Tips for Performance?

Hi,

I'm looking for some tips on getting an avalon app to really perform. The
app would have about 20 3D meshes, all being painted with Visual brushes (the
visual being Canvases). Currently, my system is struggling animating just one
mesh being painted with a visual brush so I know I must be going offtrack
somewhere.

Anyone have tips on getting all the performance out of Avalon/Avalon3D?

Also, I am using an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card - not the best but
not the worst - and it doesnt seem to be doing anything! When animating the
3D the system CPU jumps to 99% and stays there, is this card completely
worthless?

Thanks,
Avery

I do not think the current version of WPF uses any hardware acceleration. As
far as I know, the hardware acceleration depends on the WDDM drivers. These
are available in Windows Vista. Do not bother to upgrade to the Beta version
of Vista just yet as the drivers for nVidia do not really work.

There are several factors that play together there.

1) The graphics card is an issue. I do not believe a 5200 is DX9 so at most
you get tier 1 hardware support. If it has less than 64MB of graphics
memory than everything is CPU rendered.

2) Some individual elements are software rendered even on top line cards.
For example the dots in tool bars are software even though the rest might be
in hardware. I have seen some bitmap effects in hardware while others in
software, with no clear reason why.

3) Use Perforator to measure the framerates, and look at some of these
factors. It has the option to render all software elements with a pink
shading to help identify what is not done in hardware. This can help
optimize your strategy.

4) Look at the number of actual visuals being rendered. This has been
stated as a good indicator of performance, and posts to this group and
various blogs have suggestions on how to measure this and to optimize some
cases.

From what I have seen in the current versions even on a Tier 2 card (my 6600
with 128MB) the CPU is still heavily used. While WPF supports far more
dynamics than past systems, it requires just as much focus on performance.
It is not so much that Avalon makes everything fast, as it makes some things
possible that were just too hard to do before. But, things that could be
done before are only a bit faster than before (since GDI+ had hardware
support as well). Rendering visuals to a visual brush laid on a 3D mesh is
most likely always going to render the visual to software then render that
texture to the 3D mesh. I would not expect that to perform very well on
anything but top end cards with good CPU support. But, you should measure
it with Perforator to be sure, as guessing is not as good as measuring.

Michael



"Avery Z" <AveryZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B54D2C41-2D13-40EB-8AC3-A7BD97B0D9D5@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for some tips on getting an avalon app to really perform. The
> app would have about 20 3D meshes, all being painted with Visual brushes
> (the
> visual being Canvases). Currently, my system is struggling animating just
> one
> mesh being painted with a visual brush so I know I must be going offtrack
> somewhere.
>
> Anyone have tips on getting all the performance out of Avalon/Avalon3D?
>
> Also, I am using an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card - not the best
> but
> not the worst - and it doesnt seem to be doing anything! When animating
> the
> 3D the system CPU jumps to 99% and stays there, is this card completely
> worthless?
>
> Thanks,
> Avery

> I do not believe a 5200 is DX9

It is, just low end.

Etienne Boucher

The FX 5200 on my laptop used hardware accelaration with the Sep CTP but no
hardware accelaration with the Dec CTP.
That was my reason for the high cpu.
You can use perforator from the WinFx SDK to vwerify this on your machine.

"Avery Z" <AveryZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B54D2C41-2D13-40EB-8AC3-A7BD97B0D9D5@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for some tips on getting an avalon app to really perform. The
> app would have about 20 3D meshes, all being painted with Visual brushes
> (the
> visual being Canvases). Currently, my system is struggling animating just
> one
> mesh being painted with a visual brush so I know I must be going offtrack
> somewhere.
>
> Anyone have tips on getting all the performance out of Avalon/Avalon3D?
>
> Also, I am using an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card - not the best
> but
> not the worst - and it doesnt seem to be doing anything! When animating
> the
> 3D the system CPU jumps to 99% and stays there, is this card completely
> worthless?
>
> Thanks,
> Avery

A general recommendation in cases like this is to always make sure that you
have the latest vendor supplied drivers for your GPU. Apologies if you've
already done this - it's always the first step in our troubleshooting
checklist for issues such as no HW acceleration, HW glitches, etc.

-Adam Smith [MS]

"Harald Ums" <Harald_Ums@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23rjBAtCFGHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> The FX 5200 on my laptop used hardware accelaration with the Sep CTP but
> no hardware accelaration with the Dec CTP.
> That was my reason for the high cpu.
> You can use perforator from the WinFx SDK to vwerify this on your machine.
>
> "Avery Z" <AveryZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:B54D2C41-2D13-40EB-8AC3-A7BD97B0D9D5@microsoft.com...
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm looking for some tips on getting an avalon app to really perform. The
>> app would have about 20 3D meshes, all being painted with Visual brushes
>> (the
>> visual being Canvases). Currently, my system is struggling animating just
>> one
>> mesh being painted with a visual brush so I know I must be going offtrack
>> somewhere.
>>
>> Anyone have tips on getting all the performance out of Avalon/Avalon3D?
>>
>> Also, I am using an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card - not the best
>> but
>> not the worst - and it doesnt seem to be doing anything! When animating
>> the
>> 3D the system CPU jumps to 99% and stays there, is this card completely
>> worthless?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Avery
>
>

A few things worth pointing out:

1) Video drivers older than November 2004 will not use hardware
acceleration in Avalon. Perforator (included with the WinFX SDK) can
highlight unaccelerated output.
2) Currently VisualBrushes and DrawingBrushes are among the most expensive
ways of texturing a 3D surface. We're working on improving their
performance, but until we do you should look for alternatives where
possible.
3) The two most important factors in video card performance are pixel
shader version and amount of video memory. For optimal performance you want
PS 2.0 and at least 64 megs of video memory.
4) Mesh count, mesh complexity, the number of materials mapped to 3D
meshes, and the number of lights in a 3D scene all affect performance.

David


"Avery Z" <AveryZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B54D2C41-2D13-40EB-8AC3-A7BD97B0D9D5@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for some tips on getting an avalon app to really perform. The
> app would have about 20 3D meshes, all being painted with Visual brushes
> (the
> visual being Canvases). Currently, my system is struggling animating just
> one
> mesh being painted with a visual brush so I know I must be going offtrack
> somewhere.
>
> Anyone have tips on getting all the performance out of Avalon/Avalon3D?
>
> Also, I am using an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card - not the best
> but
> not the worst - and it doesnt seem to be doing anything! When animating
> the
> 3D the system CPU jumps to 99% and stays there, is this card completely
> worthless?
>
> Thanks,
> Avery

David Teitlebaum [MSFT] wrote:
> A few things worth pointing out:
>
> 1) Video drivers older than November 2004 will not use hardware
> acceleration in Avalon. Perforator (included with the WinFX SDK) can
> highlight unaccelerated output.
> 2) Currently VisualBrushes and DrawingBrushes are among the most expensive
> ways of texturing a 3D surface. We're working on improving their
> performance, but until we do you should look for alternatives where
> possible.
> 3) The two most important factors in video card performance are pixel
> shader version and amount of video memory. For optimal performance you want
> PS 2.0 and at least 64 megs of video memory.
> 4) Mesh count, mesh complexity, the number of materials mapped to 3D
> meshes, and the number of lights in a 3D scene all affect performance.
>
> David
>


This is great info. I've got a machine with an ATI Radeon 9200. The
current drivers date to June 10, 2004. From the Radeon website, I can
only verify that it has DirectX 8.1. Will downloading the latest
drivers (for Radeon, they seem to be called Catalyst) help? Or do we
really need to start using the Windows Vista beta as well to take
advantage of these features?

Thanks,
Jason

If memory serves me correctly 9200 is only 8.1 which means very limited
shader support. You will be doing most of your rendering in software for
that level card. Due to hardware restrictions, I would not expect using
Vista to change anything.

Michael


"Jason Dolinger" <jdolinger@lab49.com> wrote in message
news:e1JJ5agFGHA.1736@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> David Teitlebaum [MSFT] wrote:
>> A few things worth pointing out:
>>
>> 1) Video drivers older than November 2004 will not use hardware
>> acceleration in Avalon. Perforator (included with the WinFX SDK) can
>> highlight unaccelerated output.
>> 2) Currently VisualBrushes and DrawingBrushes are among the most
>> expensive ways of texturing a 3D surface. We're working on improving
>> their performance, but until we do you should look for alternatives where
>> possible.
>> 3) The two most important factors in video card performance are pixel
>> shader version and amount of video memory. For optimal performance you
>> want PS 2.0 and at least 64 megs of video memory.
>> 4) Mesh count, mesh complexity, the number of materials mapped to 3D
>> meshes, and the number of lights in a 3D scene all affect performance.
>>
>> David
>>
>
>
> This is great info. I've got a machine with an ATI Radeon 9200. The
> current drivers date to June 10, 2004. From the Radeon website, I can
> only verify that it has DirectX 8.1. Will downloading the latest drivers
> (for Radeon, they seem to be called Catalyst) help? Or do we really need
> to start using the Windows Vista beta as well to take advantage of these
> features?
>
> Thanks,
> Jason

Michael Latta wrote:
> If memory serves me correctly 9200 is only 8.1 which means very limited
> shader support. You will be doing most of your rendering in software for
> that level card. Due to hardware restrictions, I would not expect using
> Vista to change anything.
>
> Michael
>
>

Hmm... thanks for the info. I used the RenderCapability API that allows
you to display what Tier WPF identifies your system hardware as. It
first came up as Tier 0, which means Direct X 7 or less, with less then
< 32MB vid memory. Also Perforator showed that my entire program was
rendering in software. I downloaded the latest drivers for the Radeon
9200 which are called Catalyst. Then once running again, it bumped me
up to Tier 1 which is at least DX 7 and more than 32 MB vid ram.
Perforator now shows nothing being rendered in hardware. However, the
performance is still horrible (my program which tries to rapidly update
~ 100 databound TextBoxes bound to a DataTable, consumes 50-60% of the
CPU.) I really need to dig in with some other perf monitoring tools to
figure out what the hell WPF if really doing.

Jason