Editor's scene view performance problems

Hi,

just tested the beta 9 for a while but it's nearly unusable on my dev PC @ work. The PC is a little bit old (core 2 quad @ 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, GeForce 8600GTS, windows 7 64 bits), but I've got only an empty scene with two cubes and everything else is as it is when you create a new empty project.

The scene itself runs fine, getting around 80fps but the scene view is really slow, like 2-5 fps. There's almost half a second to a second of delay when selecting an object in the scene, and the whole editor has this lag too when the scene view is visible.

Are the required specs for the editor a lot higher than older versions of Unity ? What surprise me is that the CPU never goes over 5 or 10%.

 

Same performance issue on pc with AMD Phenom II X4 965, 16gb ram, GeForce 9800GT, Win7 64. Even with empty scene. Reducing the size of the scene view window partially solves this problem.

 

Things are a little bit better if I start Unity with the -force-d3d9 flag but it's still way slower than previous versions and barely usable.

 

It sounds like a graphics card issue. Did you submit a bug report?

 

I don't really know what I can submit as a bug report as it's not linked to a specific scene or editor crashlog, but I can try. Just wanted to be sure that there's not a new "minimum requirements" my machine wouldn't met.

 

My notebook is weaker than your pc and I have no trouble to use Unity 5. If you submit a bug report, Unity is aware of the issue and they might be able to find out what the cause is. The only way to ensure that Unity is aware of an issue is by reporting it. That is often not the case if you post it in the forum.

 

I'm having issues while previewing in the editor as well. I have a new Macbook Pro, 16GB, Quad Core. I'm pretty sure is it the inspector updating. When I have something selected it runs half the FPS, when I deselect everything it runs smooth.

 

And what is the case number of the bug report you submitted?

 

Just reported my case #644333

 

Just had some answers to my bug report, but the problem is that they can't reproduce the performance hit I have on any of their machines and it seems I'm the only one who reported such performance problems. They asked me to post here to find out if there's other user experiencing the same issues.

The problem is the same on the beta 9 as well as on the beta 12.

Profiling the editor seems to show that the UpdateSceneIfNeeded takes up to 500ms per frame on the GPU, while the CPU part of the profiler shows that what takes time is UpdateSceneIfNeeded -> GFX.WaitForPresent function (I suppose that it's waiting for the GPU to finish rendering), but it seems it doesn't help Unity team to understand what's going on with my machine.

Is there anyone else with this problem and what's your computer's specs ?

 

I had a similar problem. And looks like I found solution (at least in my case).

In my case the reason of low performance in scene view was QualityLevel that was selected by default. In Unity 4.6 default quality level was "Good" and in this case all works smooth. In Unity 5 it became a "Fantastic", that made scene view quite slow with my hardware. Switching quality level back to "Good" in Project->QualitySettings restored performance to suitable level.

My specs is: i5-4670 @ 3.40GHz, 16Gb RAM, HD Graphics 4600 (internal).

"Fantastic" level sets up antialiasing to 2x-MutiSampling that probably was too much for my internal video.
Try to check your Quality Settings, may be you have the same issue.

Update:
By the way, I tried to set quality level to "Fantastic" in Unity 4.6, and it reduced performance of scene view almost to same level that brought me to this thread.

 

Thanks for your answer. I ran some test but in my case, Unity 4.6's scene view runs perfectly smooth with Fantastic Settings. But you are right, Unity 5's scene view seems to run smooth on "Good" quality settings (or on Fantastic settings with Shadow Resolution set to Medium resolution and no AA). But in the meantime Unity 5's game view runs at 500+ fps even on Fantastic settings with 8x AA when the scene view runs at maybe 0.5 fps with the same settings.

 

Yes, I've seen that game view is less depends of Quality Settings. I dont sure why. May be Scene View have diffrent camera settings and renders more objects...
By the way, one more interesting observation: today I tryed Unity 5 with Fantastic quality settings on a slightly older computer (i5-2500 @ 4.0GHz, 8 Gb RAM, HD4000), and I was surprised because it has much better performance in scene view, it almost comfortable to use. So this performance issue still remains a mistery. It surely lies somewhere in graphics and depends of hardware but how exactly is a question. If you have some ideas what else we could clarify I could make some tests on these two PCs.

 

Ok, I'll try to describe my patterns.

I tryed Unity 5b9 and b12 on two PCs:
PC1 - i5-4670 @ 3.40GHz, 16Gb RAM, HD Graphics 4600, Windows 7 x64, DX11 - has noticable freezes
PC2 - i5-2500 @ 4.0GHz, 8Gb RAM, HD Graphics 4000, Windows 7 x64, DX11 - usable
Detailed sysinfos are in attachments: files PC1_dxdiag.txt and PC2_dxdiag.txt.

PC1 has noticeable freezes in scene editor with both betas (near 3-10 fps), PC2 looks usable (about 20 fps or more I think). Measurements are very aproximate, just as I see. To see the problem just create a new empty 3d project and try to resize scene view by dragging border between scene view and some other view (in my case between Scene View and Hierarchy), if problem is present you'll see noticable freezes. Other variants is just rotate view by ALT-LMB or zoom by mouse wheel, but resizing gives more noticable effect. By default when Unity 5b12 creates new project it sets up Fantastic QualitySettings that enables 2x-MultiSampling anti-aliasing, quality shadows etc, so AA and shadows is on. Intel video driver settings are very poor, it just set to balanced performance and using application settings for AA, filtration and SYNC.
Switching QualitySettings to Good (that disables AA and reduces shadows quality) makes PC1 usable too.

Thats all that I can clarify right now. PC1_dxdiag.txt I'll make and attach a little later.

Update: It's interesting, but PC2 don't loose performance even with 8x-MultiSampling AntiAliasing (visually it really enabled).

Update2: Added PC1_DxDiag.txt. Switching AA to 8x at PC1 reduces performance to 0.5-3 fps, disabling AA makes performance usable and even smooth.

 

Sure, if you prompt me how to switch to DX9 mode or if I easily find it myself.

 

Ok, I've found -force-d3d9 and -force-d3d11 keys and tryed DX9 on PC1.

Switching to DX9 makes performance level on PC1 even worse than with DX11. With DX11 disabling of AA in Fantastic quality mode makes performance smooth enough, but with DX9 freezes still noticeable in Good and even Simple quality modes.

Update: Added screenshot of Profiler in DX9 mode (AA x8 selected to maximize the problem)

 

Here is the last infos I added to my case report (still 644333), maybe it can help someone else.

Core 2 quad @ 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, GeForce 8600GTS, windows 7 64 bits, no integrated card on the motherboard

Tested 32 and 64 bits version of the editor, performance are quite the same.

As said before,

- On Unity 4.6b20, the default quality is set to "Good"
- On Unity 5 the default is set to Fantastic

If I set the quality to "good", it's possible to use the editor with correct FPS.

Starting from the "Good" setting I played with the different options :

- The most FPS critical option is Shadow Resolution. High resolution is almost ok, Very high resolution degrades the framerate badly even if no shadow is diplayed on the scene (just a default cube and a directional light)

- The other option that seems to decrease the FPS is the Anti Aliasing (even on 2x multisampling)

When both options are activated the Scene view is almost unusable. When only AA or Very High Resolution shadows, it becomes hard to use but "barely usable".

In play mode even with fantastic settings (but VSync off) I have around 500fps.

With Unity 4.6b20 the scene view runs with very high fps even on Fantastic Settings and manually setting the Shadow Resolution to Very High (default is High for Fantastic) with 8x AA.

 

Sorry for the double post, but just run my tests again in dx9 mode.

- With a big scene view window, dx9 and dx11 are quite close in performance with a small pref improvement in DX9
- With a small scene view windows, dx11 is still unusable when dx9 runs really smooth even with 8xAA and max res shadows.

 

Hi to all again.

I continued Unity 5b12 test in DX9/DX11 modes on PC2 and found that I made mistake in hardware specs posted before. Actually PC2 has HD3000 video chip which doesn't support DX11 thats why Unity writes on window caption "DX11 on DX10 GPU>". So the picture is slightly changed:

• PC1 (i5-4670 @ 3.40GHz, HD4600, 16GB RAM, Windows 7 x64)
  • <DX11> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x8 - unusable (0.5-3 fps)
    
  • <DX11> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x2 - unusable (3-10 fps)
    
  • <DX11> mode, Good Quality, AA disabled - smooth (>20 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x8 - unusable (0.5-3 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x2 - unusable (3-10 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Good Quality, AA disabled - usable (>20 fps, freezes sometimes)
  • <DX9> mode, Simple Quality, AA disabled - usable (>20 fps, freezes very rare)
• PC2 (i5-2500 @ 4.0GHz, HD3000, 8Gb RAM, Windows 7 x64)
  • <DX11 on DX10 GPU> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x8 - usable (>20 fps)
  • <DX11 on DX10 GPU> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x2 - smooth enought (> 20 fps)
  • <DX11 on DX10 GPU> mode, Good Quality, AA disabled - smooth (> 20 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x8 - unusable (1-5 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Fantastc Quality, AA x2 - unusable (1-5 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Good Quality, AA disabled - smooth (>20 fps)
  • <DX9> mode, Simple Quality, AA disabled - smooth (>20 fps)

FPS values are very aproximate, possible they have to be doubled.

Looks like in my case PC that uses emulation of DX11 works faster than PC that uses DX11 itself.