From what the picture shows, it looks like the songs take about 50% of your CPU for them to run (mostly). I had a 333 mhz CPU, and I could run F-Zero X without a problem, as well as Super Mario 64 (I actually have a list somewhere, but since I'm not home, I can't remember most of them). About 50% of the sets available ran without a problem, and the other 50% had a problem in at least 1 song in the set. However, most of them took nearly 90% or more of the CPU for them to run. SMB64 took like, 30-50% of the CPU, with the RSP turned on. With it turned off, it didn't run, most of the time.
The reason I bring this up is because I now have a 2ghz 64bit CPU, and most of the sets take 50% at most (usually far less, like 30%, at most). I'm just curious as to why, when you have a 2.2ghz CPU, it takes more CPU for you than it does for me, who has a slower CPU? Just curious, that's all. If it makes a differance, it's an AMD CPU...
> I'm just curious as to why, when you have a 2.2ghz CPU, it takes more CPU for you than it does for me, who has a slower CPU?
No idea. The only background apps were Notepad and TeaTimer. Plus, I've disabled a lot of Windows stuff that can slow the system down (services and the like).
Though... it had been about a week since I'd shutdown WinXP, and the number of handles was a little up--but nothing too bad. So maybe it was just the particular songs from either case. Or maybe it's your 64-bit processor.
> Did you have all those programs running at the same time?
Pentium 4 3,2 Ghz Radeon x600 XT PCI Express 16x 2x Dual Channel 256 MB DDR2 S-ATA Drive 7200 Upm OS: Windows XP Prof. SP2 Resolution:(usually 1600 x 1200, but for the screenshot I used 1024 x 768) Running Processes: very much, at least 50 or more CPU usage: only up to 13- 14% not more... You see the 2 Graphs, its because of a Hyper-Threading CPU and u see sometimes dissipations of the graph.This is because when iam changing something, but this are not dissipations because of N64th Note.
It seems, your Computer must have some other problems.Maybe problems with Spyware,Malware or Something?And u see, on my Pc there are running very much processes...at the same time!
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600 OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Name PSCONWAY System Manufacturer MEDIONPC System Model MS-7046 System Type X86-based PC Processor x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2992 Mhz Processor x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2992 Mhz BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 31/08/2004 SMBIOS Version 2.3 Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32 Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1 Locale United States Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)" User Name PSCONWAY\Peter S. Conway Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB Available Physical Memory 220.42 MB Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB Page File Space 1.22 GB Page File C:\pagefile.sys Internet Connection Sympatico Highspeed (160kbit) Hard Drive Capacity 160 GB Space free part1-62.5 GB part2-3.03
But look at the graph once more. As you can see, it varies greatly from song to song. This is how the portable sound format works. Apparently, the programmers for F-Zero X optimized their audio engine very well (either that, or HCS ripped it better than others); it uses 12-15% CPU.
Mario 64 songs can vary from 20-60%. Smash Bros. songs are lower, staying around 15%. "Phony" from Tetrisphere is a hog, staying around 45-60%.
Of course, this is all speculation on my part. Perhaps HCS can comment.
(Oh, and trust me: It's not spyware. And my computer may not be top-of-the-line, but it's nice.)
F-Zero X's music was indeed designed for the utmost efficiency, so that as much CPU and RSP power could be used for graphics. No actual synthesis is done, the music is simply decoded and played. Thus we see the size/speed tradeoff in action. Tetrisphere, New Tetris, and Magical Tetris Challenge, on the other hand, just have huge samples and synthesize at a high sample rate, which they can afford since there isn't much in the way of graphics or heavy processing in Tetris games. Ogre Battle is sort of the same phenomenon, it has fairly simple graphics and thus can afford to spend a lot of CPU on sound. It's a matter of balancing the limited power of the N64, not necessarily how efficient the programmers were (there's only so efficient resampling and mixing can get...)
For Phony I have a CPU Usage of 18 % For Ogre Battle 64 - Title 20-22% For Blast Corps Songs 15 % For Golden Eye 64 ONLY 4-7 % For Perfect Dark 7-12 % For F-Zero X 3-6 % For Banjo & Kazooie - Title 13-17 % For Beetle Adventure Racing Songs only 4-7 % For Mario Kart 64 7-9 % For Pilot WIngs 64 3-6 %
Only for Phony and other Songs of Tetrisphere and for especially Ogre Battle 64 are "high" CPU Usage. F-Zero uses very low CPU Ressources...
It's true that the N64 doesn't have a dedicated synthesis chip, the sound hardware is a simple DMA and DAC unit built into the RCP called the AI (Audio Interface). Thus all it can do in hardware is play back PCM data from RAM. Most games (dare I say all?) generate the sound via microcode on the RSP, which is designed for processing large amounts of data. The RSP is also used for geometry transformations, games load microcode onto it that takes the higher-level display list generated by the game and processess it into the low level "this triangle at these pixels with this texture" type of commands that the RDP can use directly. The design of the N64 is such, however, that you can generate audio and graphics on the CPU or RSP in any manner you choose. I seem to recall reading about Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine that the developers designed the sound system so it would do audio generation on the CPU if the RSP was too busy with graphics. My NES emulator, Neon64, never touched the RSP for sound, and initially it actually used the RSP for rendering instead of the RDP (and very early on everything was done right on the CPU).