Minimum Hardware Requirements

[csmith12]

I was just wandering what was the lowest box that showeq can be run on, and still be withing acceptable ranges of performance.

NOTES

1. Showeq is the only thing the box is used for in my case.
2. Running RH 7.2

This performance is good

PII 400 with 128MB Ram
PIII 500 with 256MB Ram

This performance is bad

PIMMX 200mhz 96MB Ram
PI 233mhz 84MB Ram

I have played with the options in showeq to improve speed of decoding, but just not getting it.

What are you guys/gals running it on? Is there a way to get acceptable performance from the PI systems. Or what can i upgrade on the PI systems to get them to perform better.

Thanks for info

[S_B_R]

I'm currently running SEQ on the following:
RedHat 7.2
Cyrix-M2 300Mhz
128meg RAM

The performance is almost acceptable, BUT it's not SEQ that is causing the problem. It's X. X is taking up most of my CPU while runing SEQ. X is usually running at 15 to 75% of the CPU. When X is a at 15% the performance is very good, but once it exceeds about 40% performance quickly falls off.
I've tried pretty much everything I can think and I have made some progress on getting better performance. I've tried Gnome, Ice, Blackbox, and KDE. KDE gives me the best performance while Gnome was the worst. I thought maybe it was Video driver related. So I started with a Voodoo3, switched to a TNT 16mb card, and the results are roughly the same (+/- 2%). The best Performace gain I have had was compiling QT with the configure options Zaphod used in his howto. That took X from a rough CPU utilization of 50% - 90% down to 20% - 75%.

I would say this is a known issue but I don't think any of the devs are working on it. I have a feeling most people don't notice it because they are running on faster hardware. Just an estimate but 75% of a 300MHz Cryix is probably only 5% of 500MHz PIII...

As a side note X didn't show these simptoms when I ran SINS in the past, nor did SEQ Versions <4.0.

[fryfrog]

i run seq on a laptop with a p2 233 and 96mb of ram, and while it isn't what i would call zippy, it does run and not so horribly.

my REAL seq box is a dual celeron 550 w/ 256mb ram and a tnt2 16mb video card. i run 3 sessions at once, it acts as a light duty samba and web server and doesn't show any signs of not liking it. i'm thinking of trying rh 7.3 though :)

[high_jeeves]

I have run it on a PPro 200 with 64MB... like fryfrog says.. it wasnt exactly speedy, but it worked fine. Much better on my 1Ghz hand-me-down tho :)

My guess is that it will run all the way down to 100Mhz or so.. but it will probably have a hard time with less that 32-48MB RAM.

--Jeeves

[Mr Guy]

You should at least have a motherboard and a CPU made after 1990 (not sure this a FIRM requirement though). RAM is a MUST. One stick (almost any kind) will do.

Also preferred is a keyboard of some type, and a monitor. Mouse helps but not needed for basic features.


Hehe a question like this just begs people to brag about how crappy their linux box is.

266 with 64 megs of ram here running on a 13 inch VGA monitor (with a whopping 256 colors), I'm practically a power house.

[kjb]

I don't notice any problems with it running on my 166mhz laptop with 32 megs of ram. Takes forevever to compile, but runs fine.

[high_jeeves]

Originally posted by Mr Guy

Hehe a question like this just begs people to brag about how crappy their linux box is.


Anyone have libEQ cross compiled for a C64? QT will probably take 2 years or so to build... but what else is it doing?

--Jeeves

[SammyFox]

Just fixed up a Dual 200mHz box with 256megs of memory. I know RH will support the dual processors but will I notice any difference with ShowEq.

SammyFox

[high_jeeves]

Yes, some.. I have run my 200 Dual also... X and QT are both mutlithreaded, so they will run on both processors.

--Jeeves

[netherneverhere]

My system specs are... drum roll please :D

P166
128 EDO Ram <--- l33t
10G HD (Had to upgrade from the dual 400mb HDs)

It Runs Slow.

But it runs.

[TweedleDee]

I've been running SEQ on a K6-2 400MHz with 256MB ram and an ATI 32MB PieceofSh vid card. It ran fine, did what it needed to do and did it satisfactorily. Last night/this morn, I upgraded to an Athlon 800, 768MB, and GeForce 256MX 64MB running RH 7.3 and it performs beautifully :) (Athlon was my old windows gateway/second account sys, but linux get's promoted and windows (or the RH 7.2 that's on it) get's demoted to the old k6 to be the gateway) Compiled in 1/4 of the time too (qt-2.3.2 in 1 hours 46 min)

[yyz]

I've ran it on a p100 with 48megs/mem before. Was sluggish, but it worked. Current PC is a p400 with 128.

Now if I could just get Tux Racer to run smoothly... :)

[Zaphod]

My ShowEQ machines are as follows:
Dev machine: AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 512MB RAM (time to do the compile/memory test). Works like a charm
Test machine 1: Pentium II - 350 MHz 128MB RAM. Works like a champ
Test machine 2: Pentium 166 32 MB RAM. Works ok with proper ShowEQ configuration (Fast machine off, Show Tooltips off, Show debug info off, show doors off, frame rate 3, save state spawns off, animate spawns off) and machine configuration (twm window manager, no KDE, no web services enabled, nothing extraneous running).


Performance on slower machines will be improved in my next CVS commit when using the new "Spawn List 2" instead of the classic "Spawn List".

Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)

[u4aora]

A recycled box with RH 7.2 running KDE. I upgraded this box using MrSuspicious detailed notes and had only one hangup with the old keydecode file in the library directory. ShowEQ compiles from CVS updates in about 30 minutes. The QT compile was several hours - one of those start it and go to bed. I do get occasional segment faults which have no particular pattern that I have noted yet. They occur as often as 2 or 3 times in an hour to none for several days.