I'm having some trouble with slowdown and tried to pinpoint what's going wrong by testing it with the following code. Here are 2 different versions of a loop statement that do the same thing. With the first one, I'm getting about 130,000 program cycles/sec and the second one, 18:P As you can see, the only difference is in one I'm writing the math out manually, and the second I'm using a function that does the same thing. Good: POINT3D LightPos = POINT3D(34, 546, 56); float u; for (int i = 0; i < 13976; i++) { for (int k = 0; k < 3; k++) { //this is pasted 16 times in the real code u = pow((LightPos.x * LightPos.x) + (LightPos.y * LightPos.y) +(LightPos.z * LightPos.z), 0.5); } } Bad: POINT3D LightPos = POINT3D(34, 546, 56); float u; for (int i = 0; i < 13976; i++) { for (int k = 0; k < 3; k++) { //this is pasted 16 times in the real code u = GetLength( LightPos); } } Here are the definitions used: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// inline const float GetLength(const POINT3D& Vector) { return pow((Vector.x * Vector.x) + (Vector.y * Vector.y) + (Vector.z * Vector.z), 0.5); } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// typedef struct POINT3D { public: POINT3D() {}; POINT3D(float xf, float yf, float zf) {x = xf; y = yf; z = zf;} float x, y, z; }POINT3D; *A couple notes: the inline seems to be working I guess.. because when I remove it, the 18 program cycles/sec goes down to 9. Also, when I move the 'float u;' into the header file, the 18 goes to 32. I don't know if this is a hint of any kind. Also, this data isn't being used anywhere in the program. in fact, this is about all the program is, since I commented all of the main stuff out. Everything's still being compiled though... P.S. sorry about the formatting... how do you do those little code boxes on this forum?

well, I do use the double fors in the final code, but I commented just about everything out to test the slowdown problem.

yes

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
inline const float GetLength(const POINT3D& Vector)
{

return pow((Vector.x * Vector.x) +
(Vector.y * Vector.y) +
(Vector.z * Vector.z), 0.5);

}

I mean.. it does the same thing, but there must be a key difference on the compiler level or something. Possibly something to do with memory? i dunno:)

VC++6

My 2 cents: This conundrum is whack.
I think the compiler output is necessary to help solve this one