Taking advantage of the GPU
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I posted something related to this in DirectX forum, but it wasn''t really this same question (more about making sure I was using HAL) and I''ve also posted in Graphics Programming and Theory about specifically using dynamic textures and such (writing a texture every frame) and basically I''ve come down to this point. I just need a general idea, which is why I posted here.
I''ve recently upgraded from a Voodoo 3 (heh, yeah, I know) to a Geforce 4. The thing is that now I have absolutely no idea how to transfer a lot of the processing to the GPU. Meaning that my program doesn''t run much faster because it''s still all (or most) being done on the CPU. I''ve looked all over and I can''t find any article or anything that explains how to take advantage of using the GPU processing power. In my situation, I need to render and change a texture almost every frame, and supposedly I can do that on the GPU very quickly. In general, how do I perform operations on the GPU?
As far as I know, DirectX and OpenGL commands "automaticly" try to use the GPU as much as possible.
Soo... my advice would be to use their functions as much as possible ^_^
Soo... my advice would be to use their functions as much as possible ^_^
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I was hoping that wasn''t the case ><
But I suppose you are right, I just wanted to clear that up! ^^;
Thanks.. I''ll have to stop doing it all myself I suppose!
(I love those faces ^_^ )
But I suppose you are right, I just wanted to clear that up! ^^;
Thanks.. I''ll have to stop doing it all myself I suppose!
(I love those faces ^_^ )
In my knowledge, which is minimal cos I''m not a graphics programmer, OpenGL takes advantage of it automatically, whereas at least DirectX 7 requires you to use the correct device - it has a HAL device and a TNL_HAL device, and you need the TNL one. I can''t comment on DirectX 8.
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quote:Original post by billybob
use hardware vertex processing, that should give quite a large boost
Yep, that was the first thing I did.
But my program still ate up CPU processing.quote:
In my knowledge, which is minimal cos I''m not a graphics programmer, OpenGL takes advantage of it automatically, whereas at least DirectX 7 requires you to use the correct device - it has a HAL device and a TNL_HAL device, and you need the TNL one. I can''t comment on DirectX 8.
As Cat said, I''m pretty sure that DX 8 does the same thing, about using it automatically as long as you are using HAL. I think you are right about DirectX 7, but I''m using 8.1
Thanks for the comments though. I haven''t really figured out a way to reduce CPU processing yet, but I just have to figure out how to take advantage of DirectX 8''s functions instead of mine (for example instead of locking a texture and writing it myself, somehow render it with DX 8 writing it)
If what you're doing now is updating a texture in system RAM via the CPU, procedurally or otherwise, you can instead upload the texture once and use pixel shaders/programs/whatever on it to manipulate it as you please. If your texture manipulation involves rendering and not some procedural function then use render_to_texture. Either way, the texture stays on the GPU, the work gets done on the GPU, and the CPU does something else.
[Edit] Aside from that if you have any vertex transformations that you're doing in software, like reorienting billboards or what have you then you can also do those on the GPU with vertex shaders.
Don't bother using the GL matrix mul functions if you were thinking those would be accelerated too, only matrix-vector transformations are actually done on the GPU in the TNL pipeline, matrix-matrix muls are done by the driver in software.
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- outRider -
[edited by - outRider on July 30, 2002 7:12:26 PM]
[Edit] Aside from that if you have any vertex transformations that you're doing in software, like reorienting billboards or what have you then you can also do those on the GPU with vertex shaders.
Don't bother using the GL matrix mul functions if you were thinking those would be accelerated too, only matrix-vector transformations are actually done on the GPU in the TNL pipeline, matrix-matrix muls are done by the driver in software.
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- outRider -
[edited by - outRider on July 30, 2002 7:12:26 PM]
Are you using DX vertex buffers, or are you doing your own processing? As long as your using vertex buffers and have it set to hardware vertexd processing, your fine.
The real key is re-architecting your application to use both processors at the same time. Usually your code flow is so a bunch of stuff then render everything. With hardware TNL you should do some stuff, render some, do some more, render some more, finish doing stuff, then finish rendering. The actual number of steps will vary based on the architecture of you program, but it should be basically the same.
If you do all your rendering at once, your CPU is just spinning doing nohting while the GPU is crunching the scene.
Stephen Manchester
Senior Technical Lead
Virtual Media Vision, Inc.
stephen@virtualmediavision.com
(310) 930-7349
The real key is re-architecting your application to use both processors at the same time. Usually your code flow is so a bunch of stuff then render everything. With hardware TNL you should do some stuff, render some, do some more, render some more, finish doing stuff, then finish rendering. The actual number of steps will vary based on the architecture of you program, but it should be basically the same.
If you do all your rendering at once, your CPU is just spinning doing nohting while the GPU is crunching the scene.
Stephen Manchester
Senior Technical Lead
Virtual Media Vision, Inc.
stephen@virtualmediavision.com
(310) 930-7349
http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=gdc2001_optimization
i found this to be quite useful. there are several other articles and samples on nvidia''s website that are interesting as well.
i found this to be quite useful. there are several other articles and samples on nvidia''s website that are interesting as well.
I would imagine that a Pentium 4 is much faster than a GeForce4 at certain things. The point in a GPU is not to speed up calculations, just to share some of the work. So if your program is only graphical, its not much helped by a GPU, because transformation and lighting is of similar speed on a CPU. The idea is to use the GPU for graphics, and the CPU for physics, AI, etc.
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