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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Better performance on netbook than desktop pc?

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Morcilla
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 18:41
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Hi,

Lately I've been surprised by the fact that I get higher FPS for my software on my Dell netbook than on my desktop pc.

Here is the case:

Netbook: Dell Intel i7 (2.68Ghz), 8Gb RAM, Intel HD 3000 Video card = 46 fps

Desktop PC: AMD Phenom X4 (3.0GHz), 2Gb RAM, nVidia GTX 295 Video card = 26 fps

So how can it be? I get more frames on an Intel HD3000, that it is not a bad card at all, but it beats a nVidia GTX 295???
That's worrying, because it shows a great frame drop for a very powerful hardware. I've tested with other high end nVidia cards in other systems and the fps are not good either.

Is there any DBPro performance stress test that you like to do? I recall old ones, maybe ther is one up to date?

I'd like to give it another try with another DBPro software, to see if I can find out what's happening

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Dar13
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 20:20
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The i7, despite having a lower clock rate, is actually more powerful than the Phenom X4 even in single-core applications.

You have to remember that DBP is CPU-bound, not GPU-bound. Otherwise the GTX 295 would destroy the HD 3000.

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MrValentine
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 11:12
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For a second opinion...

What Dar13 said +1

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 15:52 Edited at: 30th Sep 2012 15:53
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It's difficult to make such a determinations without more information about what the program does and how it goes about doing it.


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Morcilla
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 17:11 Edited at: 30th Sep 2012 17:12
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Thanks for the comments. As said it is strange, because I've also tested on another desktop pc platform:

Desktop PC: Intel i7 (something like ~2.5Ghz), 4Gb Ram, and a GeForce GTX 690 = 26 fps!
Same results as with the GTX295, uh
[Edit: Still beated by the HD3000]

I'll try to run that cloned soldiers demo that was around, if I can find it

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Dar13
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 17:35
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Quote: "Desktop PC: Intel i7 (something like ~2.5Ghz), 4Gb Ram, and a GeForce GTX 690 = 26 fps!
Same results as with the GTX295, uh
[Edit: Still beated by the HD3000]"

There's a bottleneck somewhere in the system other than the CPU/GPU/RAM.

The program you're referring to is the MPL3D Solar System, right? Does it do a lot of hard disk file access?

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Morcilla
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Posted: 7th Oct 2012 20:45
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Quote: "The program you're referring to is the MPL3D Solar System, right? Does it do a lot of hard disk file access?"

Yes you are right about the program, but it doesn't really access the hard disk that much.

Heaviest stuff is preloaded at the start. Backdraw of this is that it eats somewhat a lot of memory, let's say around 1Gb of Ram. I don't really know how much video ram is consumed.

I think that the bottleneck is a RAM <-> VRAM swapping. Since the netbook shares physically this memory, it performs faster.

This is specially noticeable with HDR and full screen shaders.
I don't know why, but the netbook doesn't drops performance with HDR, while desktop cards use to halve FPS.

This all makes me think that DBPro is not loading the textures and other stuff into the VRAM, but into RAM. Then it has a performance drop when swapping. Textures should be loaded into RAM only if VRAM has exhausted.

GTX 295 has a huge 1GB VRAM, but it makes no difference even with the lowest texture size.
On it's side the netbook (Dell Latitude E6520) has 8GB of shared memory, and HD3000 probably can only access 1GB, but the swapping is faster.

Anyway, there should be no memory swapping with low res textures, so I think that there must be something wrong with the way DBPro is handling the loading. There have been issues of this kind in the past.

Oh and I also tried different nVidia drivers, and XP/W7. No difference.

Dunno, I think performance is being lost by DBPRo itself at some point, when dealing with the hardware.

Maybe because DX9 is not supported natively any more?

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Dar13
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Posted: 7th Oct 2012 21:09
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Quote: "I think that the bottleneck is a RAM <-> VRAM swapping. Since the netbook shares physically this memory, it performs faster."

I agree, that seems to be the issue. Since DBP is CPU-bound, it kinda makes sense to have the assets in RAM instead of VRAM as it's rare that the swapping will make much of a performance hit(until you start getting into monstrous amounts of assets like in your application).

I'm not sure how to fix that bottleneck without diving into the DBP source and seeing/changing how it handles textures.

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Mage
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Posted: 8th Oct 2012 05:45
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Quote: "I agree, that seems to be the issue. Since DBP is CPU-bound, it kinda makes sense to have the assets in RAM instead of VRAM as it's rare that the swapping will make much of a performance hit(until you start getting into monstrous amounts of assets like in your application)."


Sir I respectfully disagree.

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Dar13
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Posted: 8th Oct 2012 05:48
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Quote: "Sir I respectfully disagree."

With what and how?

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Mage
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Posted: 8th Oct 2012 06:03 Edited at: 8th Oct 2012 06:09
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Quote: "Quote: "Sir I respectfully disagree."
With what and how?"

I disagree, we don't have enough information to determine the cause.
Even though DBP is CPU bound, it kinda does not make sense to have the assets in RAM instead of VRAM as it's common that the swapping will make much of a performance hit.

Since he has stated that even with reduced textures the problem exists, it is less likely that VRAM swapping is the issue.
We have next to no information about what is happening here. So it really could be anything.

I would suggest turning off parts of the program until the issue is narrowed to a specific part of the program.

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Morcilla
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Posted: 12th Oct 2012 12:09
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I'm doing further tests.
Last thing that I want is my software being sluggish in a high-end desktop video card

No talk about the HDR behaviour? Turning it on has almost no FPS drop for the netbook. This happens, for example, with the regular TGC bloom shader.
However for the powerful GTX, frames have a huge drop

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Chenak
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Posted: 12th Oct 2012 14:17
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I think its to do with texture sizes, some video cards can be funny about them, try setting them to sizes multiple of 32 (ie. 128x32 etc), If that fails make them even (ie. 32x32) and scale them to fit in your program. You have to make sure every single texture is in this format, including the images from the bloom render, your hub, everything. Use dds or png textures, anything else in my experience can cause unpredictable speed loss.

The next step is to check your 3d models as models exported in certain ways can affect performance. I get best results from .x files using the text format which I convert to dbo.

This was what was causing slow downs on my project, of course every project is different and I hope this helps to solve your issue.
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