I've seen this

public const GraphicsLevel QSDetail = GraphicsLevel.High;

but at this point it just turns off water/particles/post processing.  Will there be fallbacks (less intensive/lower shader model/etc) implemented later or is that an end user type thing?  I checked the website for the new engine and it looks like its gonna be great but I didn't see any mention of fallbacks, but it looks like you all have thought about it.  Keep up the good work and quick replies/fixes.  Now off to make a codeplex account so I can post further questions on your website.

There is a mention of fallbacks, in one of the 500 discussion posts we've made in the last week, I'm not surprised you didn't see it, I probably couldn't find it.

We will definitely be using them. I have a very simple example in the template, where normal mapping technique for terrain is used at highest or high detail, and normal mapping is not used at a medium or low detail. Also, no normal map textures are used at lower details, to save on memory.

I believe our minimum spec machine will be a SM2.0 video card, so all the features should run on at least SM2.0, although some fancier stuff down the road could require 3.0 (like parallax occlusion mapping), but it wouldn't be needed to run the engine. We'll also have better LOD options, like lower LOD models, which will help with poly count.

The snowflake thing worked. Unfortunately, it's running pretty badly for me. 640x480 with all my ATI stuff at highest performance, and the engine set to low (why do you take the water away? ;_;), I can't break 50 FPS for practical views of the terrain. Of course, looking straight down, I get 137 FPS. Of course, running in Med is out; I can't break 20 FPS.

I know it's not your engine, though. Direct3D 9 is running like crap for me lately. I actually was messing around in Irrlicht.NETCP before I gained interest in XNA, and the test level included runs just as bad if I run it using Direct3D 9. Performance doubles if I use Direct3D 8, though. The funny thing is, Direct3D 9 used to run just as well. Windowed apps run beyond horribly, too... I cannot run the test level in windowed mode, but I'm not sure if that's related.

What can I do to improve Direct3D 9 performance on my computer?

What ATi card is it?  And when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Since you do development, is it possible you have the DirectX SDK installed and enabled the DirectX Debug Runtime?  While useful, it does cause a drain on frame rates.

See, I'm an ignorant yet aspiring noob, and had no idea that existed. :P Thanks for telling me about that!

How do I disable it?

If you didn't know it existed then its unlikely you have enabled it..

In the DirectX SDK program group find the DirectX control panel - in the utilities folder.

You will see a radio button in there that allows you to switch between the retail and debug versions. But since the debug version is not enabled by default I doubt this is the case.

Yeah, it was set to retail. I noticed a /!\ in DXDiag about the debug dll, though... I deleted it (sent it to the Recycling Bin, I'm probably gonna restore it after this post), but it made no difference, and only greyed out that paft of the control panel. I'm using my little Irrlicht.NETCP program to benchmark right now. Direct3D 8, fullscreen, 640x480, AntiAliasing enabled: ~165 FPS. Same settings but with Direct3D 9: ~95 FPS. A 70 FPS difference! Windowed mode for both of them, though... Won't even break 10 FPS.

My card is an integrated card: a Radeon Xpress 1150. I have my drivers up to date; I updated them just today.

Could that just a case of the Direct3D 9 version using more advanced shaders than the Direct3D 8 version?  Direct3D 8 didn't exactly support a wide range of shader functionality. ;)

I doubt it. The only thing I did was load up a quake 3 level and set up a camera to fly around it. I'd hate to find that out, though. I'd love to ble able to get more speed out of XNA stuff. And then there's still the issue of windowed games running horridly.

My gut feeling is that it's just the card.  I would consider 90 FPS out of a Quake 3 level to be fairly decent on that card considering the Irrilicht BSP renderer probably isn't as optimized as the original Quake 3 engine in OpenGL was.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but that doesn't explain why there's a 70 FPS difference between Direct3D8 and Direct3D9.

EDIT: I don't wanna hijack this thread. Where should I go to start a new thread for help with this?

Actually, it could explain the difference.  That card could be Direct3D 8 class hardware, so has well-optimizated Direct3D 8 drivers.  When the Direct3D 9 spec was released, ATi may have done some research and determined that the hardware could be Direct3D 9 compatible, but with selective functionality.  So they could have implemented a working driver for Direct3D 9 (for at least a sub set of the functionality), but not optimized it as well as the Direct 3D 8 driver.  Further, some of the Direct3D 9 features may be implemented in software, and the Irrilicht engine may be using some of these features in the Direct3D 9 version.

This is just speculation, of course.  You might want to ask on the Irrlicht boards, they may have run into this before.

That's a good idea. I'll check with them.

The biggest reason this doesn't make sense to me is because this laptop came with Vista Home Premium, with Aero enabled. And Vista comes with DirectX 10.

That card is definitely not DirectX 10 compatible.  Only the GeForce 8-series and ATi HD 2000-series cards are DirectX 10 compatible.

I'm an nVidia guy and don't know much about ATi hardware, so take what I say with a grain of salt.  A quick look at the spec page on AMD's web site doesn't even list Vista as a supported OS for the Xpress 1100 series.  Who knows how accurate that is though.  Being on Vista could be a contributing factor.  Last Spring I used an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro on Vista for a little bit and the ATi drivers for Vista were horrible.

Oh, don't worry. I'm not on Vista. I got sick of it and went back to XP.

Maybe ATI will have some info. Irrlicht.NETCP's IRC channel is dead, and normal Irrlicht doesn't seem to have one.

Let me describe it this way:

Running directx samples program with a DX9 card: 70fps

Running directx samples program (DX10 mode) with a DX9 card: 6fps

If your card was made optimized for DX8 then that could explain it. Not only that, but like Shaw said, certain features may be disabled on your card when running in DX8. There's a whole slew of differences between 9 and 10 for example, if I wanted any of the DX10 features, I'm going to pay dearly in performance.

Lord Ikon:

Let me describe it this way:

Running directx samples program with a DX9 card: 70fps

Running directx samples program (DX10 mode) with a DX9 card: 6fps

If your card was made optimized for DX8 then that could explain it. Not only that, but like Shaw said, certain features may be disabled on your card when running in DX8. There's a whole slew of differences between 9 and 10 for example, if I wanted any of the DX10 features, I'm going to pay dearly in performance.

You do realize that a DirectX 9 card will not execute DirectX 10 code, right?  It's not like in the DirectX 8 to DirectX 9 switch where vendors could write DirectX 9 drivers for their DirectX 8 hardware.  DirectX 10 drivers must implement the full set of DirectX 10 features, so any DirectX 9 hardware will not have DirectX 10 drivers.

The reason you see that difference from 70 FPS to 6 FPS is because the DirectX 10 renderer is running in full software reference mode.   Your graphics card is sitting there drinking a cold one. ;)

LordIkon:

if I wanted any of the DX10 features, I'm going to pay dearly in performance.

Using DirectX 10 does not guarantee you a loss of performance, as long as you have the hardware to run it and don't fall back on the software reference rasterizer.  The DirectX 9 and 10 samples are pretty comparable on my 8800 GTX.

Okay, anyways... My goal is to eventually create a Tales-style RPG, with Tales of Symphonia style graphics. I think DirectX 8 can handle it. Hopefully, you guys won't be too offended that I might use Irrlicht CP... that is if I can find an input library that will work with it.

But XNA has everything I need, as well as samples and tutorials, though it will probably run slower. This will be a hard decision.

EDIT: Hey, wait a second. What about my horrid performance in windowed mode? That might be related to my performance issues.

I won't be offended either way, if you're running the template (v0.182b) I wouldn't expect great results, it is highly unoptimized, and is part of the reason we've started a new engine, which won't be done for months.

Good results on the new engine so far, but that won't help you much, because of the months it will take.

Irrlicht has been around for years now, and has probably much more support as it uses C++. I'm honored our engine was considered with Irrlicht as another option.

If it runs so slowly in windowed mode and relativly fine in fullscreen, it might be the desktop settings (wrong color depth or something) or turn off aero.  Of course my laptop wont't play HD-DVDs if aero is off, so that was a wild guess.

Lord Ikon nice work on this. I like how the structure of the code is really neat, well commented.

Being an old Developer/Moderator for Irrlicht I can say your off to a good start and the XNA framework + the vast amount of new developers springing up will thank you for your contribution.

Thank you, I'm glad to see people actually sifting through code, and not wanting to hurl at the same time. :oP

But seriously, I have to give some credit as well. Riemer Grootjans (www.riemers.net) taught me a lot when I first started with XNA, and the XNA team has had some great samples as well, not to mention absolutely the best forum support I've ever seen.

While the template code (v0.182b or earliar) was mine, the new engine is a team of people, so I can only take partial credit from here on in :).

I'm all about open-source though, I just want a free engine out there for people to either use for their own endeavours, or to be able to sift through the code and learn something from it.

Chxfryer:

If it runs so slowly in windowed mode and relativly fine in fullscreen, it might be the desktop settings (wrong color depth or something) or turn off aero.  Of course my laptop wont't play HD-DVDs if aero is off, so that was a wild guess.

I already said earlier that I went back to XP. I'm glad I did. :)

For now, I've decided to continue using Irrlicht CP. I'm definitely going to take another look at this in the future, though! Good luck with everything! :)

Why not just spend $50 and buy a new video card?  Unless you are on a laptop, you'll get so much better performance than an integrated card and they are a snap to install.