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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / EVOLVED's shader code

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CumQuaT
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 17:11
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I have yet another question for the gods of shader knowledge

*cough*revenantchaos*cough*


I've noticed a strange thing... In the code examples given with EVOLVED's shaders, I can run, say, the tree example on my computer (a quad core beast with 12gb ram and 4gb video) and it runs at a good 250fps.

However, when I run it on my wife's PC which isn't that bad (dual core 2.4ghz with 2gb ram and a 1.5gb video card) the tree demo runs for her at about 5fps...

That is a PRETTY substantial drop in fps between the machines.

However, if she runs the Object Blur demo, she gets about 25fps (while I get 270fps)

The only REAL difference between the machines is that I'm running an nVidia card and she's running a Radeon...

Has anyone else found this anomaly to happen? Or, better still, have they found a way to rectify it?


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James H
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 17:37
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Sounds like its a big difference in graphics card models, the core clock frequency is whats important - the demo in question should barely touch any vram - ati vs nvidia is only loosely comparitable of cards of same generation more or less - what model cards are they?
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Irradic
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 17:48
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Evolved's Advanced Lighting shaders are power hungry, the newer versions more so than the older versions.
So first it would be good to know which GPU model is installed in your wife's PC.

My guess for the reason why the tree example is slower than the blur demo is alpha mapping. Alpha mapping in ALS is expensive, one reason why I had to limit the usage of foliage.

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James H
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 18:02 Edited at: 26th Mar 2012 18:02
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@Irradic what is ALS(probably me being just dumb - google results come up with non english pages)?
also Im curious if you tried the foliage with mipmaps on, without it fps drops very quick for me - Ive been using mipmaplodbias to maintain some quality over distance but changed LOD models at relatively short distances.
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Irradic
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 18:22
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@JamesH - ALS is the abbreviation Evolved uses for his Advanced Lighting shaders.
Are you able to use a great amount of foliage with your method ?
I'm using billboards for tree LOD, and it makes absolutely no difference if I have 10 billboards or 10 full poly trees in the scene. Polycount seems to have less of an impact compared to alpha mapping.

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EVOLVED
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 18:27
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try the newest version (updated on 26/3)
www.evolved-software.com/code/AdvancedLighting.zip

I also recommend 280gtx and above for the system due to multiple renders, also avoid using it on laptops.
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Irradic
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 18:39
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Thanks Evolved ! We'll give the new version a try

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Brendy boy
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 21:20
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Quote: "Has anyone else found this anomaly to happen?"

I have an ati card with 512 VRAM, it's a laptop and i get 50 fps in object bloor demo. Your wife either has some crappy card or maybe has a very old version of graphics driver

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James H
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 01:10
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@Irradic not a great amount, but definately a whole lot more.
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CumQuaT
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 11:28
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Hi, to be more specific, here are the different specs of the video cards:

My laptop:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M 4063MB
(I get about 250fps)

My wife's desktop:
ATI Radeon HD 3400 1275MB (400MHz)
(She gets about 5fps)

I've also run it on a friends desktop, who's running:
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB
And he gets around 18fps...


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James H
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 12:05
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I get 87 fps to 110 fps from near to far distance with a nvid 9600gt 512mb vram (600MHz) with settings set for performance
Your lappy seems fine, the wifes issue may well be the card but not 100% sure I would have thought it got more than 5fps, check your control panel for the card and see if settings are for performance or quality and as Brendy pointed out, check the drivers. Your mates desktop though - that card should outperform mine :o
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revenant chaos
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 12:22
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Hi CumQuaT,
Have you double checked to ensure things like anti-aliasing and such aren't being forced "on" by the graphics card drivers?
Do you experience major slowdowns with all the examples, or just the tree demo? You could try breaking the tree into two separate objects (Trunk, and Leaves), In my testing I found that to be a bit more efficient than applying transparency to just the "leaf material" limbs of a tree (probably wont make a huge difference, but worth a shot).
Is there any chance those other computers are running any resource-hungry processes in the background? What resolution were you running at, it typically doesn't make that much of a difference but it can't hurt to lower it on that 400MHz Radeon.
What watt power supply does that GTS 250 computer have? Is there a chance it is being under-powered? I would expect that thing to smoke my Geforce 9600GT yet I get a steady 102fps with the tree demo if I don't move the camera from its starting location.
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CumQuaT
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 13:21
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They're all interesting points of note, but my main reason for asking was setting up "minimum system requirements" for my game... I know that most people these days have at least a duel core something something and a 1gig video card, with most gamers having 2gb or more (which should be fine) but I'd like to be able to help people out if I can...

It seems a bit nitpicky to say on the box "minimum system requirements - no background tasks and a decent power supply" :-P


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Brendy boy
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Posted: 27th Mar 2012 22:35
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Quote: "My wife's desktop:
ATI Radeon HD 3400 1275MB (400MHz)
(She gets about 5fps)"

that graphics card is outdated and very slow, that's the reason for the slow frame rate

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revenant chaos
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Posted: 28th Mar 2012 04:10 Edited at: 28th Mar 2012 04:17
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Quote: "It seems a bit nitpicky to say on the box "minimum system requirements - no background tasks and a decent power supply" :-P"

That isn't the point. Even the nicest computers can become bogged down with too many tasks, and i've seen more than a few computers with insufficient power supplies (which makes their GPU's model/make practically irrelevant). Not arguing with you but I really don't hear much difference between "Needs a powerful GPU" and "Needs enough power to satisfy your GPU", those things should just be common sense (though I realize the average user doesn't think about power consumption as they click away). I was merely trying to figure how in the world I am out-performing that particular machine.

Edit: I guess my main point is that it isn't good idea to set the min specs based on poor results from a single machine as there are too many other factors to consider. Mabey you could to try to find someone else with similar spec hardware and see how it runs for them?
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CumQuaT
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Posted: 28th Mar 2012 15:16
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Yeah, I think that's my safest bet. I'm always telling my friends to beef up their power supplies... I have to admit, I've fallen out of sync with the latest video hardware as I don't really follow it anymore, so I'm not sure what's outdated and what people generally have. I have no idea what an "average pc" is anymore, since I only ever buy high-end hardware for myself... :S

Quote: "that graphics card is outdated and very slow, that's the reason for the slow frame rate"


Ah, that's good to know. I have no idea what's current anymore. I've been too focused on making games for too long, I think. I need to go outside more! haha


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