Weird results on different machines/video cards

[teletubo]

Images tells more than words :

-This is on my 4 year old laptop, with crappy Intel 965 Graphics Card:

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/8052/mmcdemiam.png

-And this is on my girlfriend’s pc, with NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200, up to date drivers : (click to enlarge and see how the edges of the model have a white line, as if the texture was not correctly bound)

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7448/mmcluu.png

besides that, it runs at 60 fps on my laptop with no problems, but in hers it runs at 40 fps at most.

On other tests:
-A friend’s notebook with SiS351 graphics card, things were even more messed up, I don’t have a screenshot though.

-On a pc with geforce 8600gt , things were normal .

I’m using immediate mode for some stuff (like the UI), vertex Arrays for the animated models and VBO for the static stuff (for example the spear on the screenshot) .

I wanted to believe this is only an out of date driver issue, but I’ve updated and installed myselft the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 drivers on my girlfriend’s computer, and still the problem happens .

Any ideas of what I could be doing wrong ?

[lhkbob]

Isn’t the FX 5200 pretty old? Intel’s cards have been getting better so maybe the 965 isn’t as bad as you’d think, at least not compared to the 5200.

The only thing I can think of is if the 5200 doesn’t support the texture clamp mode you’re using when you render it with textures (such as CLAMP_TO_EDGE or CLAMP_TO_BORDER, etc.) or maybe its texture filtering engine is really bad.

Are the triangles in the models being smoothed with OpenGL’s primitive anti-aliasing? The images look a lot like what happens when you enable polygon smoothing but the edges are set up poorly, or the card can’t handle it correctly. If you look closely at the hood on the bad model, the cracks are yellow instead of the white/gray everywhere else, as if the head is bleeding through. This makes me think it might be a polygon rendering issue of some type.

All guesses, though

[teletubo]

@lhkbob

Are the triangles in the models being smoothed with OpenGL’s primitive anti-aliasing?

Damn, you’re good !

I disabled GL11.GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH and now the funky lines disappeared . The FPS is still low, though VBOs are available .
I guess there is no LWJGL utility isCrappyPolygonSmooth() , right ? I think I’ll just leave it enabled as default, and have as an option to disable .

Thanks again !

[delt0r]

FX5200 is a really old card. Your low FPS is almost certainly because of that. The intel cards are crap, but mostly because they have very buggy drivers. For a on board card their fill rates etc are not so bad compared to a fossil like a FX5200.

OTOH I have a new NV 300 at work, which is a fanless OEM model. It is new, and has pretty low fill rate etc. Check card specs, the model number/age does not give you a accurate view of what performance you should get.

Finally, i wouldn’t use smooth triangles. Its got fairly odd behavior and you must render the triangles in the correct order. These days folks who want AA will be using FSAA and probably have the card to do it.

[teletubo]

@delt0r

FX5200 is a really old card. Your low FPS is almost certainly because of that. The intel cards are crap, but mostly because they have very buggy drivers. For a on board card their fill rates etc are not so bad compared to a fossil like a FX5200.

OTOH I have a new NV 300 at work, which is a fanless OEM model. It is new, and has pretty low fill rate etc. Check card specs, the model number/age does not give you a accurate view of what performance you should get.

Finally, i wouldn’t use smooth triangles. Its got fairly odd behavior and you must render the triangles in the correct order. These days folks who want AA will be using FSAA and probably have the card to do it.

Ok, thank you for the information !