While at GDC last month, I went to a talk on optimizing C++ given by a person from Microsoft that evaluates the XBox games. The #1 thing was to run a profiler. That was it. He was amazed how many games he reviewed that didn''t use one. He got a MINIMUM 25% increase in frame rate on all games evaulated. Mainly from running the game through a profiler.
As for why Microsoft doesn''t supply one, that''s anyones guess.
- onebeer
Fine tuning C++ code?
Hi!
No offense
, but I really wonder if you'd notice any difference in speed in any test you can think of (talking about this ++i instead of i++). Optimizations like this one is not something any serious programmer would do. Note that you usually do something hundreds (if not more) times more expensive inside the "for" branches.
I can't think of any serious code sample where such optimization would be noticeable. Tell me if I'm missing something important.
I would divide optimizations that make sense into 2 kinds:
1. Algorithm related.
Much more important in most of the applications nowadays.
Exceptions here are "only": real-time applications and drivers, otherwise optimizing down to stuff like "make 2 tricky assignments instead of 4" doesn't usually make any sense but makes your application much more difficult to understand for the others and makes it more buggy.
A well designed and clever algorithm will speed up you application much more than poor but dangerous tricks you can do with C/C++.
A well known rule for software developers is KISS which stands for "Keep It Stupid Simple", which - a bit exagerating - expresses best what I'm talking about.
2. Coding tricks.
These are the things that are exceptions from above - mostly computer games, real-time simulators etc.
You should keep in mind however not to optimize everything, but just the critical pieces of your code like (just few examples):
- copying some large arrays of vertices
- interpolating thousands of vertices of your models in real-time
- precomputing some computationally expensive values
[edited by - MickeyMouse on April 7, 2004 4:43:44 PM]
quote:Original post by tolleyc
Summary: Use ++i, not i++
No offense
, but I really wonder if you'd notice any difference in speed in any test you can think of (talking about this ++i instead of i++). Optimizations like this one is not something any serious programmer would do. Note that you usually do something hundreds (if not more) times more expensive inside the "for" branches.I can't think of any serious code sample where such optimization would be noticeable. Tell me if I'm missing something important.
I would divide optimizations that make sense into 2 kinds:
1. Algorithm related.
Much more important in most of the applications nowadays.
Exceptions here are "only": real-time applications and drivers, otherwise optimizing down to stuff like "make 2 tricky assignments instead of 4" doesn't usually make any sense but makes your application much more difficult to understand for the others and makes it more buggy.
A well designed and clever algorithm will speed up you application much more than poor but dangerous tricks you can do with C/C++.
A well known rule for software developers is KISS which stands for "Keep It Stupid Simple", which - a bit exagerating - expresses best what I'm talking about.
2. Coding tricks.
These are the things that are exceptions from above - mostly computer games, real-time simulators etc.
You should keep in mind however not to optimize everything, but just the critical pieces of your code like (just few examples):
- copying some large arrays of vertices
- interpolating thousands of vertices of your models in real-time
- precomputing some computationally expensive values
[edited by - MickeyMouse on April 7, 2004 4:43:44 PM]
This topic is closed to new replies.
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