Netbook Intel GMA 3150 GPU

[Hatonastick]

Anyone else here have a netbook with this graphics chip?  Seems to run quite a few games well (eg. Plants vs Zombies GOTY runs silky smooth even with a full screen, unlike my iPod copy), but it really struggles with the Time Pilot clone I started work on ages ago and that just has a 100 dot starfield (the original version had closer to 1000 but that reduces the netbook to about 2-3 FPS).  Just out of curiosity is anything/everything in 2D hardware accelerated in GLB?  Plants vs Zombies for example runs very smooth in 3D mode which is hardware accelerated, but not as smooth in plain 2D mode.  I did try making the starfield using sprites instead of dots, but not surprisingly there wasn't much in the way of difference.

PS This is _not_ an attack on GLB or Gernot.  I suspect the problem is the underpowered GPU (although I can run some games pretty well), underpowered CPU, low RAM, and my really bad coding ability.

So any tricks, tips etc. would be handy.

[Wampus]

Hmm, that's odd. The GMA 3150 isn't exactly the essence of speed personified in a chip but it should be ok with a starfield of that size.

I created a starfield (meant to be sun-lit dust) using SETPIXEL calculated in realtime a part of a larger more GPU intensive background to the game I am working on for the NES/SNES remake competition. The current number of stars is 380. That works fine on my netbook 901 with GMA 950. GMA 3150 is pretty much the same chipset only a little faster. To test I just upped the number of stars to 1000 and the framerate was still high enough to look smooth.

Could it be anything else? For instance, do you do any large screen resizing or grabbing on the fly? I found that a Shadow of the Beast demo by Ian Price ran very slow on my netbook and an old Pentium 4. It turned out to be the GPU/CPU didn't like resizing something to fullscreen dimensions.

[MrTAToad]

Some graphics cards are not optimised for an OpenGL environment - instead they head towards DirectX (not that they are much good at that either).  And, of course, they tend to use system memory instead of their own dedicated area.

[Hatonastick]

Thanks guys for your response.  Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, but I've been hammering my netbook trying out various games.

I'd say my graphics card (or its drivers) don't support Open GL that well.  Direct X games run pretty well on it.  I've tried quite a few commercial games so far.  However having said that I've run GLB demos written by other people on it just fine.  I suspect the real issue might be my code, so I'm going to go take another look at it.

BTW MrTAToad, like the Zombitar.  You grab Plants vs Zombies GOTY as well?

[MrTAToad]

I downloaded the demo yesterday - hopefully I'll get the full game soon...  Very amusing game

[Hatonastick]

I think I must like it too.  I've bought it 3 times so far.  First on Steam, then for my iPod, and now GOTY edition for my netbook (I don't want to install Steam on it).

[MrTAToad]

Good pirate zombie!

Completed the main game earlier today (got the full version) - just the mini games to go now

[Hatonastick]

Yeah but yours is funkier -- plus you have a neat background picture.

[Scott_AW]

I actually have two netbooks(one's the wife) which are pretty much the same except for age.

I've noticed that your performance is notably improved when the netbook is plugged in.  If you check your 3d/display settings you'll notice that when unplugged you lose a lot of enhancements.

This is probably to save power.

So how are you doing your stars?  When started playing around with GLB I made a sample space shooter that uses polyvector a lot and it seems to work fine, that is if you're replicating the same sprite/animation.

You can check how it runs on your netbook, here's the link ->http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/rick-jason-glb-alpha/download/2198/

[Hatonastick]

My stars have been drawn using SETPIXEL and (because I thought maybe it would speed things up due to some faulty logic on my part) DRAWSPRITE, which turned out to be slower.  Oddly enough this runs fine on Ian's netbook which uses the Intel GMA 950.

With just 50 stars I get 58FPS, 150 stars and it drops to 55, and so on and so forth.  Yet I know Ians netbook can handle much more than that.  All I can think of is I've really done something drastically wrong somewhere, but every time I look at the code I can't see anything wrong at all.

I've been installing and trying out a whole bunch of games (although to be fair most hail from 2004 or so) such as Pirates! (the 3D version), Unreal Tournament, Serious Sam, Deus Ex and they all scream along.  However these are all DirectX games as far as I can tell.  I'm wondering if the Intel GMA 3150 has poor or no real OpenGL support as far as drivers go.  Introversion tends to use OpenGL in all of its games and I own copies of all of them so I tried Darwinia which ran pretty slowly before crashing, and yet I know of other people with netbooks who can run it fine.  Hardly irrefutable evidence I know as theres a number of reasons why this might be so (it wasn't patched and that version might have not been Windows 7 friendly), but it does make me wonder -- hence why I was asking on here.

Most people seem to have the 950 though, I haven't talked to anyone yet who has the 3150 chipset.  Although that depends on whether or not "I actually have two netbooks(one's the wife) which are pretty much the same except for age." means you have two netbooks with the same chipset as mine, or that you have two netbooks that are pretty much the same as each other.  I suspect the latter.

Ok tried your demo (which looks pretty cool BTW).  FPS jumped about a little bit (mostly about 58, but claimed it hit 88 at one point), had some odd pauses almost like an irregular heartbeat (just like I do when I run my little demo) and some screen tearing.  How smooth does your example run on yours?  Oh btw, this is with the power plugged in.  I wish the tool that came with the laptop for changing graphics chip settings did more than just allow you to alter the screen resolution.  There doesn't appear to be any options in the BIOS either.  I'd like to adjust how much RAM it uses for the GPU for example.

[Scott_AW]

Well one laptop actually has a 945, I'm not sure what my newer has.

Both are running XP, however one is older, a 8.9" Acer Aspire netbook and the other is a 10.1" MSI Wind Netbook.

Spec wise they are the same, but I think the video chip in the MSI may be better/newer as some things do perform better.

I haven't had problems with OpenGL.

Using polyvector with a image (could be a white 8x8 image) for your stars runs faster.  My demo jumps alot because its using 800x600, 3 layers of prerendered backgrounds.  I thought this might be faster then a tile system, but you can see the draw-back with the staggering.

Using polyvector and newpolystrip with poly vector in strip mode is actually super fast for doing things like particles.  That and you can do fancy things like coloring your stars different.  I had mine different colors depending on the speed they traveled.

Windows 7 could be an issue to, maybe regarding OpenGL in general.  But I don't have much to test that runs Opengl besides my GLBasic projects.

[Hatonastick]

Thanks for the tip about Polyvector.  I'll have to give that a go.

And yes, I had wondered whether Windows 7 was part of the problem.  Most people I've had test my gear are using XP I think.

Ok, after much poking about I've found a newer driver for my chipset and OS on the Intel website.  Interestingly enough, one of the listed fixed problems sounds suspiciously like the issue I've been getting with some of the games.  Hopefully this doesn't trash my install or make things worse.  At least I've got a full backup of my system on an external HDD.

Edit: So far seems to have worked.  The driver upgrade.  About to test it with a program.  One change I like is that the 3D options are a bit more extensive than the previous version which treated you like a village idiot.

Darn, nope.  OpenGL programs still run like a pig on it.  That have more to do with Windows 7 and its support or lack of, of OpenGL?  I thought all that sort of things was handled by the graphics card drivers?  Most of my technical background is with UNIX, despite having used Windows for many years, I don't really know much about the technical side of things.

Edit: Well after more research it turns out the glitches I get while playing some games, especially OpenGL ones, is a known issue with the Intel GM 3150 but currently no fix exists for it.  Guess I just have to hope they will update the drivers one day. *shrug*

[Ian Price]

My son's netbook is Windows7 HOAS...

[Hatonastick]

Edit: Removed waffle.  Added some bits.  Attempting to try and make sense.

If I said differently earlier I was blathering and I'm wrong.  In any case these days I'm a moron and my tech knowledge is highly suspect so despite having read all of this I might still be wrong.  Heck for all I know it's all in my head.

However, according to all the information I've seen this afternoon there isn't any problems with GMA 950 chips and their drivers under Windows 7 (which is the chipset your sons netbook uses IIRC), at least not now (there was either when Windows 7 was released, or the card was, don't remember).  However there is supposedly an issue with the drivers for the GMA 3150 under Windows 7 which is known according to some people but currently there is no fix for it.  Now whether that's an issue with OpenGL with this chip or whether the issue is some other problem, I do not know for certain.  All I know is some games are not working as well as they should.

Something isn't right if some 2D game with 2 sprites and 50 dots running under OpenGL struggles, and yet 3 commercial 3D games running on DirectX written in 2004 can run with all settings on high (obviously not the resolution one) and scream along -- the 3 Introversion games I have are all OpenGL and none of them runs properly but they are also newer so I don't know if the problem is lack of 3D acceleration, or just that they are written for more modern, faster computers.  Either way, I'm not blaming GLB, but I do seriously doubt the drivers for this card support accelerated 3D for OpenGL at all despite what sites like Wikipedia claim.

[Ian Price]

Computers. Doncha just love 'em.

That's why I dev for consoles!