame test both source and destination are Ram disk.

In every case both mine and your test are still far from Piru's ones. How can this be possible?

Ok, booting from MorphOS CD I get these results:

LAME TEST
Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA
10529/10529 (100%)| 0:16/ 0:16| 0:16/ 0:16| 16.863x| 0:00
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MPLAYER TEST
BENCHMARKs: VC: 87.966s VO: 0.010s A: 0.000s Sys: 0.634s = 88.610s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 99.2728% VO: 0.0112% A: 0.0000% Sys: 0.7160% = 100.0000%

@Miky060

I get a bit of variance when I run the benchmarks - sometimes 16s, sometimes 17s for the lame test.
Best results were gained when freshly booted, nothing running in the background, and only aksack.wav in ramdisk.
It's a shame the precision is to 0 decimal places, as Piru's result could be 15.99s whilst mine could be 16.01 seconds.

Strange that your mplayer result is greater - could be that the DDR/DDR2 makes a difference I suppose (DDR having lowe latency)... would be useful to know if Piru's benchmark was run on a 5,6 or a 5,8.

I wouldn't call 82.2s (Piru's) and 83.6s (Mine) a huge variance though - less than 2% difference.

(PS Just re-ran the mplayer test twice more and and got VC: 84.020 and VC: 83.533, so there is definitely a bit of variation when running the tests.)

EDIT - Also a:mplayer/readme.morphos says:
Quote:
whilst the benchmark thread links to:
Quote:
which could also make a difference.

[ Edited by boot_wb 28.10.2012 - 10:17 ]

boot_wb you're right, I looked again at Piru's results and there is not big difference now. I confused AmigaOne X1000 results (69,8s) with PowerBook results (82,2s) in the mplayer test so I believed that the Piru PB took only 69s!

P.S. Your 5,6 seems really fast. It should be interesting to understand if Apple choice to adopt DDR2 in the last PowerBook models actually improved battery life.