2D graphics performance

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Raap

Gawd
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Jul 12, 2008
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I was just wondering, does anyone know if there's a big difference in 2D performance between the current video cards?

Playing Distant Worlds( 4X game, 2D graphics) I've noticed that my 5870 leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to 2D graphics; there are a few scenarios with much happening on the screen where performance becomes rather sluggish. Just made me wonder if some cards are better at 2D than others, or if they're all pretty even in that field. Or is 2D graphics done pretty much just by the CPU? Is there any way to find out if it's hardware accelerated?
 
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Raap said:
I was just wondering, does anyone know if there's a big difference in 2D performance between the current video cards?

Playing Distant Worlds( 4X game, 2D graphics) I've noticed that my 5870 leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to 2D graphics; there are a few scenarios with much happening on the screen where performance becomes rather sluggish. Just made me wonder if some cards are better at 2D than others, or if they're all pretty even in that field. Or is 2D graphics done pretty much just by the CPU? Is there any way to find out if it's hardware accelerated?
Click to expand...

it would be horrible coding if the CPU was used! yikes that would be like an old MAC, IBM PC clone or APple II junk; even Atari 800/C64/Amiga/Atari ST didn't use CPU much for 2D graphics.

I have read that 2D graphics of non-gaming definitely vary radically by card and OS and driver. Sometimes XP driver is 10x faster on some cards and some old cards are 10x faster than new cards due to little driver effort etc. it's complex. not sure if most games would use the commands tested though wouldn't seem all that wise to me if they did.

they probably hook into a blimmer if they can or more often just render paired triangles with textures head on with 3D system to make 2D sprites and layers.
 
Raap said:
I was just wondering, does anyone know if there's a big difference in 2D performance between the current video cards?

Playing Distant Worlds( 4X game, 2D graphics) I've noticed that my 5870 leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to 2D graphics; there are a few scenarios with much happening on the screen where performance becomes rather sluggish. Just made me wonder if some cards are better at 2D than others, or if they're all pretty even in that field. Or is 2D graphics done pretty much just by the CPU? Is there any way to find out if it's hardware accelerated?
Click to expand...

Real time 4X or strategy games lagging out when lots of stuff is on screen is usually CPU lag. I doubt Distant Worlds is even taking advantage of dual core so if you have a lower clocked quad core it might be hurting in complex scenarios.

If it is the video card you could try forcing 3d clocks to see if it helps in 2d mode though. The card is probably running at idle speeds while playing that game.
 
Yeah, just confirmed that the game isn't using a hardware renderer, only software. It's using mostly just one CPU core, sometimes parts of one other on my [email protected].

Guess I'll just have to hope they either patch up with hardware rendering support or at least improve multi-threading.
 
have you tried setting affinity to 1 cpu core? Maybe it doesn't like splitting the load
 
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