The FPS drop at the start isn't an ATI thing it happens on all systems, SXX gave me a link to a mod called "Slowbars" it addresses the FPS at startup drop.
So I see roughly a 5 FPS increase, but generally, it does seem to run smoother. This is with regards to your first post. Before I changed the shaders, I ran a control test. ^that was selecting a position to start. ^this is once the game began. I took captures of all of the screen information. It was running mostly around 30 FPS. This is the test I ran after replacing the existing files with the ones you posted in your first post. ^At the selecting screen I did not notice to much of a difference. ^same thing as the control as far as information...But wait!!! I magically have an average of 5 more FPS. ..I would like to note that this game was performed on the same map and game setup. roughly 5 minutes apart. So I can conclusively say that, ceteris paribus, the change in FPS was a result of the change in shaders. I am interested to see what your second list of shaders does. I will have to wait till later to try that out.
i have released this as a "Performance Boosting Mod" https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-performance-booster.53233/ I will continuously update that thread with updates to the shaders, I'm aiming to remove as many extra features and shaders without impacting Graphics too much. Hopefully this will be great for people with low end GFX cards or systems. Plus many gamers prefer to sacrifice prettiness over framerate, i myself prefer a high fps and basic graphics over an AWESOME looking more difficult to play/contorl game.
Agreed.. I am pretty sure I saw a decrease of activity on one of processor cores as well. This aligns nicely with my thought that my particular bottleneck was a result of a coherent UI process for the UI in the game. I figured that was the feature bogging down one of my cores. Your mod reduced that usage ( I think). I will perform several comparisons, and show the graphs off later with a conclusion. Thanks for looking into this stuff and playing around. Im not sure if this will ultimately help the final game or not, but it may very well make the Beta much more enjoyable for others (myself included!) Keep up the work!
Try this mod to fix UI bottle neck https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-slowbars-54357.50349/#post-772764 im not sure if it still work with the current beta but its worth a try.
It's on my list of things to try. Your MOD seemed much quicker to implement. SXX pointed me to this a few days ago. I keep hearing good things about it. I WILL try this, and then post my results..On like three different threads. SO many people talking about this stuff.
Hi all, There's a new AMD Legacy 13.9 driver. For me, on Radeon HD4850 under Win8.1, it helps a lot. More FPS, more stability. PA is really playable and smooth now. As a new user I can't post a link so this is the url with a few spaces support.amd.com / fr-fr / download / desktop / legacy?product=legacy2&os=Windows+7+-+64
On AMD site it is written English only, but I got Catalyst in french anyway. Sur le site d'AMD le pilote était marqué comme étant en anglais, mais une fois installé, j'ai catalyst en français. Par contre il faut bien faire le ménage sur les anciens drivers avant pour qu'il puisse s'installer.
No I'm running windows 8.1 64 on a Core i7 + Radeon HD4850 I found the driver on guru3d, a lots of people have radeon 4800 series problems there.
I too am running 13.9. Though I never went out in search of it. Bootcamping windows 7 X64 on a mac pro from 2006. When I rant AMD's auto driver search, 13.9 is waht came up and installed. Things are running very stable (outside of PA, though lately I have been averaging ~40 FPS or so throughout a game). I can run Portal and TF2 on highest settings at 2560X1440 and things are running very nice. I would also like to note that outside of extremely large (10+ planets) PA has been running a lot better since I performed the UI mod (the first post in this thread). Not sure if it is due ot changes on PA's side of things, or if the UI mod really had that much of an effect. Anyone run the second revision of mod? In particular, anyone who ran the first version, and can compare with the performance of the second revision? just curious? Perhaps I will do that later tonight.
i bootcamped my mac mini 2010 too, it has an nVidia GT320m. it runs PA better under windows, i think this is because windows allows me to update drivers beyond the version that the Mac osx's are using
I think i found the shaders with the most load on an ATI GPU and on my Intel one too!! Its the Ordered Grid SuperSampling (Downsampling Shaders) I put all the original shaders back in and just took these out post_downsample.fs and post_lum_downsample.fs and got the best improvement out of them all. (to get this answer i tried removing just one set of shaders at a time to see which gave the best results on 2 machines, my intel based one, and my friends Gigabyte ATI 6870 carded desktop using 13.1 drivers) Also if you want to try my best FPS booster try this.. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-performance-booster-v2.53233/ On my intel chipset i was using 1366x768 res, and getting 21fps at start of game and down to 8-13 fps mid game. Now with the mod installed i get over 45fps at start game and an average of 36fps that's 24fps more than my old starting FPS of 21 fps and an average of 15-20 fps higher thru the entire game Even when the screen is LOADED with Units and factory's all building my FPS doesn't seem to drop below 16fps, normally it would be about 3-5fps i posted pictures in the thread too.
Hi I tested this FIX on ATI HD 5870 Crossfire and this FIX increased my frame rates. Still some delay while syncing but overall good performance!! One noticeable improvement was on the chrono cam playback, I could actually see all the explosions when I destroyed AI commander. THX for this FIX!!! Keep up the good work..
Thank-you if you want a real performance boost try this tell me what you think too https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-performance-booster-v2.53233/
Totally the case. Under windows, you have much better control of drivers and versioning. In Mac, your driver updates come out with OS updates. I cannot wait to try the other performance enhancing mods you posted. This could be epic. and last night I used two moons to blow up one planet, and the game didn't slow down for me at all. I know that part of that is your mods. I hope to look more closely at what the shaders are doing to more fully understand why the mod is working the way it is. Thanks again!