[RESOLVED] Framerate Issue

[x4000]

Oh yeah, and doing so with our own FPS display that he'd be using to see it.  So it's apples and apples.  I rarely use the unity editor anymore (just once every few weeks, if that), since compiling directly is so much faster and I get the exact experience of the game performance rather than the editor-ized version of it.

[keith.lamothe]

You must not need line numbers very often

[x4000]

You must not need line numbers very often

I guess in the last week I've loaded up a bit more than I had been -- maybe as often as four times in a couple of those days, yeah.  But no, in general I don't need line numbers much; our methods are either pretty small, or the places where I've just changed something are pretty obvious.  I don't make more than 5-10 minutes of changes before I run a unit test, usually, so I rarely have to wonder where something went off if it's a literal exception.

[Castruccio]

Chris, my card is actually the mobile version of that card so it's not quite as powerful, but it is still a dedicated GPU with 1GB of Ram based on  a similar architecture.  As you point out, however, my average  fps should not be around 25-30 especially with a modern dedicated card (the card I have iis better than the ATI cards built into mac laptops, which you said gives you around 60fps).  I'd expect at least the 60 you get on your mac.

For the record I have closed everything in the background and have made sure I am only running 1 copy of the game.  I have also tried disabling Vsync, etc.  I guess it could be the ATI drivers themselves, but if that were the case then I would think you would have had more problems reported by now.  I can play around with some older drivers and see if that changes things.  It's a real shame because I'd rather be playing AVWW than SC2!  AI War and Tidalis both run great, by the way.

Another note: the world map averages about 15 fps as well.  In my settlement I am around 40.

[x4000]

Hmm... I am thinking this might be some sort of power management thing.

If the world map is averaging that low, then this is almost definitely a GPU thing and not a CPU thing.  There's not really any CPU work of substance happening on the world map.  I am thinking your pixel fill rate might be really low or something, but it's very strange because we've optimized the heck out of the graphics end of this in the last few months.  It's doing a bare minimum of texture swaps, etc, etc.  When you start the game, inside the AVWW_Data folder there is an output.log file that it creates.  Do you mind posting the data from the top of that which has extra info on your GPU and system?

[x4000]

Oh, but back to the power management thing: sometimes laptops in particular can be funny about their power consumption when on battery or when their power management settings are low.  It might be that the very fact that AVWW does NOT require a lot of the extra features of the GPU is shooting it in the foot.  You mentioned that the fan doesn't spin up on the GPU, which tells me it's not working very hard.  And yet it's working slowly.

It sounds like it might be going "Oh crap, look at all this SCII wants me to do!" and goes into a higher powered state.  But with AVWW it's like "eh, I can take care of that no problem" and stays in a lower-powered state that actually gives you way worse performance than you could get if it actually bothered trying its hardest.  I've seen stranger things.  At any rate, in performance settings you may want to make sure that it's set to maximize performance rather than balance performance when you are on non-battery power.  That might be all there is to it, I don't know.

[Castruccio]

Here is the data requested from the file you mentioned:

Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [aticfx32.dll 8.17.10.1114]
    Renderer: AMD Radeon HD 6500M/5600/5700 Series
    Vendor:   ATI
    VRAM:     2746 MB
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=1 DF24=1 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=1 SlowINTZ=1
<I> Initializing (RawInput).

<RI> Input initialized.

desktop: 1600x900 60Hz; virtual: 1600x900 at 0,0
Non platform assembly: data-03050FB8 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-08500020 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-082C0048 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-082D7850 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-08308458 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-087F0020 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-08324218 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-0832BC40 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-08334268 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-0835E690 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-0836EEB8 (this message is harmless)
Platform assembly: C:\Program Files (x86)\AVWW\AVWW_Data\Managed\I18N.dll (this message is harmless)
Platform assembly: C:\Program Files (x86)\AVWW\AVWW_Data\Managed\I18N.West.dll (this message is harmless)
Platform assembly: C:\Program Files (x86)\AVWW\AVWW_Data\Managed\I18N.dll (this message is harmless)
System.DllNotFoundException: AVWWST

  at (wrapper managed-to-native) Steamworks:InitSteam ()

  at Steamworks.Initialize () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
UnityEngine.Debug:Internal_Log(Int32, String, Object)
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
Steamworks:Initialize()
MainCameraLogic:OnEnable()
 
(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/6bc5f79e0a4296d6/Runtime/ExportGenerated/StandalonePlayer/BaseClass.cpp Line: 2505)

Platform assembly: C:\Program Files (x86)\AVWW\AVWW_Data\Managed\System.dll (this message is harmless)
0:C:\Program Files (x86)\AVWW\AVWW.exe
UnityEngine.Debug:Internal_Log(Int32, String, Object)
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
MainCameraLogic:StartInternal()
MainCameraLogic:Update()
 
(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/6bc5f79e0a4296d6/Runtime/ExportGenerated/StandalonePlayer/BaseClass.cpp Line: 2505)

graphicsShaderLevel:30
graphicsDeviceID:26817
graphicsDeviceName:AMD Radeon HD 6500M/5600/5700 Series
graphicsDeviceVendor:ATI
graphicsDeviceVendorID:4098
graphicsDeviceVersion:Direct3D 9.0c [aticfx32.dll 8.17.10.1114]
graphicsMemorySize:2746
graphicsPixelFillrate:4400
operatingSystem:Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) 64bit
processorCount:4
processorType:Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 450 @ 2.40GHz
supportsImageEffects:True
supportsRenderTextures:True
supportsShadows:True
supportsVertexPrograms:True
systemMemorySize:5942
UnityEngine.Debug:Internal_Log(Int32, String, Object)
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
MainCameraLogic:StartInternal()
MainCameraLogic:Update()

[Castruccio]

Oh, but back to the power management thing: sometimes laptops in particular can be funny about their power consumption when on battery or when their power management settings are low.  It might be that the very fact that AVWW does NOT require a lot of the extra features of the GPU is shooting it in the foot.  You mentioned that the fan doesn't spin up on the GPU, which tells me it's not working very hard.  And yet it's working slowly.

It sounds like it might be going "Oh crap, look at all this SCII wants me to do!" and goes into a higher powered state.  But with AVWW it's like "eh, I can take care of that no problem" and stays in a lower-powered state that actually gives you way worse performance than you could get if it actually bothered trying its hardest.  I've seen stranger things.  At any rate, in performance settings you may want to make sure that it's set to maximize performance rather than balance performance when you are on non-battery power.  That might be all there is to it, I don't know.

Power management is set to high performance, but the same issue arises.  It sounds like what you are saying about the GPU not kicking in fully  is right, however.  I wonder why this is.

[x4000]

The pixel fill rate is on the low side, but it should be serviceable with that sort of rate.  The rest of the stats look about like I'd expect from your description, so no hidden surprises there in the device caps or something.  I didn't really expect there to be, but it's always best to check.

If you play at a lower screen resolution, how much does that help your performance?  With that sort of pixel fill rate, it may be that the resolution you're playing at is simply too much for the performance you want on that specific card, but I'm not sure.

Does your GPU spin up with its fan when you play with AI War and Tidalis?  Those both have significantly fewer optimizations in place for their GPU performance than what we've done on AVWW at this point.

[keith.lamothe]

To provide some reference stats, just loaded up the standalone and created a new world, exited the settlement to the world map and turned on the FPS-display settings toggle:

FPS: 27 Draw Calls: 292 Texture Swaps: 32

And the relevant stuff from output_log.txt

Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [atiu9pag.dll 8.14.1.6150]
    Renderer: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250             
    Vendor:   ATI
    VRAM:     256 MB
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=1 DF24=1 INTZ=0 RAWZ=0 NULL=0 RESZ=1 SlowINTZ=1

graphicsShaderLevel:30
graphicsDeviceID:38674
graphicsDeviceName:ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250             
graphicsDeviceVendor:ATI
graphicsDeviceVendorID:4098
graphicsDeviceVersion:Direct3D 9.0c [atiu9pag.dll 8.14.1.6150]
graphicsMemorySize:256
graphicsPixelFillrate:2000
operatingSystem:Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) 64bit
processorCount:2
processorType:AMD Phenom(tm) II N660 Dual-Core Processor
supportsImageEffects:True
supportsRenderTextures:True
supportsShadows:True
supportsVertexPrograms:True
systemMemorySize:3835



To put it in perspective: I paid about $400 for the entire laptop (about 6 months ago, iirc), but it still manages 27 fps there.

[keith.lamothe]

I should add that I was running it in a window at 800x600, and had a bunch of other programs open and a few of them doing something (windows media player playing something).

[x4000]

And some more reference stats, I just loaded up a test world that I already had and looked at the world map in the same way (this was windows mode running 1600x1080, target framerate of 120, with about 6.8GB of programs running in the background; some 20+ programs in all):

FPS: 135 Draw Calls: 381: Texture Swaps: 33

Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [nvd3dum.dll 8.17.12.8026]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     512 MB
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 DF24=0 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0

desktop: 1920x1080 60Hz; virtual: 3520x1080 at 0,0

graphicsShaderLevel:30
graphicsDeviceID:1553
graphicsDeviceName:NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
graphicsDeviceVendor:NVIDIA
graphicsDeviceVendorID:4318
graphicsDeviceVersion:Direct3D 9.0c [nvd3dum.dll 8.17.12.8026]
graphicsMemorySize:512
graphicsPixelFillrate:9600
operatingSystem:Windows 7  (6.1.7600) 64bit
processorCount:8
processorType:Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
supportsImageEffects:True
supportsRenderTextures:True
supportsShadows:True
supportsVertexPrograms:True
systemMemorySize:8174

[Castruccio]

Decreasing screen resolution from 1600x900 to 1280x768 to 1024x600 results in about a 10fps jump in each change in a forest area (going from 25-35-45 fps respectively). 

No GPU spin up on AI War as far as I can tell (from just launching and letting the game run at the start of a new campaign for a few minutes). Frame rate in AI War averages between 50-100+ depending on zoom level.

[keith.lamothe]

Decreasing screen resolution from 1600x900 to 1280x768 to 1024x600 results in about a 10fps jump in each change in a forest area (going from 25-35-45 fps respectively). 

Out of curiosity, what do you get on the world map at 800x600?

[Castruccio]

The lowest res my set up offers is 1024x600, where I get about 17.5 fps on the world map.