HD RP vs Built-In Pipeline Performance comparison

Of course I don't expect HDRP to just by default be perfect and render everything faster, it's not magic. I do get that with builtin things would not be easy and performance would need a lot of work. With the current HDRP and what BOTD showed us, we naively thought that we could go for 60fps and HDRP features on PS4.
HDRP 5.x seems to have Switch in mind (from what I read in the changelogs).

Just a small correction to what you are thinking, yes we may have wrongly configured HDRP hence the bad framerate but I suspect that even with the perfect configuration and usage, it would not give us enough time for everything else (gameplay, UI, network, etc.). Again, it's only temporary and it will, at some point, work for this kind of use case.

 

I'm pretty sure BOTD was always shown to run at 30 fps?

 

Yes, I did not said it wasn't, like I said, we just thought that it could be used for a 60fps PS4 game now since it's been a few months since BOTD.

I did not post in that forum yet, I still want to run more tests to maybe pinpoint the reason why it's so slow. Just like you said, I don't want to join the ignorant group by saying that I can't prove with facts. I should find time to do these tests in January. My dream project would be a simple scene with some basic values for lighting and everything, latest HDRP in a release build PS4 which would output useful information about performances. That may help the Unity team to improve the HDRP package and / or help me better configure future projects.

 

Do not forget that the scriptable render pipeline only works with HDRP/LWRP, with it alot of specialized optimization can be done that can not be done under the classic pipeline

 

2018.3.6.f1 HD pipeline 4.6

 

All rendering passes are turned off on hd pipeline
GTX 550 ti
Unity 2018.3.6f1
PC
Ultra preset on Built In
Deferred rendering on Both
SRP Batcher is On ..




Lights On


Lights Off

 

Hi, I'm new to Unity, I saw this topic and I wanted to ask this question at a distance, I tested the default example both in the 3D template with Extras, and with the HDRP template at 1920x1080. I made a build of both using FPS_Counter, and I also noticed a difference of about 100 FPS more in the classic pipeline. Then did anyone understand if this gap could be reduced or are the advanced features of HDRP to reduce performance? Thank you. Attached the screenshots

 

This is because HDRP is an AAA renderer - it does all the heavy lifting up front so it can maintain that framerate long after builtin has died... does that make sense? it does a lot of caching and work up front in the frame.

HDRP does a hell of a lot more work so you can throw the kitchen sink at it and expect stable fps.

 

First of all, thanks for the answer, the doubt came to me because even with the same conditions, the classic rendering is more than twice as fast. so you can deduce that if you are satisfied with the graphics in general of the classic pipeline go to that one, otherwise if you want to do something even more realistic go to the HDRP. The fact in my opinion is that there is too much performance gap between the two in the face of a significant graphic difference, but maybe there will be further optimizations, is that correct?

 

I'd like to see a comparison between builtin + Deckard and HDRP in terms of realism.

 

How are the performances with Deckard, do you know them?

 

Deckard is a temporal & spacial super sampler designed to get similar AA, DoF and motion blur as offline renderers (aka non-real-time renderer) ... because it is in effect an offline renderer. It can take multiple seconds per frame if you want it to. Also, you can use it with HDRP.

 

Ah, i saw Deckard, is more for cinematographic rendering actually!

 

thanks!!

 

HDRP is designed by people who did Frostbite and Destiny's rendering. It follows a similar pattern: you get all the AAA features but you have to stop thinking like a hobbyist and start thinking like AAA developers do by viewing the problem mostly as "how do I reduce bandwidth"? because bandwidth is the main limiting factor.

With builtin, for a simple scene, the bandwidth requirements for builtin are very low by default. But when you add more lights and geo and post effects to builtin, it will get stomped by HDRP's performance because the heavy work HDRP does up front is designed to make bandwidth cost much less once it is under a real load in a real project.

Here's some made up numbers to give you an idea if the scaling, I'll use fps as a guide so it's relate-able (we really should use millisecs):

Prototype boxes
HDRP 200fps
Built-in 600fps

2.5D platformer
HDRP 200fps
Builtin 400fps

Next gen FPS with all post effects with VFX compute and shadergraph:
HDRP 100fps
Builtin 20fps (or not able to work at all due to pipeline limitations)

See? once you cross a certain threshold, HDRP keeps on going - for real world jobs, not little experiments. Also if you know how millisecs and fps really work, you'll see FPS as a guide is misleading you badly. It's not linear!

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...hey_Said_Numbers_Dont_Lie_They_Were_Lying.php

So basically if something is running at 200fps or 300fps, it's hyper meaningless. There's not actually a big performance difference. But the number looks big. When you look at the reality with millisecs though, there's not a big difference.

Also HDRP allows for using raytracing with one click in 2019.3 so there's that.

 

It's like you didn't even read the most recent post in the thread.

 

For me, right now, HDRP is easier to use, has more functionality, looks way nicer, the lighting is more realistic, and experimenting with basic shaders is much more streamlined (all in the box). I'll take it any day over Standard at this point, even if there is a performance hit.

If you need performance, use what is good for you.

 

Alternatively you could remove unneeded functionality from the HDRP. That is the primary purpose of a scriptable render pipeline after all.

 

What does this post have to do with anything?

Edit: oh, they're you're assets. So this is just... uh... spam I guess?

 

Spam removed, and banned from the thread he started. That's what you get for not caring about forum rules at all.

 

I am far from a graphics guru but I agree with Hippocoder's assessment of the new rendering pipeline. It's not about base performance in simple scenes but about how it scales with real-world demands like complex scenes studios are building for current generation titles.

It's like comparing forward vs deferred rendering performance without considering realtime lighting. To measure performance of HDRP vs the built-in render pipeline, which HDRP isn't even finished, in this way is borderline disingenuous. It seems to be designed with scalability and future features in mind and pays a upfront initial cost to achieve this, there are similar tradeoffs in traditional programming when it comes to async/multithreaded code. You must meet a threshold before it becomes beneficial.

I also wanted to post this earlier today when I saw who made this thread. I think people who make rendering and lighting related paid products, which in my opnion may have dubious value since late Unity5/Unity2017, shouldn't be considered unbias reviewers of this drastic new rendering paradigm from Unity. This is coming from someone who absolutely loved Scion post processing back in the day. But I would not really take the opinion of its developer on the Post Processing Stack that effectively replaced it as unbiased.

 

Hardly. Enlighten was an absolute disaster and still is. The free version of Aura still dramatically outdoes it and Aura 2 absolutely tramples all over it. I'm not convinced any future lighting solutions from Unity will be any better or even come close to feature parity.

 

Enlighten was never intended to deliver volumetric lighting, at least that was my impression since the get-go. For baking direct and indirect lighting. Aura was supplemental to Unity3D's lighting system but a good question is if using Aura/Aura2 will have much value in Unity's HDRP now since volumetric lighting is a 1st party supported feature in HDRP.

You can remain unconvinced Unity3D will provide a complete lighting solution because you're right. But you can't really expect me to believe that there is significant value in older products that now have a 1st party supported equivalent in Unity3D for projects that target newer versions of Unity3D, especially HDRP. Scion is a good example of this. Aura eventually will be another good example of this. It's not that either are bad, it's just that overtime new rendering features that these products aimed to fill the gap of seem to eventually make it as a 1st party feature. Which is the point I personally see it losing some of the value.

Why would someone who uses HDRP in Unity2021 use Scion or Aura? They probably won't need to and it's not the fault of those developers. There just isn't a need for 3rd party implementations like that after they have been replaced by 1st party implementations.

It also cannot be denied that Unity3D providing 1st party implementations of some features does hurt the bottom line of the developers who maintain the original 3rd party implementation. I will never change my mind on the opinion that those developers may not have unbias opinions on these newer features or the direction of Unity3D when it intersects with a product they sell.

I also had great experiences with Enlighten and the progressive lightmappers are just continuations of what Enlighten offered Unity3D and I find those to be quite great too. Do either solve the rendering equation for realtime rendering? Obviously not, but they were good tools. The issue with Enlighten I think is people had bake time issues and didn't manage bake resources well so the resulting quality was bad or the bake time was quite long or both.

I honestly though do not understand the comparison between Enlighten and Aura. A GI lightmapping solution vs a volumetric lighting product. They don't really intersect on goals or features.

 

HDRP is still barely battle tested in 2019 and you said Unity 5/2017. You also said " rendering and lighting related paid products."

 

And if you take what I said in complete context I stand by it. Some of the paid products being sold in the asset store related to rendering and lighting have dubious value a year or two after their initial release. Not all of them and I never said all of them which is what the "may" part implies.

I also see limited value in discussing this, I'm not sure this is really going anywhere.

 

Although this thread is a bit dated, for me it is a topic of current importance and I want to share the results of my tests.

In all the examples the MSAA is missing so the quality is not at the top but I was interested in comparing lights and details.

PC Specification: (LAPTOP)
Processor : Intel i7 7700HQ
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
RAM : 16GB DDR4

120 Fps

100 fps


220 fps


In addition, I also tried the HDRP 7.3 of which the results do not differ much but the fps drop dramatically below 80 and the scene consists only of a vehicle, a floor ( plane ) and 2 cubes.

Not to mention the countless problems that are created in all HDRP versions.

I find that the built in standard with some cunning, lighting and shaders ad hoc gives excellent results with much less complications.

 

I've had various issues with shaders not rendering properly with URP 7.2 and above (probably a similar problem with HDRP). So a developer would spend all the time in the world to recreate all their HLSL shaders using shader graph, they have to install a bunch of packages that are constantly being outdated/updated. And now HDRP apparently runs worst than the built in render pipeline? And what's the point? So you could have raytracing with shader graph and a visual effect graph? This is terrible. Unity took 2 steps forward and 10 steps back. They now have worst graphics and features than the competition, and they also made the setup process much worst. You end up with terrible performance and various shader issues.

 

From what I have tried so far I can confirm that HDRP is a mess, and fortunately I have not tried URP but I suppose it is the same disaster!

HDRP certainly has a little bit more detail, but for that little bit more, the question is whether it is really worth complicating life and drastically cutting performance.
Also read this post:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/improving-performance-in-hdrp-7-3-1.878374/

It is not clear what path the Unity Team is taking in this regard, but while Unreal now has consolidated and stable graphics and is currently improving its performance.
Version 5 must be impressive:

Unity is making a lot of confusion and the thing that scares me the most is this:




Unfortunately I have been developing with Unity for over 8 years and I have neither the time nor the desire to start studying another engine but here it seems to me that we are going in the wrong direction ( Small personal outburst ).

For me now the best solution is not to use HDRP.

 

This is my game developed with the built - in and standard shaders in the Unity 2018.4.23f1 LTE:

On my pc it runs well (45 fps) on Ultra quality and the graphic result satisfies me, while with HDRP it dropped below (20 fps) and the graphics obtained are not so better.

 

This is very questionable HDRP is definitely NOT a AAA renderer in it's current state, I can list tons of missing features, let alone incomplete features. Also,next gen engine should be more optimized not less. The orders of magnitude of slow down in HDRP is extremely worrying, and should not be justified by claiming it's doing the heavy work.

 

...Not to mention all the problems that occur while working.
Even in the versions declared well integrated in the editor 7.2 and 7.3 I had many problems and I often had to trash the project and recover it from the backup because despite the verification of all the parameters I was unable to recover it.

At this point the question is:
it worth using HRDP or URP in our projects?

 

@ciorbyn ,
I ran into the same issue as you last year : https://forum.unity.com/threads/huge-performance-hit-with-hdrp-vs-built-in-pipeline.729416/ & https://forum.unity.com/threads/can...e-for-the-most-beautiful.734306/#post-4938338 .

TL/DR : like you, I was astonished by the huge performance hit the HDRP brought, got 0 useful help nor explanation, and felt deceived from the initial announcement stating HDRP would be faster than the built-in renderer ; so eventually, I switched back to the built-in renderer despite liking the HDRP improvements, and never looked back ; the plus is that I feel it's much easier to create custom surface shaders by code than using the shader graph ; the minus is that some of these shaders are already done in HDRP...

 

Browsed the asset store and came across a asset which had demos from all 3 pipelines. Come to think about this thread so tested them out. Of the 3 HDRP gave the lowest FPS, but not only that, it was alot of stutter and microstutter. URP was the one with highest framerate but looked like crap.

3950x and 1080 TI

 

Havent updated in a while, 445.87

 

Could you test with new ones?

 

Then I need to run DDU and stuff. Its not like 445.87 is stone age old

edit: actually only one WHQL driver release after that one

 

u can definitely tell it is amateur game though, hdrp will enhance overall look so is closer to top game engine.

 

There are plenty of games using Standard pipeline that look very good. It's art direction, assets and post processing more than render pipeline.

 

for realistic game u will need facility that only hdrp have, such as scattering and volumetric and tessalted shader etc.

Currently not available in srp and if plugins used it will tank framerate.

Art direction is to talk of highly abstract style - such as flat shading, which is generally not used when comparing top graphic capabilities sir.

 

Sure for that last 2 procent, but you have games on standard pipeline like Escape from Tarkov that looks really good.

You also have shaders like the Uber shader for the standard pipeline that improves look.

You don't just automatically get a good looking game because of HDRP

Edit: art direction is a thing regardles of style

 

EFT the latest build is using hdrp with volumetric plugin. Yes it is true hdrp does not make it suddenly better but with correct knowledge it helps.

For example, please see friend tests in signature (under ray tracing.) She is using 2 nvidia titans RTX in sli, so performance is great, but not for everyone i understand.

 

Art direction is often used to hide shortcomings of engine wars, except when you look at pure technical tests it is a flase positive i feel.

 

You are asserting things that are plainly not true.

 

I think @MDADigital meant that to get the best out of HDRP (or any renderer for that matter) you need to understand how to compose a scene regarding lighting setup and such like.
It’s not just enough to be using HDRP.

Anyone that isn't already capable of setting up a scene to look good in Built-in Renderer, won't magically become good at setting up a scene in HDRP.

Nothing to do with whether you have the hardware power of two graphics cards or not.

 

So now you have to be a graphics expert to get decent graphics quality and have acceptable performance with HDRP and URP. With UE4, I can throw a scene together, setup some post processing, add some material instances, and it runs buttery smooth with no stuttering at all.

How can you people possibly defend Unity this much? With UE4 and every other game engine, you don't need some complex setup and a graphics professional to get a beautiful scene up and running.

Does it take a graphics programmer to add a simple material node editor to Unity? The new render pipeline should have been activated by default, and been 100% backwards compatible with HLSL shaders. This is unacceptable.

 

Just want to chime in my agreement with @ciorbyn. From what I have tested out, HDRP is a confusing mess for me too. The potential benefits for me so far have not outweighed the increased complexity and additional clutter. Not a fan.
Especially not when I'm already getting great results with built-in. Here's some screenshots from my entry for the Neon Challenge done in Unity 2018 with built-in + standard shader.

 

Yeah just to make my own thoughts a bit clearer, the points I raised were in specific disagreement with a statement that suggested it wasn’t possible to make good looking realistic games using Built-In and that some features weren’t possible in Built-In when they clearly are.

I think that to get the very best of any renderer you need to have a certain set of skills to understand scene composition (and I say that as someone that is a complete novice in that area of expertise).
But that wasn’t said to diminish the obvious problems users are facing with the new render pipelines, irrespective of their own experience levels, which I completely understand and agree with.
Which is why I think it's unhelpful when some users are giving false reasons for using HDRP and perhaps sending some newcomers down a path they perhaps don't need to bother with right now, hence my previous responses.

 

On youtube I even found this video which Unity 5.5 is used
As a demonstration that the standard shaders can give a lot of satisfaction.

The video dates back to 4 years ago

 

Just saw this video, great presentation on using HDRP plus a lot of lighting tips in general.

 

I had already seen it but unfortunately the graphic result of Unity's HDRP does not reach the level of realism of other engines, and as mentioned above for the mess that creates between incompatibility of shaders etc ... at the moment it is not convenient to use it.