why is TEXT so slow when windowed?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/why is TEXT so slow when windowed?
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| I'm displaying about 7 or 8 lines of debug and info text on-screen, but when in windowed mode this produces a drop from 60 to 30fps, dep. upon what else is happening. Remove the text or switch to fullscreen and all is sily again. Why is displaying TEXT over 3D so slow??? Anyone else found this problem? |
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| Radeon? I noticed some versions of the catalyst drivers doing this a while back. Seems they caught the old Nvidia bug. |
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| I assume your desktop refesh rate is 120hz or something? |
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| I do have a Radeon (9800pro) but I'm using a refresh rate of only 75hz - does it make a difference? |
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| Only in as much as windowed mode always waits for vsync, even with flip 0. Well that is how it is on my system anyway, maybe XP is different. So its a bit difficult to quantify how much extra time the text display is taking given just a FPS because your code might be running close to a vsync and the text display is just enough to tip it over the edge and make it always wait for another one when you flip. So for a comparative FPS you really need to be running without a wait for Vsync. More generally though my understanding is that displaying text or any 2d stuff is likely to stall the 3d graphics pipeline, though I would have thought that would make for more obvious differences full screen than windowed, but then I do not really understand exactly what DX is doing to support a window so who knows. All I can say for sure is that for the same refresh rate windowed mode is usually somewhat slower than full screen on my system, no doubt for a variety of reasons. |
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| It seems to be dependant on drivers - my laptop has a GeForce4 440 Go which used to be very slow when using Text over 3D in either mode. But recent I upgraded the drivers and now Text is fine in windowed mode but still really slow in full screen. Whereas my other PC has an Intel gfx thingy and it's fine with Text in either mode. Basically I'd avoid using Text for "real" display purposes as you just don't know how it's gonna react - even different version of drivers for the same card handle it differently. I only use it now for non-time-critical debug info. |
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| Is there a frame-tweening locked-logic 3d framework around that enables me to see not only the FPS but also how much free time remains on each frame? I'm currently using the original 3d framework from the code archives (http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=9) which works very well but I can't find a way to tell how much time I have spare at, for example, 60FPS. If anyone's using this framework and can tell me how to modify it to show spare frametime, or if anyone has a frametweening or smooth system they would share it would be very useful. |
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| how much free time remains on each frame? Don't forget the Scanline() command. |
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| What's the scanline command? Never heard of.... just kidding. Please ignore this thread from now on. I've asked the same question in another thread where hopefully more people will see it. |
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