Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 July 18

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July 18

Framerate problems

When I play a computergame on my laptop, the framerate starts out just fine. However after about 15-30 minutes of playing the framerate drops to unplayable levels. I don't know what's the problem. It happens when I run any game, so it's not specific to any particular program. I'm baffled really to what might be causing this. I'm running an Intel Centrino Duo. Videocard is a Quadro NVS 110M. ScienceApe (talk) 07:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. That is a bit odd. It could be overheating, which some systems deal with by automatically underclocking, which would reduce performance. If you've had the laptop for a year or more, you might consider taking it apart and cleaning out the fan vent. It usually gets clogged with dirt on laptops. (It's not terribly hard, but don't do it if you're not comfortable with taking apart computers and putting them back together.) It's also possible that your graphics drivers might have a memory leak... have you already updated your drivers to the most recent version on the vendor website? Hmm... can't think of anything else right now, but there's probably other things that could cause this issue. If I think of any more, I'll post them. Oh right, you might want to try running some benchmarking software like 3dmark or something. It might be able to give you a graph or something of your system performance over time. Indeterminate (talk) 22:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suspect that this is simply a memory issue. The longer you play the game, the more things need to be loaded into memory (models and sprites and textures and what-have-you), and after a while it can no longer fit. It then either has to be recycled and removed from memory (which can conceivably slow your game down) or more likely be paged off to the hard-drive, and when it needs to be recalled again, it can't do it from super-fast volatile memory, it has to do it from super-slow magnetic discs.

Of course, I can't be sure, but it would help if you posted how much RAM you have and what games this is happening on. 83.250.236.75 (talk) 00:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok I have 3072megs of ram. Memory speed is 533mhz. Memory type is DDR2 SDRAM. It happens on pretty much all of my games, including emulators. I mostly play Unreal Tournament 2004 these days. Even relatively simple emulators like Genesis emulators. It'll run at a smooth 60fps when I first start the game, then after 30 minutes or so, slows to 30 fps then 20 fps. I will also add that my laptop doesn't seem to detect my battery anymore. I once ran the laptop on batteries and was downloading something via wifi, and the battery drained in just a few minutes, and it hasn't worked since. Unplugging my laptop will shut it off. I have no idea if this has anything to do with my problem, but I figured I would throw it out there. I will say that I can't remember having framerate issues before the battery died on me... ScienceApe (talk) 06:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Download CPUID Hardware Monitor and monitor your temperatures while it's in the slow-down state. Overheating is the biggest possibility here, the age of your hardware means that it'd have gathered a significant amount of dust in its heatsinks, something like File:Laptop_dust.jpg. Memory leak is really unlikely because it does not depend on what you do, merely loading the cpu will cause slow downs. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

But that doesn't really explain why after I restart the game, the framerate is back up to acceptable levels again. I just tried Unreal Tournament 2004 now, and played for about 20 or 30 minutes till it became very choppy, then restarted the game, and it's back to normal again. ScienceApe (talk) 15:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to disagree there, when the GPU isn't under load (i.e. the game isn't running anymore) then the fans blowing on it will return the temperature to a normal level very very quickly. Literally 30 seconds or less which is probably the time it takes to reload the game and start the level again. At which point the GPU is working hard again and the fans are trying to keep the temperature cool, but eventually it gets too much and the GPU slows down to stop itself burning out. Have you tried cleaning out the vents yet? Cans of compressed air are very good for this if you don't want to open it up (although it could be argued you're making it worse as in many cases you're blowing the dust further into the machine). Just don't hold the cans upside down! ZX81 ^talk 13:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks like you're right. I cleaned out the vents with an airduster and it appears to work great now. Thanks a lot for the help. ScienceApe (talk) 20:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Three gigs of RAM should be more than enough, that's certainly not the problem then. While the battery-thing is obviously bad, I don't see how it would have anything to do with this. Do you have any of those really intrusive anti-virus programs running in the background? It might do a scan or something every 30-45 minutes that will slow down your computer (I'm guessing here). Also, it might not lead anywhere, but if I were you, I'd download Process Explorer and start killing processes like an insane lumberjack. Just stop everything non-essential, restart your game and see what happens. 83.250.236.75 (talk) 19:49, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually formatted my computer recently and reinstalled Windows XP SP2. So it can't be any malware or viruses, because they should have been destroyed in the format. Could it be a problem with drivers? Do I need any drivers for RAM? ScienceApe (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok downloaded that thing, and stopped all non-essential things. I still got massive slowdown in my game... I'm going to try uninstall my sound drivers and see what happens then. ScienceApe (talk) 23:28, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

How to take screenshots of Mac OS X applications's windows

I have recently found myself uploading screenshots of an application designed for Mac OS X, (see Chromium screenshot). However, so far I have only done this using Preview and the "grab" function. This meant that I have not been able to reproduce the semi-translucent shadow that windows in Mac OS X produce. Could somebody kindly tell me how I can capture the semi-translucent shadow, (as seen in File:Finder.png, and File:ITunes 8 OS X.png). Thanks alot, --P.Marlow (talk) 10:30, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Try Apple-Option-4. That should allow you to define a screenshot area that includes the shadow. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

and if you press the spacebar immediately, you should get a camera icon that will grab the image of the window only. :) Kushal (talk) 14:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

right, but it won't give you the shadow, which is explicitly what the OP wanted. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:59, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your help. Another user very kindly answered it for me: you press Command-Shift-4 and then Space, after which you click the window you want to capture and it captures the whole thing including the shadow. Thanks for your help anyways!--P.Marlow (talk) 08:56, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

GIF2APNG

Please convert most animated GIFs on Wikipedia Commons to APNG! --88.78.10.214 (talk) 14:35, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

This is the reference desk. Try the WP:Village Pump. APL (talk) 14:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

APNG is not supported on nearly enough of the current browsers that people actually use. Sure, it would be nice if lots of browsers supported MNG or APNG, but they don't, and promoting non-standard minority formats isn't Wikipedia's job. -- 87.114.153.140 (talk) 15:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I had never heard of APNG until this moment and using "...an unofficial extension to the PNG specification" which the "PNG group officially rejected..." would be a very bad idea. Anyway, what's wrong with animated GIFs which work everywhere? Astronaut (talk) 16:39, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Ideally we'd move away from animated GIF to an animated PNG format, in the same way that the web has mostly moved away from regular GIFs in favour of PNGs. MNG (which is the PNG group's suggestion for animated PNG, but which the Firefox people didn't like, and which no-one else seems to care about) and APNG both have the same advantages over animated GIF as PNG has over regular GIF: better compression, multilevel alpha (so you can do nice transparency), gamma support, and proper colour support (not just a limited palette). But the reality now is that no-one supports MNG out of the box, and for APNG there's no out-of-the-box support in IE, Safari, or Konqueror, and those browsers that do support it only did so relatively recently, leaving large populations behind that don't. -- 87.114.153.140 (talk) 16:51, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally the "PNG group officially rejected" thing isn't that serious a problem, as the PNG standard was built to accommodate new extensions without causing problems (which APNG is), whereas MNG doesn't "fail gracefully" on current browsers that do have PNG but not MNG. The real problem is that the web standards bodies haven't standardised a format, leaving an inconclusive chicken-and-egg situation (where browsers won't support things that aren't used, and authors won't make things that browsers won't display). That said, even if W3C or WHATWG did standardise on one or t'other today, it would likely be years before IE caught up, and it's difficult to justify creating general-interest content in a format that only a minority of visitors can see. 87.114.153.140 (talk) 17:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Isn't there an animated SVG format? JW _|^|_| Talk 17:48, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Two, really. SVG has basic procedural declarative animation where elements change according to some basic rules and paths (see http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/animate.html); this would be of some use to Wikipedia, animating some kinds of diagrams. The second kind is full DOM access, where a script (which means javascript in practice) can reach into SVG drawings and wiggle bits around. That's much more flexible, but it's very difficult to use in Wikipedia, because that would entail allowing ordinary contributors to supply javascript that's then run on others' browsers, and sanitising such general user-supplied code is very difficult. For both of these the spec exists, but the code is lagging; for MNG/APNG the code exists (either included or as an easy plugin for all major browsers) but the spec is lagging. 87.114.153.140 (talk) 18:01, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

In any case, at the moment, animated GIFs are here, probably to stay. If in the future some other simple, animated bitmap format is widely acceptable, you can be sure Wikipedia will be all over that. That being said, animation for animation's sake is not necessarily desirable—a non-animated diagram can be sufficiently more enlightening than an animated one, if only because you can usually discover at a glance what a static image is trying to convey, whereas watching an entire animation (sometimes a few times) is required to make sense of it. There are places for animation, and there are places for static images. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:59, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

We can't convert GIFs to APNG because more than half the people on the net won't be able to load APNG since it's only supported on a few browsers. Animated svg doesn't even work in the latest Firefox alpha properly. -- penubag  (talk) 07:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

MHZ - Help (Again)

Can anyone please clarify more specifically this problem here. I am really stuck with my system. Please help. Thank you--119.30.36.46 (talk) 16:37, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

DNS settings sensitive?

Is it risky to post one's DNS settings from their domain/webhost on the internet?

I can't think of anything that a malicious person could realistically do with your DNS settings. Maybe they could figure out what ISP you use, but they could do that with your IP address anyway. Here, if it makes you feel any better, I'll post my DNS settings:

nameserver 24.25.227.55

nameserver 66.75.160.63

nameserver 24.25.227.56

Does that help? :) Indeterminate (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Since it's a domain you're talking about, anyone can just do a whois on the hostname and get your nameservers. If that's what you're talking about, it's not sensitive information. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:32, 19 July 2009 (UTC)