Gfx.WaitForPresent

I'm on Windows 7 Pro and I have the WaitForPresent issue. The spikes are visible on the device too though. I'm going to try Cryztalfox advice. I hope it affects the builds as well.

 

Has anybody found an answer yet?!

 

Cryztalfox's solution did NOT entirely get rid of the viewport stuttering. Even if it did, I need some DX features for my project so switching to OpenGL is not an option for me.

This is really a nasty bug that needs to be fixed urgently!

 

As LaneFox pointed out, it is not an innocent value. It is using 89% of my CPU and my fps is down to 33fps, I only have 3000 objects, basic shaders (all are being batch drawn) I have shadows disabled. There is no reason to be hitting that low of an fps just loading and moving a few thousand cubes.

I really don't like having to use a work around. Feels like I will run into issues on other systems. I hope they fix this soon.

Edit: I was just testing something. Seems I only get it when the camera is in Orthographic. The second I switch to perspective, my fps flys up to normal. I am curious as to how many other people are using ortho, or if they are getting this with persp cameras as well?

 

IN OpenGL i look win 50ms only ! but gfx stay here

 

I've found a solution to the problem that doesn't require any sacrifices to your project.
The problem appears to be centered around Unity 4.3 compatibility with Windows 8.

I switched Unity to run in compatibility mode with Windows XP and it completely eliminated the GFX.WaitForPreset call without any negative impacts on the project.

 

thank's i just try and i stay here with overhead !

 

Just make a quick test here. With shadows enabled, Gfx.WaitForPreset goes to 60%, 70%.
With no shadows , 0%.

 

That worked for me!

 

I am also experiencing this problem after updating my Unity to the latest version.

There were no changes made to my project between updating Unity, yet when I run my game it is unplayable due to the same reasons these dozens of people have pointed out.

 

confirm. if i start unity3d in winXp mode, the problem is gone forever!

 

I'm not totally convinced this is a bug as I too am (or was) having this problem on a 8.1 / ARM device (mobile) and yet could not figure out why I would get between 30-15fps for basically nothing in my unity project (running remote debug with an actual device).

but what I CAN say for sure, is that 8.1 seems to be v-sync locked on this particular device, so setting vsync does absolutely nothing in the game.. you just can't change it on the device (at all).

the other deal is just poorly optimized shaders for DirectX 11 and/or super crappy drivers for ARM and w8... to much stuff happening in the fragment portion of it... seems like anything above 21 ALU "kills" the GPU on these win 8/8.1 mobile devices. so you really have to be conservative with the shaders... combine as much as possible into single textures, single meshes.. no post effects, no or at MOST one light source, no shadows (or extremely limited one hard shadow), limit your physics, limit your particles. post effects absolutely destroys frame rate.


now with all that said, since we can actually debug remote graphics now for ARM/Win 8.1.... and capture vert/frag operations, as well as mega details for reach draw call and a timeline... :

(the following is a timeline capture of the drawcall(s) sequence for one frame, 8 draw calls, ~60fps)

Code (csharp):

1.  

as you can see... quite a few cycles just "waiting" for vblank... nothing we can do about it apparently.


there is really not a lot of difference in that drawcall timeline between a scene optimized for 60fps and one that runs at 30 or 15fps with poorly optimized shaders, are just too much crap going on.

 

so if i understand you it's comming from shader maybie

 

more than likely yes... doesn't mean it was poorly written, it could just be trying to do too much or use operations that are notoriously slow for mobile GPUs.

 

yes i use skyshop rendering and get gfxaitForPresent only after install Windows 8

 

I have this bug on windows 7. Vsync is off on the project. It happens both in-editor and in-standalone

 

After trying the "Windows XP compatibility mode", i was about to type "yess, it works!". But no. It doesn't.
The profiler is fine, no gfx.waitforpresent peaks, but the framerate is dropped. So, the xp compatibility mode, only hide the gfx.waitforpresent messages on profiler (really don't know why).

Closing and reopening Unity does not solve.

Rebooting windows do solve.

My project is running at 7/800 fps but when the gfx.waitforpresent thing comes on (randomly) i got 130 fps.

 

Can a Unity developer please tell us what Gfx.WaitForPresent is and why it is hogging so much resources now compared to 4.2?

 

it most likely reflects a GPU bound problem... as the CPU is literally "waiting" for something.. either vsync, or the GPU to process something. It could be many different things... each of those things I listed in the third paragraph of my earlier post could be the issue, or a combination there-of.

 

Hi,

Here i have attached the image. In this image my scripting and other stuff taking the small amount of memory but this Gfx.WaitforPresent taking the 85% of the space because of this only my frame rate getting low.

I have checked the scripting,Rendering, Garbage collector, vsync everything coming fine. But this gfx only giving the problem.


Have any idea about this?..

 

Please visit my Thread over here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/248465-BIG-Android-Performance-Drop-with-4-5


It seems that "Script Debuging" is a little buggy itself with 4.5 (at least when you developing for mobile I think)

 

Even i have disable the vsync and i changed my camera to vertexlit from forward rendering. even though i am getting this problem.

 

Are you developing for mobile?

Did you try to disable script debugging in the build settings?

 

yes, i am developing for a android mobile platform.

I have unchecked the script debugging, even-though it is coming.

Have you got any idea about why it is coming?

 

Please try to complie a complete empty scene....with only:

- One Camera (Clear Flags: Solid Color)
- Disabled Gui-Layer
- Disabled Flare-Layer

- NO Scripts in the Scene
- NO other Objects in the scene

Try and run this on your android device and then lets see what the profiler is teeling you. Moreover try to disable these in the Build Settings:

- Multithreaded Rendering
- Enable Internal Profiler
- Use 24-bit Depth Buffer

EDIT: If you now get some acceptable FPS then you need to:
-> load your game scene, disable every gameObject except your camera
-> Test the FPS
-> If everything is okay....enable one gameObject
-> Test again
-> If evrything is still okay....enable another gameObject
-> And so on..

If you enable one GO and immediately get FPS drops while testing then you know this object is causing the FPS-Drop.
This is the way I try to find the "bad guys"...its rather time-consuming but it works most of the time.

 

thanks for your idea. let me try this

 

i have tried to compile the empty scene with camera and fps count script. i compile it to my unity editor, i played the scene and i saw the profiler the gfx.waitforpresent took the 5.6ms. It was the empty scene eventhough it is taking the more than 90%.

I uncheck the camera flare and in build setting i uncheck the optimizemesh data, static batching, dynamic batching, enable internal profiler.

tell me why its taking the so much timing for this?

 

i don't know why none of unity developers found this a real issue..

testing a sample project on my old Galaxy Nexus, GFX.WaitForPresent took 50+% of resources...
made the game from being 50-55 fps to around 15fps !! turned the game to unplayable literally!

i dunno what GFX.WaitForPresent role is, but whatever it is, am sure its Not more important than making the game playable!?..

 

then what the reason for getting down the performance in the scene?

 

sorry i didn't get your question.. what i was saying that gfx.etc was consuming resources thus dropping fps around 15 fps...

 

i have a scene when i run it on the editor it showing the above 50 fps count. But when i exported as a apk and run it on my device the fps rate is getting damage it showing only upto 10fps and lot of lag.

What is the reason for getting fps down in the device?

 

try connecting your phone to pc then connecting profiler to see what's happening in your device while running the game... no one can answer you without showing an image of profiling your game in mobile..

 

Having this issue too, even though I just updated to Unity 4.5. I am using Windows 7 and not developing for Mobile.
Running this on an Intel Xeon E5-2609 Quadcore CPU with 12GB RAM and a 760 GTX installed.

To start with, opening the Profiler window to try and optimize Performance drops the FPS I am getting in the Editor considerably and checking to see what might be the cause I also get the dreaded "Gfx.WaitForPresent" in the Overview:


Tried turning off VSync and that didn't help. Even Running it at "Fastest" Quality Setting with Shadows disabled and Low Resolution with AA/AF disabled and Half Res Textures seems to still produce this to a lesser extent.

 

I also am having this issue... Nothing seems to fix it..

 

Anyone got any info on that?

 

I encountered this issue on Mac OSX 10.9.3, though its behavior seems to depend on which monitor the game is running on.


In this image, the left half is running on an Acer AL2216W, and the right half is running on an AOC 2269W. Both are connected via DVI to the same 780ti and both are running at 60 Hz. I don't have to restart the game for this to happen - simply running it in windowed mode and dragging from one monitor to the other will change the behavior.

Not only does this seem to be limiting the frame rate of the game, but it also makes it really difficult to profile the other items as their sections of the graph get shrunk down so much.

 

Interesting find, this issue has prevented us from upgrading for the time being.

To my knowledge, you can uncheck the coloured box next to the usage group to stop it displaying in the profiler.

 

Wow... not sure how I never bothered to try that before. Thanks =-)

 

Not sure if this is at all related, but every time I have a Gfx.WaitForPresent event in my profiler, my Memory graph shows my mesh count jumping from 50 to 130 (nothing going on in the scene), and my active rigidbodies in Physics going from 2 to 0 (they go to sleep)...

These events happen at exact regular intervals, in my case spread out approximately 20 something frames.

These events look very precisely controlled in the graphs for Physics and Memory, but the number of ms that Gfx.WaitForPresent takes in my CPU varies greatly. Sometimes it's an unnoticable spike (4%), sometimes its 98%.

I never noticed this before upgrading to the Pro Trial, but I am currently using unity 4.3 on Windows 7... and this is all coming from running the profiler in the editor with the game running in the editor.

 

It would be nice to get some input from Unity.

However I've noticed in many of the profiler screenshots shown on this page that the GPU usage is pretty high. For example 'schetty' has 21 ms on the GPU alone, that is at best that is 47 frames per second, add on the 5ms or so I can see in the cpu (ignoring waitForPresent) and that takes it down to 38 fps. Now if vsync is active or if the device is snc'd to the fresh rate the gfx.waitForpresent is most likely to be showing the time that frame had to wait for the next sync.

Many people have mentioned Android, as far as i'm aware those devices are locked to 60 fps, meaning enabling/disabling v-sync will have no effect, thus if you project can't reliably hit 60 fps or more on those devices then you will get waits for the next v-blank.

Its difficult to be sure since many people posting here have very different projects and may be encountering a number of different issues, but for my money this is definitely something to do with the cpu simply waiting for the gpu to become free or for the v-blank.

No, not related. In the editor you'll get these regular jumps every time the editor updates. I can't remember off-hand if its something specific, like having the stats window open, or even if its something in the profiler itself. Should be easy to confirm just profile from a standalone build.

 

Just updated to 4.5.2f1. Same problem. Randomly happens. I cannot optimize a !$£/%%£!=)( anything because i got 43 fps once, and 470 after a few Unity restart. F**K.

 

I haven't tested this yet as I have never profiled a standalone build and will look into that, but just to throw this out there, I diminished its impact by 99% by tunneling all of my OnGUI calls into one main OnGUI, which decreased the amount of garbage collecting my GUI calls were making, which ultimately means less strain on both the CPU and GPU... so you're probably onto something, but I have to say that these spikes occured when my machine was capable of running 140FPS, with a WaitForFPS script locking it to 60... so it's not definitive of "your graphics card can't handle it" and may still infact be a bug... because my graphics card was far from maxed out, with the closest spike not relating to gfx.waitforpresent(which was spiking to 98ms) coming in at a whopping 6ms total. (on the GPU)

 

Hello guys,

same problem here, in my case it's happened in random situations (particles, GUI panels, etc...) but I think I found a solution.

I used the old technique of erasing everything on the project except the Assets folder. Analyzing the problem more closely (kicks) I fixed the project without having to remove the following files:

ProjectSettings / EditorBuildSettings.asset
ProjectSettings / EditorSettings.asset
ProjectSettings / TagManager.asset <--- I really need this in my project.

The Unity asked me if I wanted to upgrade the project ... yes.

It worked for me.

I BELIEVE the problem is in ProjectSettings / ProjectSettings.asset file, not sure.

*MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE TRY THIS!

 

Its not a question of your graphics card being maxed out, though that is a good way to get this issue, its about the gpu being busy and the cpu having to wait before it can continue to the next frame.

For example a project I currently have open the profiler tells me that the cpu is taking 1.39ms, but the GPU is taking 1.59 ms. Clearly the cpu is finishing before the gpu can be ready for the next frame and thus gfx.waitForPresent appears. At least that's my understanding of it and makes sense in terms of the profiler term being used 'waitForPresent'.

Of course I could be completely wrong, just like everyone else in this thread. Such a shame that we can't get a Unity dev in here to give us a definitive answer.

I'm also sceptical of many of the 'solutions' posted here, because none provide any reasoning or information as to 'why' their fix works. That leads me to believe that they are simply fixing an unrelated issue that itself impacted on the cpu/gpu timing. Other solutions suggest that there may be some specific hardware issues, but generally I think people are misinterpreting the data they are seeing. Its not that gfx,waitForPresent is adding time, its just the time it has to wait before it can start sending data to the gpu again, which can happen for a variety of reasons, v-sync, maxed out gpu, gpu taking more time than cpu per frame etc.

 

Ah, that all sounds very reasonable... doesn't explain why my GPU time was 6ms and waitforpresent was 98ms though.. and the disparity seems apparent in other cases in this thread as well where the math doesn't add up

 

Hmm, not seen something that extreme, especially if the gpu isn't taking much time itself. Guess there must be more to gfx.waitforpresent than I figured. I've brought this thread to the attention of Brett (bibbinator) hopefully he will be able to get some official posts on the matter in her soon.

 

Hi im having exactly the same issue on 4.5.4 f1 and Vsync is off ofc.
Im on win 7 on win 8.1 everything is fine.
Its been couple of months any news on fixes?

This destroys my work.. is this a joke? Why its not fixed yet?

 

I've had this happen off and on but I still can't figure out exactly what triggers it. Tonight I had it crop up again, spent a good chunk of time trying to find the culprit, and literally closing an editor window made it go away. It never ever seems to be the same thing that fixes it but I'll still assume user error until I can't get out of the problem using testing and backups.

Make sure all your windows (especially scene or any custom stuff like playmaker ect) are closed before profiling the issue. If no dice, try to start Unity in a fresh project and check your scene(s) in pieces.

If this doesn't help, a fresh project with selective importing to nail down the issue then figure out the route from there. Best of luck.

 

exactly. Its just random bug i guess. Buying new pc solved it.
Just kidding i restarted and it fixed itself, it's just that you get so sure you can debug stuff that when you actually cant
you start panicking.