Where are the SL bottlenecks? (was Re: [sldev] branches/shadow-draft missing llrender.cpp)

[Dave Parks]

That's a lot of screen real estate.  I run at 1280x1024 on one monitor 
and 1680x1050 on another.  Also, I run without anisotropic filtering 
enabled and 4x AA.  One of the main SL bottlenecks is memory bandwidth, 
so motherboard and FSB matters a lot.  Our code isn't very cache 
friendly at all, with lots of small allocations happening all the time.  
You can track down your particular problem by using the fast timers 
(Advanced->Consoles->Fast Timers).  This will show you a real-time 
profile of where time is being spent on your machine. 

What OS is this?  With 4GB RAM, are you running a 64-bit OS?  I haven't 
done performance analysis of 64-bit Windows yet.

Scott Squires wrote:
> I have an 8800GT, and have never seen > 35fps, and that is when starring
> out at the ocean.  In a regular scene with no avatars, it is typically <
> 25fps.  Reducing the SL graphics settings from the "high" preset does not
> increase fps.  My cpu is an X2 4200, but I rarely see over 60% cpu
> utilization.  In the task manager, usage seems to be slightly higher on one
> core, but there is not a core that is maxed out.  4gb ram.  While my
> desktop resolution varies from 1600x1200 to 2048x1536 on one monitor, and
> 1900x1200 to 2304x1440 on the other, the highest resolution I ever run SL
> at is 1600x1200.  Making the SL window smaller does not seem to make a
> difference.  Is my cpu really a bottleneck, even though it doesn't appear
> to be fully utilized?  Is this an architecture thing?  Do Intel users
> generally see better SL performance than AMD users?  A cpu upgrade may be
> in my near future, but swapping mobos to change architectures is a PITA.
>
> On Mon, 26 May 2008 16:29:35 -0700, Dave Parks <davep at lindenlab.com> wrote:
>   
>> I get as high as 60 FPS in a scene with around 100 lights, and as low as
>> 8 in a crowded scene with lots of transparency (Ahern).
>>
>> This is on Win XP Media Center with a GeForce 8800GT and Intel E8400
>> (about a $700 PC).  Long term there will probably be the option of
>> enabling per pixel lighting without shadows, which results in very
>> little performance hit.  Also, this is largely unoptimized.
>>     
>
>