1.9.1 performance impressions
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Ron Overdrive
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Join date: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 1,002
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04-14-2006 18:27
When I first came to the preview grid the first thing I was concerned about was performance. Watching Torley and Ben's videos settled how it would look, but how it would perform is what my concern is. And I am VERY dissapointed. Like many I noticed right away a performance hit and found out the cause was the Vertex Shader. Not a big deal, I can live without one option and my card (GeforceFX 5500) can use shaders, but it does so at a crawl wich is why ripple water option is always disabled for me. Bug note: noticed Vertex Shaders will magically re-enable itself after every 3 or 4 crashes/restarts. The new Occlusion Culling: Does jack sh**. Tried enabling it and disabling it. Visited an area I KNOW would trigger it and its where I did my stress test: the sim of Gibson. Red boxes gallore and all it gave me was a whopping 1 FPS boost. This feature needs to be tweaked hardcore to become more aggressive otherwise why bother putting it in? HW Lighting, love the new look and acceptable FPS loss of 3FPS. However, during my travels I knoticed that this 3FPS loss is constant regardless of the amount of lights even when there are only the base 2 light sources pressent (Sun & Moon and Transparencies). Now since there are no external lighting in a majority of the preview grid, wouldn't it make sense for that FPS loss to disappear in those areas especially when no ones around? Strangely enough, I've seen an INCREASE in FPS using the old SW Lighting in areas where only the base 2 light sources are present and no ones around. Maybe a laison can explain that one to me because I find it hard to believe. As for the overall performance comparasin of 1.9.0 to 1.9.1 here's some screenshots of my fast timers & FPS. All these shots and tests were done at the same quardinates (thank you ptp teleporting!) with Occlusion Culling turned on & Vertex Shaders off. Main Grid (1.9.0) Client FPS: 15.5 Fast Timer Average: 65.0ms Siva (1.9.1) using Sun & Moon only Client FPS: 7.1 Fast Timer Average: 153.5ms Siva (1.9.1) with HW Lighting Client FPS: 6.1 FPS Fast Timer Average: 170.5ms As you can see 1.9.1 is currently running at less then HALF the speed of 1.9.0 with the same general configuration and for some reason is doing more then twice the amount of work. Wasn't that workload suppose to be offset to the GPU? If so why is it running so bad even at the lowest level of lighting? Some serious work needs to be done before releasing this to the main grid otherwise LL is gonna lose a huge chunk of their userbase. My basic specs: AMD Anthlon XP 2600+ (1.9ghz), 1 gig DDR ram, an overclocked GeForceFX 5500 256MB AGP. Client settings: AF on, Shiny on, Disable Far Clip off, Draw Distance 64, Fog 2.0, Drop Draw Distance 5, Particles 1024, Outfit composit limit 1. Videocard drivers: NGO Optimized nVidia drivers version 1.8425 (based off of nVidia's 84.25) Extras: PCI Latency set to 64ms, nHancer profile tweaks for both 1.9.0 and 1.9.1preview. EDIT: 1.9.1(10) results, getting better but not quite 1.9 performance yet Siva (1.9.1.10) Sun & Moon Client FPS: 9.5 Fast Timer Average: 108ms Siva (1.9.1.10) HW Lighting Client FPS: 8.0 Fast Timer Average: 123ms
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ZATZAi Asturias
Artificial Isle
Join date: 7 Oct 2005
Posts: 189
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04-14-2006 19:00
Ouch, a 5500 eh? I had one of those (PCI) on my old machine, on a 6800 now, boy what a difference. I actually have a slower processor than you, well, maybe not, they dont scale the same (Pentium M 1.7ghz). I dont experience the same FPS drop that you do in 1.9.1, in fact, it runs just as well as 1.9.0 does for me.
I get around 15-25 FPS in standard and preview client, with draw at 96, shiny on, anistropic on, HW lighting on, etc etc...
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You may not want to hear this, but could it be a compatibility issue with your non-standard drivers?
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Ron Overdrive
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Join date: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 1,002
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04-14-2006 19:11
From: ZATZAi Asturias Ouch, a 5500 eh? I had one of those (PCI) on my old machine, on a 6800 now, boy what a difference. I actually have a slower processor than you, well, maybe not, they dont scale the same (Pentium M 1.7ghz). I dont experience the same FPS drop that you do in 1.9.1, in fact, it runs just as well as 1.9.0 does for me.
I get around 15-25 FPS in standard and preview client, with draw at 96, shiny on, anistropic on, HW lighting on, etc etc...
...
You may not want to hear this, but could it be a compatibility issue with your non-standard drivers? If that was the case then I wouldn't have seen a performance increase with the recent update. Its Siva, not my drivers. Keep in mind you also have a seriously better videocard then me. I dunno about you, but I don't like the trend of seeing the min specs constantly going up with each upgrade when there's little improvement.
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Kris Ritter
paradoxical embolism
Join date: 31 Oct 2003
Posts: 6,627
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04-14-2006 19:13
welp, personally speaking, if the main grid ran half as well for me as 1.9.1 preview does I would be one happy bunny. But preview rarely reflects the performance of the real thing, unfortunately.
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DoteDote Edison
Thinks Too Much
Join date: 6 Jun 2004
Posts: 790
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04-14-2006 19:20
I'm curious, does LL use older servers/hardware for the preview grid? Or how does that work?
My assumption is that older hardware is used, since the preview seems geared toward testing the client software in combination with client hardware. And not so much mass-testing client software with their newest servers (which might be the reason sometimes a release comes out and has problems on the main grid servers.)
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Maximillion Grant
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Join date: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 172
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04-14-2006 19:37
From: Ron Overdrive If that was the case then I wouldn't have seen a performance increase with the recent update. Its Siva, not my drivers. Keep in mind you also have a seriously better videocard then me. I dunno about you, but I don't like the trend of seeing the min specs constantly going up with each upgrade when there's little improvement. I'd have to take issue with your last statement there....hardware lighting and flex prims are hardly little improvements. I feel they're going to change SL dramatically. You can't stop progress.
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Rakshasa Brokken
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Join date: 22 Sep 2005
Posts: 45
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04-14-2006 21:34
From: Maximillion Grant I feel they're going to change SL dramatically. You can't stop progress. LOL yee like the Schlong that seems to be made very terrifingly limp and dangly lol and I personally can't wait for 1.9.1 I am looking forward to flexable prims being a clothes designer and a attachments maker.  I due however wish that they would add flexablility to atleast the torus as well too the other prims already mentioned in the Preview notes, simply because I find that has the most options of use In my opinion anyway (when it comes to attachments like hair and such).
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ZATZAi Asturias
Artificial Isle
Join date: 7 Oct 2005
Posts: 189
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04-14-2006 22:06
Hmm I have to agree with Max. Hardware lighting is a big deal, and so is flexible prims. While I can't compare flexible prims to anything in the past, the new hardware lighting works better for me than the old way, its faster.
Ron, not to be rude, but you make a few statements that perplex me. You say that you don't like the client getting slower with each revision (admittedly I'm paraphrasing), yet you state that you saw a performance boost with Siva. That would seem to indicate that Linden is trying, and in some cases is successful in improving performance.
I know the new lighting improves my performance. When I said I get FPS in 1.9.1 that is equivalent to 1.9.0 I should have said that, the performance I get with HW lighting ON in 1.9.1 is similar to the performance I get with SW lighting OFF in 1.9.0. Perhaps some improvements work for some people, like it did with you for Shiva, and some not so much.
Additionally, while you may have seen an improvement with Shiva with your drivers, this Preview is different, and is most certainly using different calls to the GPU than it did before, as before it didn't use any at all, correct (For lighting anyway)? So perhaps it is your drivers after all, maybe the LL code doesn't interact well with that part of your driver. I know with other games I have used specific Nvidia Driver revisions due to specific issues, if I were you, I hope at least give the Nividia driver a try, you never know. Nothing is perfect, it could be SL, or your drivers, the only way to know is to experiment, otherwise your making decisions based on your personal beliefs, your faith in the system, and I don't know about you, but personally I don't assume hardware or software programmers to ever be perfect, they’re no gods.
I think it's good that you bring this to light now, rather than waiting for the preview to go gold, that’s the whole point of the preview after all. I can't help but think though, that perhaps Linden should post up some minimum requirements so people have an idea of what to expect with their hardware, and can have some certainty in its support in SL development.
I would try the official Nvidia, and see if it works better. That is, if you "want" to help beta test 1.9.1, or you could just point out the issue and let others figure it out, though you are in a unique position to research the issue being that you experience it.
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Ron Overdrive
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Join date: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 1,002
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04-15-2006 04:21
From: Maximillion Grant I'd have to take issue with your last statement there....hardware lighting and flex prims are hardly little improvements. I feel they're going to change SL dramatically. You can't stop progress. I don't call it progress when we're finally adding things that have been available in games for years and all it does is up the minimum spec out of the budget arena when we still have GLQuake level graphics. Unless things are improved with how 1.9.1 works with its surroundings the minimum specs will change to be a 6800GS/GT or equivilent with a recomended 7 series or equivilent. At the moment, that tosses SL out of the budget arena entirely. Not everyone has $200 to shell out for a new videocard. Edit, btw.. changed my drivers and nothing changed. Upgraded to the new NGO 1.8426 wich is based off the (proven) fastest of the 84.xx drivers (84.26) and Agni (main grid) jumped 2 frames while Siva lost 2 FPS.
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Feynt Mistral
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Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-15-2006 04:36
Like me. However the major issue here is not the lighting but the rendering. I believe that LL made a poor choice with their rendering system. Yes, it is efficient. Yes, in a hermetically sealed room within certain rendering boundaries (see my analysis of the OC system) will dramatically improve your frame rate. However the system only seems to offer any real boon to a largely indoors environment. Second Life however is by and large an outdoors environment, with very little in the way of tall, obscuring structures. A ray casting method of scanning (looking outward from your camera to everything in your field of view, calculating which prims are behind which, and then rendering only the ones you can see) would in my opinion yield much better results in this case. However Ron's observation would then be completely correct and each major revision WOULD require a more powerful computer, as such a system would put a tremendous strain on memory and the processor to do all that calculating (especially for 2000+ prims in your field of view). I, personally, do not see a reduction in performance from the main grid client to the preview client even with full lighting and flexys bobbing about like jello in an earthquake. Also, as my analysis reveals, I achieved 20 fps at ground level for the first time in my career in SL. I think that's worthy of praise.
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Hello Toonie
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Join date: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 212
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04-15-2006 04:45
From: Ron Overdrive Unless things are improved with how 1.9.1 works with its surroundings the minimum specs will change to be a 6800GS/GT or equivilent with a recomended 7 series or equivilent. Well, no-one's forcing anyone to turn vertex programs on. I guess with VPs off and lighting quality set to lowest, 1.9.1 performs and looks about the same as 1.9.0 (hard to say for sure while the preview grid lacks my usual hangouts). However, I agree with the general point you're probably making, that adding optimizations (that's what the new lighting is claimed to be right?) or features which greatly slow down performance on budget cards doesn't make such sense from the town-hall long-term budget-card performance-drive point of view. (yay hyphens!) Fortunately at least occlusion culling performs fine in hardware from FX5200 upwards (thanks, legacy of 3dfx!) and is generally a win even there, modulo the other threads about it just not kicking-in very often.
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Ron Overdrive
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Join date: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 1,002
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04-15-2006 04:59
From: Hello Toonie Well, no-one's forcing anyone to turn vertex programs on. I guess with VPs off and lighting quality set to lowest, 1.9.1 performs and looks about the same as 1.9.0 (hard to say for sure while the preview grid lacks my usual hangouts).
However, I agree with the general point you're probably making, that adding optimizations (that's what the new lighting is claimed to be right?) or features which greatly slow down performance on budget cards doesn't make such sense from the town-hall long-term budget-card performance-drive point of view. (yay hyphens!)
Fortunately at least occlusion culling performs fine in hardware from FX5200 upwards (thanks, legacy of 3dfx!) and is generally a win even there, modulo the other threads about it just not kicking-in very often. Except I have Vertex shaders off. I'm still suffering in the single digit framerates. Even with Lighting to the lowest and VS's off I'm still at 2/3rds the performance (sometimes half in large builds) of the main grid. No joke, I was sitting in a closed room inside Gibson, everything was red, and my FPS was 4. On the main grid this was 10 - 12.
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Hello Toonie
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Join date: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 212
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04-15-2006 05:04
From: Ron Overdrive Except I have Vertex shaders off. I'm still suffering in the single digit framerates. Even with Lighting to the lowest and VS's off I'm still at 2/3rds the performance (sometimes half in large builds) of the main grid. No joke, I was sitting in a closed room inside Gibson, everything was red, and my FPS was 4. On the main grid this was 10 - 12. Ouch!! (Just to rule it out, you're not doing these performance tests with the Octree display on all the time are you?  ) I noticed that the 'some' terrain detail level has gone, by the way. That's a shame, because 'low' terrain detail looks like arse and 'high' was always a significant performance-drain for me in 1.9.0 and earlier.
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Alondria LeFay
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Join date: 2 May 2003
Posts: 725
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04-15-2006 09:06
I definately have similar problems as Ron, with frame rates dieing completely in 1.9.1 preview, and lockups whenever I am around large prim areas (like my home in Miramare). I really think that there should be a cap on the octree size, if it grows too large, any gain from not rendering will be lost by the calculations.
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Hello Toonie
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Join date: 25 Jul 2005
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04-15-2006 09:22
That's assuming that the slowdown has anything to do with the octree / occlusion.
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Maximillion Grant
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Join date: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 172
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04-15-2006 09:44
From: Ron Overdrive I don't call it progress when we're finally adding things that have been available in games for years and all it does is up the minimum spec out of the budget arena when we still have GLQuake level graphics. So your point is, anything new done to improve the look of SL doesn't count because other games look better? SL can't be compared to anything else since it's streamed realtime over the net. Games (and I even hesitate to use that word since I don't really consider SL a "game"  like WoW, Half-Life 2 etc have the advantage of knowing what's around the corner, keeping textures and models in memory etc. SL by nature is going to stress out a machine more than those because it's always trying to keep up. You can only judge SL progress on past versions of SL, not by comparing it to Quake and in that respect these are big changes. You can pick up a 6600GT or X1600 for around $100 these days. Depending on where I went on the preview grid I had both great framerate and pretty bad with vertex shaders on and lighting on full....but it's like that for me on the main grid as well. I'm using a GeForce 7800GT with 2 gigs of system RAM and certain builds bring my machine to a crawl.
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Shyotl Kuhr
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Join date: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 105
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04-15-2006 12:13
Even with culling, I've noticed that overall my framerates have taken a rather hard hit. I found a location in the preview that gave me horrid framerates, and then went to that exact location in the main grid.. My framerate on the main grid was ~3 times that of what was in the preview. I also waited several minutes for network activity to settle(rezlag). I then took pics of both. ;p Preview settings: -Ripple water -Shiny / Bumpmapped Lighting detail -Sun and moon only Avatar Rendering -Bump Terrain -High Main grid settings: -Ripple water -Shiny Objects Avatar rendering -Bump Mapped & Cloth Terrain -High Adv Graphics settings are included in the screencaps. I shrunk them down as much as I could feasibly manage. If the Statistics bar is too hard to read the framerate from, just look at the red text in the upper right corner. Basically shows the same thing. Main grid? Oh a little shy of 20fps: http://shy_coyotl.home.mchsi.com/sl1.9.0.jpgPreview? 6-7: No culling http://shy_coyotl.home.mchsi.com/sl1.9.1.10nocull.jpgculling http://shy_coyotl.home.mchsi.com/sl1.9.1.10cull.jpgAny possible clue as to what could be causing this? Sl 1.9.1 took a hammer to my 9800 pro.  Edit: After messing around with this some more, I've come to the conclusion that the "Drop Draw Distance if FPS<" function appears to be non-functional in the preview. Handy. Even with the draw distance down to 64 in both, I still get better framerates in the main grid, and also, the preview seems to be /really/ jerky when moving around.
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-15-2006 13:09
From: Feynt Mistral I, personally, do not see a reduction in performance from the main grid client to the preview client even with full lighting and flexys bobbing about like jello in an earthquake. Also, as my analysis reveals, I achieved 20 fps at ground level for the first time in my career in SL. I think that's worthy of praise. 1.9.1 tuned as best as I can manage it gives me 3-4 FPS on the Lusk platform. I get almost 10FPS there with a higher draw distance in 1.9.0. I borrowed a 3 GHz P4 at work, and still didn't beat 10FPS on the Lusk platform in 1.9.1. It seems that if you don't have good vertex shader support, 1.9.1 is a major hit. If you do, it's a little faster.
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Feynt Mistral
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Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-15-2006 13:37
From: Argent Stonecutter 1.9.1 tuned as best as I can manage it gives me 3-4 FPS on the Lusk platform. I get almost 10FPS there with a higher draw distance in 1.9.0.
I borrowed a 3 GHz P4 at work, and still didn't beat 10FPS on the Lusk platform in 1.9.1.
It seems that if you don't have good vertex shader support, 1.9.1 is a major hit. If you do, it's a little faster. Well with the same settings that net me 20 fps in a closed in 20m^3 box I too get 3-6 fps on the Lusk platform. I tried enclosing the platform in a 40x40x20m box last night, but performance didn't improve much at all. Perhaps because the box was too big, if it were 30x30x20 and was matched up with the culling cubes in octree.... I'll have to try that, it might affect how the grid will have to be structured to optimally improve rendering. But yes, before I switched to Omega drivers so I could use the vertex shader all the time with no oddities, vertex mode on was at least 3 fps faster than vertex mode off.
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Ron Overdrive
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Join date: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 1,002
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04-15-2006 13:40
From: Hello Toonie Ouch!! (Just to rule it out, you're not doing these performance tests with the Octree display on all the time are you?  ) I noticed that the 'some' terrain detail level has gone, by the way. That's a shame, because 'low' terrain detail looks like arse and 'high' was always a significant performance-drain for me in 1.9.0 and earlier. No, I only turned on the Octree when I saw the low framerate. Wanted to see if Occlusion was working. Sadly it was, cuz I turned it off and my fps lowered to 2.5. From: Feynt Minstrel I, personally, do not see a reduction in performance from the main grid client to the preview client even with full lighting and flexys bobbing about like jello in an earthquake. Also, as my analysis reveals, I achieved 20 fps at ground level for the first time in my career in SL. I think that's worthy of praise.
Yeah I read your little review. Sadly that number isn't really worth the praise since you had to litterally put yourself inside a closed box to achieve 20 FPS on the ground. But I agree with you that they should reduce the blocks to 32m^3 from the current 64m^3.
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Feynt Mistral
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Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-15-2006 13:51
Well no, my testing proves that enclosed areas (at least smaller than 32x32x32, and placed in line with a single octree culling cube) would significantly improve rendering while you're inside of it. That means apartments with no windows, houses, the FurNation skymall (I think) and all manner of underground type creations would benefit from this. I can DEFINANTLY see this OC system being an amazing boon for first person shooters like Quake where much of the action takes place in an indoors type area with corridors and usually 15m wide rooms. However the majority of SL is outdoors, so I still think it's a poor choice of system.
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