Performance is poor for one user with decent setup.

Performance Tuning
#1

I can’t seem to figure out what’s going wrong here.

Everybody who’s tested Stencyl so far (50 or so people), and that includes a 500 MHz/128 MB/integrated video setup, has gotten maximum framerates. Then comes along someone with a 1.6 GHz/1 GB/256 MB ATI Mobility Radeon X600, and he gets poor framerates, and it jumps all over the place no matter whether he’s using J2D or LWJGL.

To give a sense of what framerates we’re talking about, normal framerates in Java2D mode are in the 100 FPS range (locked to that), and in LWJGL, it’s vsynced, so it’s 60 FPS and up. This user is getting 30-60 FPS in both modes, and it’s all jerky/unplayable.

He has no other programs open, and he just reinstalled the latest drivers last night with no change. What else could go wrong?

#2

do other games work as expected ?

#3

That’s what I’m asking him for. Could spyware/bloatware possibly be a culprit? He’s using a Gateway laptop and is not terribly technologically inclined (I had to walk him through everything, even the DirectX diagnostics), so that might be something I want to check too.

#4

He only has Civilization 4 installed, and that works fine, but the again, I’d expect a turn-based game with low requirements to work fine.

What else should I ask him?

Edit: A spyware cleaning got the framerate back to 60 FPS or thereabouts. Not great since it should be 100 FPS, but a substantial improvement. I wonder what else is going on?

Edit 2: Clearing bloatware got his LWJGL windowed and full screen performance up to 60 FPS, but J2D is still around 60 FPS. Oh well, it’s all good now.

#5

It’s unusual for a laptop to operate at anything above 60Hz.

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

Well, when the game is using Java 2D to render in a window, it is not vsync’ed, so he should be getting the requisite 100 FPS everybody else has been getting so far. I use several laptops for example (one that’s worse than his and 2 years older), and they all get 100 FPS.

#7

ISTR Java2D can vsync under-the-hood.

Cas :slight_smile: