Resource issues with 98se?

Weird…I’ve run 3DC from Version 3.32 onwards on both Win95 and Win98SE on a Pentium 200 (yes, a Pentium 200) with 96MB of RAM, 256mb fixed swapfile (i.e., min and max are set to 256 and system files modified to ConservativeSwapFileUsage = 1), a Voodoo 3 3000, in either 16/32 bit color depending on what I’m doing.

I’ve never had any real resource issues to speak of. 3DC runs quickly enough for my purposes, and really doesn’t start bogging down seriously unless I’m in 32-bit color mode (rarely, i only do this when i need to use textures ]256 in dimensions), AND the model has a really high point count.

I’ve also had PSP and several other andquot;helperandquot; programs open simultaneously with very little trouble while 3DC was running.

In fact, it’s pretty damn fast in 16 bit color. The only slowness comes pretty much while opening it and loading some of the external-preview operators.

I think it’s got more to do with specific system configurations and vendors than a catch-all software issue.

-Mel Ebbles

I commonly like to keep a number of applications available while I work. For example;

IE or Word 2000 referencing a turtorial
PSP6 to work on bitmaps
and 3DC to work in a model.

I have a 933Mhz, 256M Ram system with loads of disk space.

I regularly encounter not enough memory errors when osing 3DC (but only when using 3DC). I use a Gforce 2 MX400 card with 64M and the latest drivers from the board company, not nvidia.

Can anyone tell me if there is something I can do to try and kill this problem. I can crash with as little as 3 or for objects on the screen.

Any advice would be appreciated. I have considered moving 3DC to a different machine. I have a 500Mhz machine with the same amount of ram that is running Windows 2000. It’s not my preferred solution, since it doesn’t have any of my other tools installed either. andnbsp; andnbsp;

Thanks for looking into it.

Hope it works! The resource / speed thing on 98 is the only, repeat, only thing that ‘bugs’ me with 3DCP! Fantastic product in every other way!

Jon

I just thought of a way that should reduce the amount of resources used by 3DC <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>. I am not certain how much effect there will be. Probably a relatively small amount. But I should be able to give you more information later today.

Richard

There’s nothing that you can do unfortunately. 3DC uses a lot of resources and earlier versions of Windows are quite restricted in the amount of available resources.

It isn’t an issue for XP or 2000.

Richard

Alex,

Actually this wouldn’t make any difference. The tabs are just a way of reconfiguring the same controls. There isn’t any duplication.

But thanks for the suggestion.

Richard

Alex,

You’re absolutely right. It is the number of controls used by the 3DC interface that is the issue. All of the buttons, panels etc. are what eat up the resources. There are a bunch of techniques that can be used to reduce resources. But, 3DC already has used most of the resource-reducing techniques.

I did some testing tonight that I andquot;hopedandquot; would help. Unfortunatley it made little difference. I was able to recover about 1 or possibly 2 percent of the resources with one change that I made. I had a second change that would have netted another 1 percent, but I didn’t implement it because it would have made the download bigger and would have added some controls not supported by Microsoft (they wrote it but don’t support it). I thought it was too risky.

So, unfortunately the improvement with 3DC 5.5b is going to be pretty small.

Actually, there is another issue with resources. There is a bug in one of the Microsoft supplied controls (a picture control) that eats up resources and never releases them. I have removed a few of these from the new release and replaced them with a less buggy Microsoft control <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –> It may help somewhat with resources, but it is hard to say for sure.

I must say that I am pleased to see XP arriving and being main stream. If you have XP (or 2000) you won’t have this problem at all.

On the bright side, I don’t expect to be adding any new resource usage to 3DC (to speak of) so it won’t get any worse.

Richard

hmmmm, I just deinstalled the older version and installed the latest version and my performance issues, mentioned earlier, seem to no longer be so severe. andnbsp;I guess my problems are resolved for the moment. andnbsp;Thanks for all the background information. andnbsp;I will soon be migrating to Windows 2000.

Good to hear. I did make some changes to the current version to address this problem. I didn’t think they would improve things that much. But perhaps they did.

Richard

Just for reference, Initially I was using 16 bit and then I took everyones advice and enabled 32 bit. This is when things started to slow down, but a number other things, including things not related to 3DC, started working better so I didn’t wan to go back…