Hi there,
I’ve just downloaded Blender for the first time 
Got a quick question though, I find the interface very slow, for example if I click on “File” I can watch it draw the drop down menu and fill it up (only takes a few seconds, but shouldn’t it be almost instant ?
Is it because the whole things is done in OpenGL ? My systems not exactly slow (being a 2.4Ghz PV HT with 512Mb RAM) and my graphics card is only a GeforceFX 5200 but shouldn’t that be enough ?
Thanks
Mark
Yup, all blender is OpenGL, so you must have a card with OpenGL drivers
up and running
It must be that because my system is slower than yours and I have no problems.
Default answer is ‘get the latest driver’
Advanced answer is ‘look this thread’
http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=1419
Welcome
Stefano
Hmm,
Not found a solution in that link yet, all AA is switched off, got the latest NVidia drivers.
Anyone have guesses ?
Machine is :
Windows XP (Home)
P4 2.4Ghz (Hyperthreading enabled)
512Mb DDR400 (2 * 256Mb for Dual channel)
GeforceFX 5200 128Mb
Not really a powerhouse in todays world but it should (in theory) be able to run Blender nicely.
Regards
Mark
Ok, so I’m new to Blender, but this seems wrong… I’m seeing really nice 3D responses (manipulating shaded objects, nice responses to mouse movement etc.) but rendering text in the UI (i.e. menus, render progress indication) is so slow as to be ridiculous!
I’ve found that I can get good rendering speeds as long as I minimise the blender main window (so that the progress text is not displayed).
decreasing the colour depth improved things slightly, it’s now usable at least!
My setup? Yes I’m using a low end ATI card - but I need the dual-heading for my music s/w
WinXP Pro
P4 2.4GHz
256MB
ATI radeon VE (32MB DDR, Dual headed - both @ 1074x768) - latest catalyst drivers
Cheers,
_namke
I have no issues at all, and my system is even slower, excepts for my new graphic card:
1 Ghz Thunderbird (AMD) yeah, it is 2 year old CPU 
and I can’t even upgrade to a faster one if I don’t buy a new mainboard first, heh 
512MB RAM (2 memory slots each 256MB - 266Mhz bus system, nothing fancy)
FX5600 128MB with dualmonitor setup… (ony AGP 4x speed, no 8x on my mainboard )
so it works flawless and I got Latest 45.23 drivers from Nvidia and my system is Win XP Home…
so I don’t know what you flaw is…what Blender version do you try?
Sorry, should have said v2.28a
Weirdly enough, it works perfectly well on the machine I am using now which uses the built-in intel 82815 graphics controller - opengl here is the microsoft version…
_namke
some machines draw to the front buffer really slowly
(I hope I don’t need to explain the front buffer, back buffer …)
essentailly the menus are drawn to the front buffer because then blender doesn’t have to re-draw the entire scene when erasing the menus. On some systems it would be faster to re-draw the entire scene. Maybe it should be an option?
it isn’t usually the hardware, but the drivers.
I hope you tried shutting off international fonts. That did the trick for me.
Being a noobee
How do I change that ?
Mark
Ok, here’s some more information about my home system - looks like I’m using the ‘accelerated’ ATI OpenGL renderer; wonder whether it’s worth trying the default MS version (which seems to be adequate on the machine I have at work)??
GL Vendor ATI Technologies Inc.
GL Renderer RADEON 7000 DDR x86/SSE2
GL Version 1.3.3920 WinXP Release
I did a few approximate timings last night when rendering - with the main window and rendering window open, a simple frame takes about 5 or 6 seconds (according to the Blender ‘DOS’ window) to complete; minimising the main window brings this down to about a second; whilst minimising the rendereing window as well brings the render time down to about 0.1 seconds… So as you can see, writing the progress-text in the main window takes a significant amount of time!
_namke
Hi,
It might have something to do with what’s running on your system tray. There are programs such as Quick Time player that appear in the bottom right corner of your windows screen.
Programs that do appear here are usually constantly running and therefore could slow blender’s performance down. To solve this problem, try exiting any programs that you don’t need.
Other program such as Nortan anti virus can also slow down performance as these programs are constantly running.
Well, I hope I was of some help.
Cheers
Jon
Thanks Jon! You gave good advise, Norton Internet Security slows Blender down to a crawl!
Odd really as it doesn’t effect any other applications (at least not so I notice)
Thanks again
Mark