[Virtualacorn-list] VRPC Suddenly Become Very Slow

[Mik Towse]

In article <A4C2439761A04CBA9E360372FF2CAF4E at philipsdesktop> T.O.M.S. wrote:
> This is a long-shot Mike, but perhaps worth checking.
> 
> I've just remembered. Someone reported last year that, having set up a 
> new machine, VirtualRPC was unexpectedly running very slowly.
> 
> He normally runs in 32K colours, so he tried reducing to 256 colours, 
> reducing screen resolution and so on, in the hope of speeding things 
> up, but all to no avail.
> 
> In desparation, he tried running in 16M colours - at which point RISC 
> OS speeded up by "at least 5x".  :-)
> 
> From that, the guess was that 32K colours (15-bit) may be a 'foreign' 
> mode for the underlying graphics card in the PC to handle, and was 
> making hard work of generating it specifically for use by RISC OS. 
> Whereas 16M colours (24-bit) may already be a built-in 'standard' PC 
> mode.
For sure the only colour modes available are all True Colour. Judging by the
amount of Graphic memory available (3200Mb) it's a combined CPU/Graphics
card.

> So if you've reset your CMOS file, have you inadvertently selected 
> 32,000 colours perchance? Any better in 16M colours? Fingers crossed.
I think it's always been 32k for my chosen screen res. I use 1440x900 because
it's an exact ratio of the actual PC res' of 1680x1050. It allows room for
the window furniture when double-clicked to fullsize.

Anyway, I made it 16m & initial impression is that things are smoother. Looks
like it's swiped 4Mb for my free memory. So now I only have 115Mb free! :D I
tried the suggestion elsewhere of reducing refresh to 30Hz & boy, did that
make the mouse lag!

Hm, as I type this the slight lag has returned. <sigh> Clearly there's an
underlying issue with the PC. I'm beginning to think it's a memory issue &
that the PC is using the USB drive for paging.

I think I'll turn off paging for E: & see what happens.

-- 
Mik Towse * mik.towse at xemik.com * http://www.xemik.co.uk/
My writers' site can be found at: http://www.lexis.org.uk

xemik.net - cost effective web hosting : http://xemik.net

Always remove the last screw first