GUI Navigation is slow (normal mode)

[ckp]

@Imgema, I moved my image cache folder (via sam link) to SSD after I first started using LB in 6.8. At that time it didn't really seem to make a difference but I just left it that way. Maybe if I moved it back to my usb 3 drive where LB and everything else is, I might see this issue. So, I suppose I won't move it back, haha! 

My image cache folder is 7.1GB with 65,393 files. 

[Imgema]

Can you give me some details in how you moved your image cache folder please? If it's easy that is...

[SentaiBrad]

If I recall too (and Jason may need to clarify a bit on this) but we do also use some of the advances in the Operating System, that are present in Windows 10. So inherently, 10 is faster than 8 which is faster than 7.

I have a giant library as well, and you can see how my LaunchBox install interacts on the Tutorial videos. If you would like, I can make a video going through a list of steps if you would like, but my LaunchBox install isn't overly laggy. Like I said, we did tons and tons of testing, and once a users library gets over 5k, it instantly starts to slow down and use more resources. This though has actually gotten a lot better over time. Jason has made speed improvements over the last year that would make LB from that point in time pale in comparison. I would assume roughly every 5k is a bit of an up tick in computer usage though. Some features are more demanding than others, so I would also check a few things: Disable controller support in the LaunchBox options menu all together, disable movie and music auto-play, if you have LaunchBox showing you how many games you have per platform in the side right bar then turn that off, and make sure you RAM Cache is at an appropriate level for your PC. I have 32GB of ram and mine is set to 4GB.

My LB install is over 100GB, with my cache folder holding 27,522 files at 2.91GB (some of these are for BigBox as well). It's on an internal SATA3 8TB Western Digital HDD.

[Imgema]

My cache folder is 15.800 files at around 250 MB. That's on a collection of 8.000 games in LB.

 

I had already disabled most of what you mentioned. I have 16 GB, RAM cache is set to 2 GB.

Behavior is the same always since i ever started using LB. Every time i restart the OS, LB lags a lot if THE CACHE WAS ALREADY COMPLETED BEFORE (if i refresh the cache, LB becomes smooth again, even though the pictures are loading).

 

After i scroll through all the images, it's smooth again, until i restart the OS and then it lags again. That's with my regular setups in the mechanical disks, in both computers.

So basically, in ordet to make LB smooth i either have to:

-refresh my cache

-go through every picture while it lags, until everything is shown.

My copy in the RAMDISK does not have this problem. Even after OS restarts, LB is smooth when i browse through the whole collection of boxarts. Actually, i decided to use this setup instead as my main from now on because of this. Unless i find a way to move my cache folder in the RAMDISK so i can continue to use my regular setup in the mechanical HDD.

 

I will do the same test on a mechanical drive on the windows 10 setup. If it's the same then i don't know what to say.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Imgema

[ckp]

3 hours ago, Imgema said:

Can you give me some details in how you moved your image cache folder please? If it's easy that is...

Sure.

I opened a cmd.exe command prompt and ran this:

mklink /J R:\LaunchBox\Images\Cache C:\LaunchBox\LaunchBoxLinks\Images\Cache

(C:\LaunchBox\LaunchBoxLinks\Images\Cache folder needs to exist before you run the command, so create that Cache folder wherever you want it to be first).

The C drive is my SSD. change the paths and drives to match yours.

It just creates what looks like a shortcut in the original LB location which gets redirected to the path you specify on the SSD drive. To LB, nothing changed.

Before running the command, I would suggest you rename the original Cache folder to something like Cache_original. Then run the command.

 

Edited September 26, 2016 by ckp

[Imgema]

Thanks, i will try that and report a bit later

[SentaiBrad]

2 minutes ago, ckp said:

Sure.

I opened a cmd.exe command prompt and ran this:

mklink /J R:\LaunchBox\Images\Cache C:\LaunchBox\LaunchBoxLinks\Images\Cache

The C drive is my SSD. change the paths and drives to match yours.

It just creates what looks like a shortcut in the original LB location which gets redirected to the path you specify on the SSD drive. To LB, nothing changed.

Before running the command, I would suggest you rename the original Cache folder to something like Cache_original. Then run the command.

 

Do you need to re-run the command after you've cached new items?

[ckp]

Just now, SentaiBrad said:

Do you need to re-run the command after you've cached new items?

No. 

[Imgema]

Edit: OK it worked. But i had to create the destination folder manually. But it works so now i only need to keep the cache folder in the RAMDISK. And LB is smooth even after i restart.

 

Thanks for the tip!

Edited September 26, 2016 by Imgema

[ckp]

Good news! If you ever want to go back to the way it was with no symlink, you just delete the shortcut looking thing in Launchbox\Images folder that is pointing to your other location (it's just a sym link, like a shortcut). Then you would just create a new normal "Cache" folder inside Launchbox\Images. Or you can rename your old original cache folder back that still has the cached files from that point in time assuming you kept it. Then you could also delete the Cache folder that is on your ssd or ramdisk to free up that space again.

 

[Jason Carr]

@Imgema It is somewhat normal for the scrolling to stutter a bit every once in a while, but that usually happens during caching, not afterwards. Another thing that's worth noting is that scrolling performance does go down slightly if you have the boxes sized smaller, because more boxes have to be rendered on the screen at a time.

Now that I'm understanding the issue better, though (I completely didn't understand that it was scrolling performance for some reason), I have an idea as to what's going on. Previously we were actually caching things in the background to help improve the scrolling performance, but I tried taking that out to see if it helped with some other things. What you're seeing is the typical behavior for when items are directly loaded from the disk cache and not from the RAM cache (which is configured in the Options, of course). In general I see much better performance in that scenario, but I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. I'll try enabling the background caching again to see if that helps. That will basically do it's best to automatically cache things into RAM in the background to prevent the scrolling delays.

[Imgema]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

@Imgema It is somewhat normal for the scrolling to stutter a bit every once in a while, but that usually happens during caching, not afterwards. Another thing that's worth noting is that scrolling performance does go down slightly if you have the boxes sized smaller, because more boxes have to be rendered on the screen at a time.

Well, it's weird, but for me it's smooth during caching with no lag whatsoever. Also, i'm on an older CRT, using 1024x768 resolution so even with small icons my screen can only fit 12 boxes.

The lag only happens after the cache is completed and i restart the machine. If i don't restart there are no problems even if i close LB and open it again later on. So basically, it reads the cached files from RAM while the PC is open but it clears after the restart and then LB has to read those tiny files from the cache folder on the disk. Is that correct? That would explain why i don't have this problem when i put the cache folder into the RAMDisk. Because, basically, i force the program to read those files from the much faster RAM, even after the restart (the RAMDisk application allows me to save everything from RAM to disk before restart and it load them again into RAM after the PC starts).

 

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

@ImgemaWhat you're seeing is the typical behavior for when items are directly loaded from the disk cache and not from the RAM cache (which is configured in the Options, of course).

It reads from the RAM for as long as the PC is turned on. But what happens after you restart? It needs to read the cache files from the disk until they get into RAM again. During that time i get scrolling lag (if i use the default folder from the mechanical disk that is) Is that correct?

Anyway, that automatic background caching to RAM sounds good to me.

Thanks for all the replies so far by the way.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Imgema

[SentaiBrad]

After a period of time, if not right away, things will get removed from RAM to make way for other programs. Once LaunchBox is closed, everything residing in RAM should be gone.

[Jason Carr]

Alright, so I ended up spending some significant time on this this afternoon. I made some major structural changes so whatever you guys can do to test, that would be much appreciated. The changes are of course in the latest beta that I just put out (6.10-beta-8).

With these changes, in theory the scrolling should no longer stutter. You will probably see more popping in now that the scrolling is not stuttering while it's trying to load the images from disk. If you're seeing too much popping in, you can increase the RAM cache. On a related note, you can no longer completely disable the RAM cache. I was able to optimize things quite a bit in the process by getting rid of that option. You can of course still set the RAM cache to a very low value, and check the box to clear the cache when launching games, so it should be mostly a non-issue having that option removed, as you can just set it to a low value.

Thanks guys, please test and let me know how it's working. I need to put out an official version on or before Wednesday, so hopefully I didn't just break things.  

[Lordmonkus]

Nice, more speed optimizations are always appreciated. Will check it out in a little bit.

[SentaiBrad]

Nice. I also just realized I was a beta behind somehow, and I've opened up LaunchBox three separate times earlier today.

[ckp]

10 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

and check the box to clear the cache when launching games

question: if you do check the box to clear the cache when launching games, does it mean the cache will load back into memory, right after closing the game/emulator, in the background until it's done or until the next game is launched?

[Jason Carr]

It will only start repopulating the cache once you're back in LaunchBox and accessing more images.

[Lordmonkus]

Just doing some quick testing by skipping through systems and games and while it wasn't slow for me at all since a couple of beta patches ago it does feel a bit faster now. Just feels a bit snappier and crisp when scrolling though games quickly in BigBox mode.

[Maddoc1007]

@Jason Carr Just left BigBox on attract mode for a bit non cached to see how fast it caches the clear logo's, boxart etc.  Really stunning and very very fast cacheing large collections such as arcade from the grey outline boxes minute wheel stops spinning almost instantaneously showing up the the logo's etc.  I think the problems some people are facing is that they have too many background services running at the same time, i only have a handful of services running and on a dual core processor the speed is  phenomenal, Really the fastest  i have seen it thus far.  A good place for finding what services a person can turn off to improve their speed is http://www.blackviper.com/ is is the information i used to get the most out of my computer.  KUDOS