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Frame Limiting 
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Joined: 2011-11-21 20:23:44
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I googled and searched the forum and did not find this feature mentioned neither could I find it in Debug Settings. Does this option exist and I can't find it? I need to frame limit to anywhere from 25-60 fps. Currently I run significantly over that (up to 300fps in some cases) and as a result I am using more power consumption, higher GPU load and higher video card temperatures. I can use NvidiaInspector to frame limit however much handier doing it in the client.

regards
Ormand Lionheart


2014-07-29 01:56:58
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
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I don't intend to implement frame limiting in the Cool VL Viewer !

And yes, I'm proud that it can do 300+ FPS (it means that I optimized the main loop very well), and yes this is actually useful (because a frame is not just about displaying an updated 3D view: it's also about dealing with sim to viewer and viewer to sim messages, taking into account the user's interaction (mouse, keyboard), updating the UI, rezzing objects, decoding textures, computing various things, etc, etc... At lower frame rates, the viewer simply becomes overall more sluggish.
And yes, I don't really care about power consumption (my own systems are overclocked and locked in "turbo"/"performance" modes always); if I wanted low power systems, I won't buy high performance ones in the first place...

If you really want to slow down the viewer, you still can enable the "sync to VBlank" feature of your driver, meaning the viewer will get artificially slowed down to 60 FPS (or whatever rate corresponding to the vertical refresh frequency of your monitor) for its peak rates. I still don't recommend doing it.

In an ideal world, the 3D rendering loop of the viewer would be done in a separate thread, that could then be limited to produce lower frame rates while not slowing down the rest of the operations of the viewer (that would still be executed by the main thread). Achieving this result would however involve a huge overhaul of the code, and it's unlikely that it will ever happen.


2014-07-29 08:06:36
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Joined: 2011-11-21 20:23:44
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So frame limiting will also limit performance of other functions? In that case then Nvidia Inspector is probably a better option which does not require Vsynch enabled which I found not a good solution either. Thanks for the reply.


2014-07-29 17:54:09
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Joined: 2011-09-17 11:12:19
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I sometimes add a yield in debugsettings to lower framerate, if I need my laptop to stay quiet for a while. It doesn't give you an accurate fps, but it does allow you to limit the resources sl use.


2014-07-30 18:17:03
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Catten wrote:
I sometimes add a yield in debugsettings to lower framerate, if I need my laptop to stay quiet for a while. It doesn't give you an accurate fps, but it does allow you to limit the resources sl use.
The yield time setting is only taken into account while the viewer window is not focused. It won't change a thing while the window is fully active.


2014-07-30 18:35:16
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There is both a backgroundyieldtime and a yieldtime, where the latter will set yield for the focused window. You can check the fps drop if you change this to e.g. 20


2014-07-30 19:57:43
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Catten wrote:
There is both a backgroundyieldtime and a yieldtime, where the latter will set yield for the focused window. You can check the fps drop if you change this to e.g. 20
I will remove this setting. It's strictly of no use (and was disabled by default anyway): yielding time in this way is probably the worst thing to do and would cause lots of sluggishness (especially in heavy rendering environments since the pause is constant and not dependent on the frame rate) !!!


2014-07-30 21:14:12
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Joined: 2011-09-17 11:12:19
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Its a very useful feature if you want to use SL on a laptop in a quiet environment and avoid your fan going off (e.g. library etc.), As I mentioned it will not let you set a fixed fps, but it will let you reduce the amount resources used by the viewer by forcing a sleep. I see no harm in it being there, until a better implementation can be made.


2014-07-30 21:40:23
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Joined: 2011-11-21 20:23:44
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Catten wrote:
Its a very useful feature if you want to use SL on a laptop in a quiet environment and avoid your fan going off (e.g. library etc.), As I mentioned it will not let you set a fixed fps, but it will let you reduce the amount resources used by the viewer by forcing a sleep. I see no harm in it being there, until a better implementation can be made.


Try NvdiaInspector. Works similar to NVCP but has a frame limiter. Yesterday I went to a recommended SIM that has a garden made with Mesh and Materials and even at 64m DD my power usage was up to 106%, gpu usage in the 90's and the temp was 75C. I had to get out of there quick since I'm sure that would have done some kind of damage. Frame limiting I was able to go back with reasonable stats. Like you mentioned earlier the proliferation of Mesh and possibly Materials is going to be an issue. And I have a high performing system. I can imagine what it may do to a laptop.


2014-07-31 00:59:11
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fuzonacid wrote:
Yesterday I went to a recommended SIM that has a garden made with Mesh and Materials and even at 64m DD my power usage was up to 106%, gpu usage in the 90's and the temp was 75C. I had to get out of there quick since I'm sure that would have done some kind of damage.

  • If 106% represents the power supply usage then either you overclocked your system beyond reason, or your system is extremely badly designed: you should never go over the power supply rating (so 106% should never be attained, even when both CPU and GPU are loaded at 100%).
    However, If the 106% figure represents the consumption relatively to the rated CPU or GPU power consumption, and this CPU or GPU is overclocked (or got a "turbo" mode), then it's nothing to worry about, unless 106% also goes over the CPU/GPU package max power rating (see the last point about over-voltage, since it's the only way to go beyond that package max power dissipation rating with modern chips).

  • CPU or GPU usage figures at 100% are safe. Such figures (usually given by gadget-like software) are very coarse and inaccurate anyway (so don't be surprised is your gadget software shows figures beyond 100%... It's just giving a false figure, since, by definition, usage can never overshoot 100%): both the GPU and CPU are designed to safely reach and sustain forever a 100% computing load (that's really the least you can expect from a CPU/GPU !!!). So your 90% usage figure for the GPU is nothing but perfectly normal.
    In fact, old CPUs (back in the 1980s) were always loaded at 100%, because they had no "sleep" state (only a "halt" state, that couldn't be toggled on/off fast enough to be of any practical use), so when they were not doing anything useful (i.e. not executing some OS routine or software), such as while waiting for the user to press a key, they were simply looping in the code (the programmer could not use a "sleep" instruction, they had to code a loop) and were thus always kept at 100% usage; you could reinstate such a behaviour with some modern OSes (Linux can do that) by disabling all P-states (package sleep modes) and C-states (core sleep modes), but C0 (which is the "100% on" mode), of course.

  • 75°C is a safe temperature for the IC dies (in fact, anything below 80°C is perfectly safe). Some CPU and GPU cores can even reach temperatures in the 90°C range without any problem and no risk of damage (even though it speeds up a lot the electro-migration phenomenon and would speed up the aging of the chip by the same factor); such chips got absolute maximum ratings in the 100°C range for their max core temperature (do check your specific CPU/GPU data sheet to be sure however).
    Of course, it won't be safe if the figures you quoted correspond to the heater temperature (because then the die itself would be much hotter), however:

  • All modern CPUs and GPUs are protected against overheating and would scale down their own frequency before they would reach a dangerous temperature or overshoot their package's maximum power dissipation rating; nowadays, the only way to damage a CPU or GPU is to increase their supply voltage beyond their "absolute maximum ratings" (since the chip is then helpless at correcting this dangerous situation): again, check the data sheets (I know, it's "geeky", but that's the only way to know for sure)...

  • Even with a supply voltage (slightly) beyond the absolute maximum rating, which could happen accidentally with a dying power supply and/or motherboard/graphics card dying voltage regulators, you would most probably encounter crashes (and likely total system lock-ups) before the CPU or GPU would fry up.


2014-07-31 08:30:10
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