new OP Viewer = half framerate???

Hey folks,

First question here on the forums. Appreciating the userbase thats here.

I’m seeing massive performance drops anytime I open an OP viewer. (RightClick, View…)
Even with a simple 1Channel CHOP, TouchDesigner goes from 60fps down to 30 or less.

Attaching 2 screenshots:
TD Framerate 1 - Noice. 60fps
TD Framerate 2 - Yep. Opening a viewer with 2 circleTOPS at 512x512 wrecks performance.

Scaling the window up makes it even worse. This seems odd, as you can click the OP display flag and fill the whole window background at no performance cost.

I’ve scoured the documentation and the forums but cant seem to find anything on this. Just trying to understand if this is meant to be the workflow…

Is this expected behavior? Does opening a new viewer window in even the most basic network crush machines?

Thanks everyone.

-Casey

PS. It seems my image attachments are wonky. Apologies, and happy to edit if someone can point me to a formatting link.
TD Framerate 2.jpg
TD Framerate 1.jpg

It’s a bit complicated but the here’s some brief factors:

  1. Don’t worry about it for now, because Perform Mode is where you’ll be which will have different (and better) performance
  2. Depending on your whole system, it’s could be Vsync pulling you down to 30fps because it was hovering around just under 60fps because of the new window opening.
  3. Window drawing is expensive, which is why you’ll see everyone recommend only using 1 Perform Window to cover all your screens when it comes time to installation.
  4. I noticed you have a Trail CHOP. I can’t see from here how many channels and samples, but operators liek that that are heavy on drawing also impact the performance (because they’re also just getting drawn in the background). You’ll often notice performance jumps when you bypass the viewer for things like that (all viewers that would see it, including containers and such)

I would personally not worry about it till you’re later in the project and start testing it with Perform Mode and a single Window COMP setup.

I’ll also mention that on some drivers it seems like the windows ‘take turns’ refreshing, and since the monitor can only do 60 refreshes a second, each will only be able to refresh 30 times a second. This will drop the FPS during this instance.

I’ve noticed as of the last few months that opening a floating window viewer for anything that is cooking in real time drops the fps pretty dramatically where longer ago it did not.

This has happened across two devices and has been puzzling. I’ve been leaning towards it being an nvidia driver related thing, but was never able to find a version to roll back to where this was not an issue anymore.

It’s also seemed to improve a lot with the latest experimental - and also windows like the performance monitor if not updating internally seem to leave the fps up at 60 again now.

Thanks everyone,
The response has helped big time. Good things to know and consider.

  • Casey

PS. In my very limited time getting into TD so far, I’ve come across the work of both ‘nVoid’ and ‘Enviral Design’, and want to thank you both for making such cool stuff, and sharing your knowledge with others. Cheers!!!