Where do I start?

NooBee · Post by **NooBee** » December 4th, 2003, 9:56 pm

Hi everyone

I am pretty new at this so sorry for any naivity. I must say I am extremely delighted at the work that has gone into making Firebird what it is so far. I also find this forum to be very informative and i’ve learned a lot from all who post. I am excited to be involved in the open source development of this great project even though I have nothing to contribute except for personal opinions.

I’ve been reading some of the posts on nightly builds and would like to know if installing some of these would make Firebird run better on my machine. Athlon 850mhz, 512meg, winXP home, dialup. And if so, how do I figure out which one to treat myself to? I do find Firebird to be sluggish at times, especially anything involving java. I’ve read of optimized versions as well from certain individuals. Should I be downloading these or should I be optimizing it myself for my own machine, if so, how? Do I need microsoft .net framework?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Or should I leave well enough alone and be patient, enjoy the ride until .80 comes available? My experience level is almost zippo.

Again, congratulations on a great product !

Äkiidoll · Post by **Äkiidoll** » December 5th, 2003, 3:51 am

NooBee wrote:Hi everyone

I am pretty new at this so sorry for any naivity. I must say I am extremely delighted at the work that has gone into making Firebird what it is so far. I also find this forum to be very informative and i’ve learned a lot from all who post. I am excited to be involved in the open source development of this great project even though I have nothing to contribute except for personal opinions.

I’ve been reading some of the posts on nightly builds and would like to know if installing some of these would make Firebird run better on my machine. Athlon 850mhz, 512meg, winXP home, dialup. And if so, how do I figure out which one to treat myself to? I do find Firebird to be sluggish at times, especially anything involving java. I’ve read of optimized versions as well from certain individuals. Should I be downloading these or should I be optimizing it myself for my own machine, if so, how? Do I need microsoft .net framework?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Or should I leave well enough alone and be patient, enjoy the ride until .80 comes available? My experience level is almost zippo.

Again, congratulations on a great product !

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=25161

bladestaylor · Post by **bladestaylor** » December 5th, 2003, 4:34 am

NooBee wrote:I’ve been reading some of the posts on nightly builds and would like to know if installing some of these would make Firebird run better on my machine. Athlon 850mhz, 512meg, winXP home, dialup.

if you have SSE on your athlon, you could try aebrahim's or cypher77's builds for AthlonXP (/Oxs /G7 /arch:SSE).

otherwise, you could try aebrahim's builds optimized for athlons without SSE (/Oxs /G7).

NooBee · Post by **NooBee** » December 5th, 2003, 6:32 am

Thanks for the replies. What is SSE and how do I tell whether I have it?

Yek · Post by **Yek** » December 5th, 2003, 7:12 am

NooBee wrote:Thanks for the replies. What is SSE and how do I tell whether I have it?

You can try h-oda's utility wcpuid, from here:

http://cgi2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/cgi-b ... cpu31a.exe

and look at the extended features page when it's running.

** if someone knows of something better , feel free to jump in and correct. I've been using linux too long ;) -- This is what I've used fairly recently on win2k and xp though. It'll show you the flags among other things. **

Duey · Post by **Duey** » December 5th, 2003, 12:28 pm

Thanks for the replies. What is SSE and how do I tell whether I have it?

Sweet. AMD's page actually has an answer for this.

http://139.95.253.214/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBC ... e=obj(3741)

Which AMD processors support SSE?

SSE Support in AMD Processors

SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) support is included in AMD's 3Dnow!™ Professional technology, which is supported in all Model 8 and Model 6 AMD Athlon™ processors (AMD Athlon XP, AMD Athlon MP, mobile AMD Athlon 4) and Model 7 AMD Duron™ processors.

The original Model 1 and Model 2 AMD Athlon processors and Model 3 AMD Duron processors do not support SSE as a whole, but do support certain SSE instructions, including software prefetch instructions and streaming store instructions (MOVNTQ). These instructions are included in Enhanced 3DNow! technology, which is supported by these processors.

To determine whether an installed processor supports SSE, use a utility such as AMD CPUID, which can be downloaded from the AMD Processor Utilities and Updates page. CPUID feature flags should be used to determine instruction set support, rather than deriving the processor's capabilities from vendor specifiers combined with CPUID model numbers. Further qualification of SSE should be done by checking for OS support. Even if SSE support is present in the processor, it may not be usable if the OS lacks support for the additional architected registers.

For additional information, refer to the technical document titled, "AMD Processor Recognition Application Note", which can be downloaded from the AMD Athlon™ XP Processor Tech Docs page. In particular, note:

* Table 4 - "Summary of Standard and Extended Feature Bits"
* Tables 6-11 - "Standard Feature Flag Descriptions"
* Subsection titled, "Determining Instruction Set Support", under the chapter, "Identifying Supported Features".

Duey

bladestaylor · Post by **bladestaylor** » December 5th, 2003, 4:36 pm

this is sloppy, but you could just try running the SSE builds...if you don't have SSE, it'll crash as it starts up.

i think it's either that it a) crashes when it hits the first SSE/SSE2 instruction (which it doesn't understand) or b) checks for whether the instructions are there as it loads by feeding them in, so that it crashes before it can allocate any memory.

couldabeen · Post by **couldabeen** » December 5th, 2003, 6:35 pm

NooBee wrote:Or should I leave well enough alone and be patient, enjoy the ride until .80 comes available? My experience level is almost zippo.

This might be your best option. It is easy to remove a TB that doesn't work, or has been fubar'd, but things tend to work better for inexperienced users if they stick with the milestone's.

Just be weary of themes until you've found out if they work for your build or not. Same for extensions, especially ones that affect the GUI(ie; adds a button).

NooBee · Post by **NooBee** » December 5th, 2003, 9:06 pm

Thanks very much! I will check the links and continue following this forum and eventually I will have enough guts to go ahead and try something. Best way to learn is by trying and troubleshooting a crash anyway, i bet.

wI-OSMAN- · Post by **wI-OSMAN-** » December 5th, 2003, 10:26 pm

hi, i would like to try out these Opmized builds, i run a P3 700E @ 933EB MHz

who should i use ?

mtigas · Post by **mtigas** » December 5th, 2003, 10:41 pm

P3 would be G6 SSE.

As far as I know, these should be right:

Pentium - G5/G6
Pentium-MMX - G5/G6 (MMX)
Pentium Pro - G6.
Pentium 2 - G6 (MMX)
Pentium 3 - G6 (MMX,SSE)
Pentium 4 - G7 (MMX,SSE,SSE2)

Celeron depends on what version celeron you have. (There's "Pentium 2 Celerons" all the way up to the current "Pentium 4 Celeron". As far as I know, they should have the same instruction set as their parent chip.)

Where do I start?

Where do I start?

Re: Where do I start?

Re: Where do I start?