pouët.net

Hi!
Lately I experienced some strange performance issues with some newly released demos. My gear is a Dual core 2.4, 2Gigs Ram, GF 8600 GTS, newest Forceware Drivers.
Most Demos seem to run flawlessly, like "Debris" running very smooth in 1024x768, Vsync, 8xAF, 4xAA. But recent productions that are meant to run smoothly even on the Geforce FX or 6800 like "Discharger" by Stravaganza and "Lifeforce" by ASD are turning into slideshows in several parts. "Lifeforce" runs in 640x480 (!) at barely 50 frames for most of the time but bows down to 2-3 frames in several scenes (Man reaching for the heart, suicide scene).

From the demo's comments I learn that other owners of the Geforce 8 family experienced exactly the same problems.
My question: does anybody know if this is some kind of driver issue? Or is this caused by some kind of feature only the newer Geforce Cards have? Or is it just some unoptimized code?

Sorry, I don't want to turn this into a tech forum, but I would like to enjoy these great productions as they were meant to be enjoyed! Help is very appreciated!

no problem on gf 8800 gtx here

I can tell you that lifeforce on my 5600 gf fx averages 35 fps at 640x480, without dropping a frame overall.

I wonder if you get into software mode or it is not getting enough wattage from your system.

It sounds like a driver issue. The demo runs flawlessly on my 8800 GTS btw.

Windows Vista and higher end OpenGL don't mix that well. I heard there were a lot of driver problems..

--> Navis
Hmm..no, the power supply shouldn't be an issue... the strange thing is that in only happens in selected scenes. That's why I wonder if in those scenes some special OpenGl features are used that don't go well with this card family...
--> Preacher
Running XP here, being not a fan of Vista :-)

AstronautStebo: Try updating your drivers.

--> kus ma bite
That's part of my problem - I'm already running the newest Forceware :-)

Lifeforce works fine on my Nvidia gfx card in my Vista pc :-)

it usually takes them some time to get good performance from the drivers on new hardware, and this card series has been a generation shift, so.. come back in six months. :)

-->smash
You may be right, I'm afraid... I will wait and see what the next Forceware brings :-)
Ironically enough, "Media Error", where a lot of people complained about the speed, is running well here... the city scene and the smoke box really impress - fine work on that!

astro: well, we did optimise, we just optimised for modern hardware. :)

There's also this: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41330

--> imbusy
Interesting article... and while my card is the smaller 8600 this would proove smash's point that there is still a lot of room for improvement concerning those Nvidia drivers...

demo runs magnificiently perfect here on my friend's 8800 GTX XXX

Just as a side note: The performance of my ancient Radeon9700Pro improved ~20% over the years, compared to the first driver + directx9 versions...

my lappy has a 8600GT. I've yet to experience what you go through.

8600gts here and no problems so far

We had problems on a dual-rig gf 8800 compo machine with our demo http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30563 , which had ridiculously low hardware requirements. Blacklight iterated on it a few times and had to turn off envmapping in the final scene to get it going. It dropped to like 1 fps in the (single) complex scene at the end. No problems on gf 5, 6, 7...

I have a 8600M GT + 256 MiB gfxmem + C2D @ 2.0 GHz + 2 GiB RAM with latest drivers and a 6800 + 128 MiB + Athlon64 2.0 GHz + 1 GiB RAM with older drivers (10x.xx) to test with. Indeed, the 8600 had some issues: every now and then, the framerate dropped below 10 fps for half a second or so. Overall performance was lower than on the 6800, too. I also had some sound issues here, like frequent buffer underruns.

I just found the solution!

When KeyJ mentioned his hardware, I noticed that he has the same configuration of Dual Core + 8600. So this gave me an idea what to look for:

The Nvidia control panel has one special option for multiple core machines called "Thread optimisation" or something like that. This seems to be an option that should normally speed up the work between CPUs and GPU.
This was switched to "ON" on my machine. When I set this option to "AUTO" or "OFF", Lifeforce and the Stravaganza demo I mentioned as examples suddenly run absolutely flawlessly even at higher resolution :-)

So basicly, this option seems to hinder the performance, if the programm isn't optimised for that feature.

So, thanks a lot for your feedback. Maybe this is of some help for other people experiencing similar problems.

PS: Navis, even is some obscure feature of my card doesn't seem to like your demo, I do love it a lot! ;-)

Keep in mind that the 8600 series is crap compared to the 8800

I'd really love to have one of those crap cards though :/

I tried to turn off threaded optimizations in the driver (BTW, it was set to "Auto" here by default), and indeed most of the half-a-second dropouts vanished. Overall performance was still below expectations, though. I got the best results by forcing the demo to run single-core completely. The only problem that remains for me are the sound dropouts, but I blame that on the crappy HDA drivers :)