Game plays worse/slower in newer versions: Is this considered regression?

[Rekrul]

I haven't played Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition in a while. The other day I loaded it up in 1.8.0 and noticed that the game was stuttering and randomly slowing down, even when set to 1:1 resolution and only 2x filtering. I thought this was strange as I don't remember it having any problems on the same system in the past.

So I went back to 1.6.3, which was the last official release I was using and the game runs silky smooth. In fact, I can bump the resolution up to 4x and put the filtering on 16x and it still runs better than 1:1/2x do in 1.8.0. The main menu runs worse and the sound stutters there, but the game itself plays perfectly.

I tried to isolate when the slowdown started, but after testing a bunch of versions, it just seems to be progressive and hard to nail down. Sometimes it will slow down/stutter, sometimes not. The only consistent factor was that each version I tested after 1.6.3 seemed to be worse than the previous version. The random slowdowns would happen more frequently.

This is in the Windows 32-bit version running on;

2.4Ghz Core-2-Duo
GT430 graphics card
4GB RAM
Onboard sound
Windows XP SP3 (yes, I know it's outdated)

Would the fact that later versions have trouble running this on the same hardware be considered a regression, or would it just be chalked up to later versions having steeper system requirements than older versions?

[Dipen]

I haven't played Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition in a while. The other day I loaded it up in 1.8.0 and noticed that the game was stuttering and randomly slowing down, even when set to 1:1 resolution and only 2x filtering. I thought this was strange as I don't remember it having any problems on the same system in the past.

So I went back to 1.6.3, which was the last official release I was using and the game runs silky smooth. In fact, I can bump the resolution up to 4x and put the filtering on 16x and it still runs better than 1:1/2x do in 1.8.0. The main menu runs worse and the sound stutters there, but the game itself plays perfectly.

I tried to isolate when the slowdown started, but after testing a bunch of versions, it just seems to be progressive and hard to nail down. Sometimes it will slow down/stutter, sometimes not. The only consistent factor was that each version I tested after 1.6.3 seemed to be worse than the previous version. The random slowdowns would happen more frequently.

This is in the Windows 32-bit version running on;

2.4Ghz Core-2-Duo
GT430 graphics card
4GB RAM
Onboard sound
Windows XP SP3 (yes, I know it's outdated)

Would the fact that later versions have trouble running this on the same hardware be considered a regression, or would it just be chalked up to later versions having steeper system requirements than older versions?

Go to your nVidia Control Panel -> go to "manage 3d settings" on the left and on the right in global settings click on OpenGL rendering GPU - from the drop down select your graphics card (GT 430), if it is not already. this should assist in a lot of other ways. Usually it is on Auto select which in turn uses the generic directx. Try the above and do let me know please.

[Rekrul]

Go to your nVidia Control Panel -> go to "manage 3d settings" on the left and on the right in global settings click on OpenGL rendering GPU - from the drop down select your graphics card (GT 430), if it is not already. this should assist in a lot of other ways. Usually it is on Auto select which in turn uses the generic directx. Try the above and do let me know please.

I don't have that setting;



None of the options have anything to do with OpenGL.

[[Unknown]]

Is it worse in 1.7.5?

Are you using default settings? I'm guessing you aren't just reducing the resolution - which things have you disabled / changed to improve speed?

-[Unknown]

[Dipen]

Go to your nVidia Control Panel -> go to "manage 3d settings" on the left and on the right in global settings click on OpenGL rendering GPU - from the drop down select your graphics card (GT 430), if it is not already. this should assist in a lot of other ways. Usually it is on Auto select which in turn uses the generic directx. Try the above and do let me know please.

I don't have that setting;



None of the options have anything to do with OpenGL.

try updating the display drivers bro
chk attachment

[Rekrul]

try updating the display drivers bro

I have the latest drivers that are available for XP.

Are you using default settings? I'm guessing you aren't just reducing the resolution - which things have you disabled / changed to improve speed?

When testing for problems, I always start with a fresh copy of each version, unpacked directly from the archive to a new directory. Then I run it with all the default settings. The only things I change are to switch to fullsceen and I change a couple of the control mappings to match my gamepad. I leave everything else at the defaults when comparing different versions. I don't even use a save file for the game, I always start it from the beginning.

Anyway, I'm beyond confused right now...

I've been testing different versions of PPSSPP and I can never get consistent results, even with the same version. I can run it in v1.6 and get good performance, close PPSSPP, run it again and get crappy performance. It seems to be random. If the sound on the main menu is OK, then the game plays fine. If the sound is breaking up, then the game will play slowly. Note that FMVs and stuff like choosing a car in the garage are fine.

The only constant is that I can sometimes get good performance out of the 1.6.x versions and I always get terrible performance in 1.8.0. I also tested 1.7.4. It was somewhat better than 1.8.0, but still had highly inconsistent speed. It would randomly slow down, speed up, etc.

If I'm being 100% honest, the performance in 1.6 isn't perfect, however the speed variations are small enough that they don't typically affect gameplay. In fact, I only really notice them when watching the video I made. That is, when 1.6 decides to cooperate.

I don't have capture software, and that would probably skew the results a little too, so I used a digital camera pointed at my screen. Both were made with 100% default settings, except for the control mapping as noted above. Also, both were made starting the game from scratch. Nothing else was running on my system and I rebooted before running PPSSPP.

(You'll have to click and watch them on YouTube because the forum won't let me post two videos)

PPSSPP v1.6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjT-2FzO_k

PPSSPP v1.8.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok87TS3hkxY

Note that 1.8.0 speeds up to just about normal around the 59 second mark, but slows down again a couple seconds later. You can hear the audio warbling.

[[Unknown]]

Try changing Threaded optimization in the driver settings to On or Forced or whatever the Yes setting is.

I know that I had a similar issue of very inconsistent performance between runs using an NVIDIA 9800 GT with older NVIDIA drivers. It ended up being caused by some heuristics in the NVIDIA driver deciding whether to activate the threaded optimization.

Maybe we are now falling on the bad side of that old driver's heuristics.

It would be interesting if this makes 1.6.x consistent for you, even if it doesn't improve 1.8.x.

-[Unknown]

[Rekrul]

Try changing Threaded optimization in the driver settings to On or Forced or whatever the Yes setting is.

Unfortunately there was no change. Two good runs in 1.6, followed by a bad one. All bad runs in 1.8.0.

[[Unknown]]

Hm. What if you try Direct3D 9 as a graphics backend instead of OpenGL in PPSSPP's graphics settings? Does that change anything for either version?

Also - there were a lot of changes between 1.6.x and 1.7.x. If you even tried one in between, it would cut down on the possible issues by a lot.

https://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/index.php?m=fulllist
v1.6.3-621-g0d7a5cd09 - is basically the same as 1.7.0
v1.6.3-6-gb9388f50e - is basically the same as 1.6.3

So if you were to try one half way in the middle, say v1.6.3-316-g96ff23a47, it would tell us a lot. If that build works just like 1.6.3 for you, then it means none of the 300 changes made before it are the problem. If it already has the problem, it means the 300 changes after it probably aren't the problem.

With another try halfway again, you could cut down another 150 small fry - your power as the hero of the story, the Chosen One who can reproduce the issue.

If we can get it to less than hundreds of changes, it'd be a lot more possible to guess what could've caused the problem. I did review the major changes made in this range and didn't see anything that should obviously cause it.

-[Unknown]