Dual core processors and AWT Event Dispatch thread

Performance Tuning
#1

Obviously game development in Java people are told to not use AWT/Swing due to performance reasons, one of those reasons being that the EDT(Event Dispatch Thread) will come into play and could cause performance degradation.

However when you have dual processors is there any reason NOT to use the EDT?
The original reason for not using it has pretty much dissappeared and unless someone can come up with a new argument other than the event thread, garbage collector, latency or whatever then there’s no reason why you can’t/shouldn’t use AWT/Swing.

#2

UM no… sorry. Faulty logic.

You start by saying “one reason is” and tyou conlcude with “there are no reasons left not to.”

The one doesnt follow from the other. There are plenty of OTHER very good reasons not to try to do game content in Swing besides performance, the biggest being that its just not designed with the control necessary for seriosu games. Swing is at its heart an asynchronous protocol, serious games need frame by frame control of the display.

Another one is that its drawing pipeline just isnt optimized for game type content, it was deisgend and optimized for GUIs.

Its not so much a question of raw performance as much as it is a question of fit to the job. Having another processor really doesnt change any of this.

Games are near-realtime programs. Swing is in no way deisgned for that kind of environment.

#3

Unless you’re writing the kind of game that needs a complex GUI :slight_smile:
I’d actually quite like to try writing some horrendously complex management sim of some sort using Swing and a custom L&F. It’d be really, really easy.

Cas :slight_smile:

#4

True and granted 8)

#5

Look at sourceforge. It’s something like Mars project. It’s not as much too complex, but it look this way.