Java and Nvidia

[Antice]

1.4.7 vanilla is slow in general. With the new updated forge I am running optifine ultra with multicore support enabled and getting 60fps consistently on a geforce 640. This is with fancy graphics and tree's. No antialiasing. Before I had to turn fancy graphics off and was only getting 30 fps. I wouldn't blame the frame rate issues on FTBs mods.

I've had a lot of problems with optifine in the past, but this release seems to work like a charm for fps probs. I also updated java to the latest version. Multicore support gave me 40 fps increase when I turned it on, otherwise I would have 30fps or worse in redwood forests. I can't support optifine so if you are going to try that use their support forum threads.

And to the above, the textures for the 64x packs might be poorly compressed or formatted they are community developed and I had to optimize the sphax textures myself before I could get them to run smoothly using an image batch conversion program. With vanilla textures you get the same fps more or less client side. The reason you may see a difference is the vanilla packs are probably better supported by the artists, optimized, and theres less objects to load textures for. FTB will hog texture memory because there are allot more blocks loading different textures even if they are optimized. This is probably why the vanilla minecraft devs are careful about not creating a ton of new blocks every update.

what version of optifine are you using. NVIDIA card and optifine are not friends in general, and my card seem to have a rather intense hatred for optifine in particular.
The amount of GFX glitches i get just makes it a big NO to use it for recording. giving people a headache ain't part of my evil plan.

 

[Abdiel]

Is there a way to trick minecraft into using more than one cpu core?

I was thinking something along the lines of starting a server on the same machine as the client... or was this done when they changed the SSP version to run as an internal server?
I know i can run a server and client in parallel on my machine without noticing much in the form of performance changes... (FPS remains more or less the same tbh) But my bottleneck atm is probably memory related. 4gig's just ain't nearly enough when running FTB mindcrack.

I have tested, and found that my kid's laptop get's a rather noticeable* FPS increase when she is connecting to a server set up on my machine on the LAN network, so there is definitely some game mechanics processes that are "server side" so to say, and that are not mirrored on the client. the cost in memory will likely kill my performance in my case, but Someone who's got plenty of RAM should maybe see an increase? (and trippling my RAM would be a cheap fix for a major increase in performance when editing and recording, so it's definately "on the books to do so already)

That could possibly work. Splitting the server and client should reduce the load per core, but probably slightly increase the total load as some calculations need to be run twice. And running only a client, with the server on another computer, should be a significant gain (as you observed). Still, in regards to multi-core machines, Optifine is your best bet.

4GB is way more RAM than you'll ever need for a client. This is the most common misconception, people will just recommend throwing more RAM at a problem until it fixes itself. When in reality Java (unless you also fiddle with GC settings through command line arguments) will happily eat as much RAM as you give it, regardless of how much it needs. Using more RAM bring issues with access speed, TLBs, caching, paging, etc. There is a break point where throwing more RAM into the pile will actually slow you down. Where exactly this is depends on your computer specs and other things running under the hood (other applications using memory - you mentioned recording, additional CPU/GPU bottlenecks, etc.). For me, the optimal number turned out to be around 1GB when playing on a server. After that I start to notice slowdowns and choppy FPS. (My computer has 8GB of RAM total.)

 

[Antice]

That could possibly work. Splitting the server and client should reduce the load per core, but probably slightly increase the total load as some calculations need to be run twice. And running only a client, with the server on another computer, should be a significant gain (as you observed). Still, in regards to multi-core machines, Optifine is your best bet.

4GB is way more RAM than you'll ever need for a client. This is the most common misconception, people will just recommend throwing more RAM at a problem until it fixes itself. When in reality Java (unless you also fiddle with GC settings through command line arguments) will happily eat as much RAM as you give it, regardless of how much it needs. Using more RAM bring issues with access speed, TLBs, caching, paging, etc. There is a break point where throwing more RAM into the pile will actually slow you down. Where exactly this is depends on your computer specs and other things running under the hood (other applications using memory - you mentioned recording, additional CPU/GPU bottlenecks, etc.). For me, the optimal number turned out to be around 1GB when playing on a server. After that I start to notice slowdowns and choppy FPS. (My computer has 8GB of RAM total.)

If it weren't for fraps, I'd not need any more than I got memory wise. Disk speed is the main bottleneck for recording, but with more ram i could pile on my editing suite as well, with minecraft and fraps both running I hardly use more than half my CPU at any rate. I've considered using a ramdisk setup to help eliminate the autosave lag in minecraft. it's a lot worse when the disk is busy accepting data from fraps continously.

I just might get myself a pair of hard drives instead tho, I want a RAID stripe set, since that allows for faster disk IO. that would help more when rendering than more ram would. altho being able to run both minecraft/fraps, and the editing suite at the same time would really make things simpler for me. never underestimate the power of convenience. and being able to just pop into my world and do some quick recording, then pick it up in the editing suite immediately would be immensely useful.

I just did a quick comparison. I fired up a quick game with FTB retro (1.2.5 with the empty map mod disabled so it would create a proper world),. And i noticed that my FPS in 1.2.5 is 10-20 FPS lower on average than when running the current version of the mindcrack pack. So that client internal server method is apparently working for distributing the load between CPU cores rather well.

 

[runlvlzero]

what version of optifine are you using. NVIDIA card and optifine are not friends in general, and my card seem to have a rather intense hatred for optifine in particular.
The amount of GFX glitches i get just makes it a big NO to use it for recording. giving people a headache ain't part of my evil plan.

OptiFine_1.4.6_HD_U_C3 (ultra)

I get a bit of flashing texture over xycraft and other glowy ores, thats it for graphics glitches. I know what you mean though, I have had allot of probs with optifine so I'm greatful when I get a version that works with the forge ver the modpack is set up with. I installed the standard version first so antialiasing was already disabled if its not you might have to manually update your NVIDIA control panel global settings to get rid of the grid lines everywhere as that can get toggled on under the cards global options. Be sure to disabled threaded optimization under global when running minecraft.

And good luck with recording, AFAIK its best to have a second drive on another controller from your main one for that.

 

[xSINZx]

First off, Thanks all for the hints and points in the right direction.
I have managed to get my fps up to about 80fps in certain areas and dosn't seem to go below 40, but sits around 50 to 60 most of the time. So I'm happy enough!
Optifine Multicore seems to be working ok but not great. I also get graphical issues with the xycraft blocks (Sphax 128) I don't really use them for building to much anyway. Have only really built a Magic Tower/Room with the White Bricks and the distortion when approaching looks kinda cool anyway.
I am currently using OptiFine_1.4.6_HD_U_D3.zip Not sure if this one is the right one to use with the Forge ver we have in the DW20 5.1.1 pack though. But as I said working ok for me atm.

Cheers all.

 

[runlvlzero]

Glad the advice was sound. I watch a few professional youtubers use optifine and the high rez textures anyway with the glitches so I consider those ore issues to be fairly minor and worth the increase in performance. I think they record at 30fps so anything above 40 with vsync on is good for them.

 

[Antice]

Glad the advice was sound. I watch a few professional youtubers use optifine and the high rez textures anyway with the glitches so I consider those ore issues to be fairly minor and worth the increase in performance. I think they record at 30fps so anything above 40 with vsync on is good for them.

I get that without optifine, so doing without is fine for me. I'd use it despite the visual glitches if i absolutely had to. Optifine does not really fix any issue i have with my HDD being too slow to accept a world save at the same time as I record, but it's only an issue when traveling large distances. as far as slowdowns go it's a fairly predictable one at that.