Performance and optimization questions

[Nash]

I noticed you were using an AMD graphics card. Try turning off "shaders for lights". Back then when I was on ShitMD, performance would be murdered with shaders for lights and dynamic lights in the scene.

[Graf Zahl]

Looks like uploading the frame indeed takes the longest time. Do you happen to be using GZDoom 1.8, rather than 2.1?

You are measuring the VSync wait there which is fully included in 'Finish'.

I noticed you were using an AMD graphics card. Try turning off "shaders for lights". Back then when I was on ShitMD, performance would be murdered with shaders for lights and dynamic lights in the scene.

That option doesn't exist anymore with GZDoom 2.0 as the shaders method is the only one, using a different means to pass its data which is also working on AMD.
Also, the OP already said that dynamic lights barely make a difference.

[edward850]

Looks like uploading the frame indeed takes the longest time. Do you happen to be using GZDoom 1.8, rather than 2.1?

You are measuring the VSync wait there which is fully included in 'Finish'.

Actually, that's with vsync off. Something about that shot knocked the framerate down from 100 to 50. And the map seems to like bouncing around 400 to 100 a lot.
On average, the finish time is around 5ms for that map.

[TammySilverwolf]

Here's a shot. I've been using the high performance setting on windows 8.1 to play, which is why I'm surprised it's chugging so much. . . Unfortunately Windows doesn't have the tools I'm familiar with for performance stuff (I usually use linux, but the distro I use can't connect to my wifi... Ironic!) so I really can't see if gzdoom is using multiple cores or just trying to snag some cycles from under the windows bloat.

I'm going to see what I can find on performance stuff for my cpu (quad core 1.50 ghz base), but any help would be appreciated. I can run a fair few other engines with decent settings but this one seems to hate my hardware. Heh!

---

[TammySilverwolf]

Update: Updating my chip drivers to the latest version actually did make a marked improvement, from 4 fps to 15 at the worst spot. Still not where it needs to be and it still caps out at 60 fps (I'll have to look into this on my own, I guess) but hey, it's progress!

[Enjay]

Well, I'm not sure if this is much help but I'm not getting a particularly hard performance hit at all. With vsync on, my frame rate stayed at a steady 60fps. When I switched vsync off, the lowest frame rate I could manage was 178fps and it was usually much higher than that.

nVidia GTX 760, current drivers, Win 7 64 bit

[Graf Zahl]

That machine seems to lag on everything: Pure CPU code, rendering code and finally on the wait for the frame to be done. It looks bad across the board. The CPU alone is 5x as slow as mine and looking up your graphics hardware, it seems to be rather weak and as an APU it doesn't have dedicated high performance memory.
I'm afraid that you won't get happy with GZDoom on that system. It seems to be roughly at the same level as an Intel HD 3000 but additionally hampered by AMD's high driver overhead.

[edward850]

I would still like to know what build of GZDoom he's using, because I cannot believe a 1.5GHz CPU would process the scene that slowly.

and looking up your graphics hardware, it seems to be rather weak and as an APU

Oh, never-mind. Why would anyone do that to themselves?

Here's a shot. I've been using the high performance setting on windows 8.1 to play, which is why I'm surprised it's chugging so much. . . Unfortunately Windows doesn't have the tools I'm familiar with for performance stuff (I usually use linux, but the distro I use can't connect to my wifi... Ironic!) so I really can't see if gzdoom is using multiple cores or just trying to snag some cycles from under the windows bloat.

I'm going to see what I can find on performance stuff for my cpu (quad core 1.50 ghz base), but any help would be appreciated. I can run a fair few other engines with decent settings but this one seems to hate my hardware. Heh!

You have some funny ideas about how any of this works. From the top:

• "High performance" has nothing to do with Windows, and everything to do with the power settings your cheap Netbook uses. Forcing Windows to use full possible performance all the time (as that's all High Performance power setting does) will do nothing except drain the battery.
• G/ZDoom doesn't use multiple cores for rendering (It does for sound, though). Doom doesn't use multiple cores for anything.
• That Windows "bloat" wont be doing much of anything if GZDoom is your focused application, if much of anything at all. Keep in mind there's a critical difference between the software Windows comes with (which even with 8.1, isn't a lot outside of the usual essentials), and the software your netbook manufacture may include.
• Those "other engines" aren't Doom, and you're using a non-standard renderer with some fairly complex geometry (Doom isn't designed to be hardware rendered). Your comparison would only work if you were talking about ZDoom with a vanilla IWAD (or equivalent mapset).

[TammySilverwolf]

That is really upsetting, frankly.

This is what I have: http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/lap ... C55D-A5382 except that my computer has 8 gigs instead of 4. I just came off a job and traded my 6 year old probook for this thing thinking it was a step up. . . It ran HL2 at a respectable pace.

Feh, maybe I can model the geometry I want or something.

I've tried: Zdoom 2.71, gzdoom 1.8 and GZDoom g2.1.pre-562-g43ea025

all of them have the same issue, it seems, so unless there's some way to just dedicate a single core to the entire game, I'm SOL.

As far as doing it to myself, there aren't words to describe the poverty in which I currently find myself. Perhaps I'll be able to afford a better machine with my next job, but for now I guess I'll sulk. We'll see what happens.

[edward850]

all of them have the same issue, it seems, so unless there's some way to just dedicate a single core to the entire game, I'm SOL.

You didn't actually read my post, as I already explained that Doom is already a single threaded application. And I don't see how that would affect your performance, you actually want more cores to separate operations like the sound.
Which it already does. Well, only the sound, but splitting off the renderer doesn't have any improvement anyway due to thread lock requirements.

[TammySilverwolf]

I did read it, I'm just not very good at expressing myself when I'm irritated. Sorry I understand that wouldn't really help anything, but like I said, there may be ways around it-- I'll just need to figure out how ambitious I'm feeling and adjust my approach accordingly. It can't be all that bad, right? Right?
>_>
<_<

I'll give it some thought and see what I come up with!

Thanks a lot for your help, everyone. I learned something new today.

[edward850]

Realistically, what you need is a computer that actually meets modern system requirements. It's a wonder that such a netbook even runs GZDoom in the first place. It'll run Doom in a pinch, but GZDoom's renderer isn't Doom, and your map sure isn't either. It's a very good example of the dramatic performance difference more complex geometry has and a wide range of hardware.
Half-life 2 is also a very old game/engine, so it's not exactly pressing for performance.

[Graf Zahl]

There's nothing wrong with your approach. The issue here is solely the computer you are using. Its CPU and especially the graphics processor are simply too weak. To get this into reference, this roughly translates to a desktop PC from 10 years ago.

I'm really sorry but you are not likely to get good performance out of any Doom maps on that machine that are significantly above vanilla detail levels.

[Graf Zahl]

Realistically, what you need is a computer that actually meets modern system requirements. It's a wonder that such a netbook even runs GZDoom in the first place.

Why shouldn't it? Even though performance wise the GPU is bottom of the barrel, it still happens to support OpenGL 4.4, as silly as that may sound.

[edward850]

Well, exactly that. It is as silly as it sounds.