Huge FPS drops from 60FPS ARMv7 to 25/30 FPS ARM64 - Unity 2017.4.20

Hello guys,

We've build our game so far with ARMv7 on Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the FPS is solid 60FPS.
After that we've tested to create a build with ARM64 architecture and the FPS drops from 60 to 25 FPS.
It's not fixed 25 it's playing/spiking from 60FPS to 25FPS.
version: Unity 2017.4.20

Anyone knows what is the issue with that? In Unity blog posts it says that ARM64 will boost the performance not huge decrease it.

 

Are you using Vulkan?

 

Nope it happens on GLES3.0, GLES2.0 even in Vulkan. Tested all of them.
However if i turn on the 32 ARMv7 build. FPS is fine.

 

Did you switch from Mono to IL2CPP at the same time, or were you already using IL2CPP for the 32-bit build?

 

I'm using IL2CPP for the 32bit and 64bit.

 

Did you check what is eating up the FPS with the profiler?

Is it CPU or GPU?

Try to use a lower resolution (using Screen.SetResolution or "Player settings" => "Resolution Scaling Mode" with a low FixedDPI, something like 180) and check if that boost your FPS, if so then probably the GPU is working hard.

If it doesn't boost the FPS it sometimes means that the CPU is working hard and you should check if some code should be optimized (memory allocation in Update method maybe?) or some plugin is causing the problem.

Good luck.

 

I have the same issue with my game. FPS in ARMv64 build drop too low, I think it is CPU problem.

 

If you're able to reproduce that it runs slow on ARMv64, but fast on ARMv7, could you please submit a bug-report as described in this document:
https://unity3d.com/unity/qa/bug-reporting

It's important that you report these issues together with a reproduction project if you want them to get fixed. If you don't do it, it might be a long time until someone else reports them or until Unity Technologies find them.

After you submitted the bug-report, you receive a confirmation email with a bug-report Case number. Please post the Case number (number only, not the link) in this forum thread for Unity staff to pick up.

 

Hello, we are experiencing the same issue. We made the arm64 build for our 2 games (2D and 3D). The game get super slow only on 64 bit devices.
And we have just found that these devices have 64 bit chip but running 32 bit OS (not sure for all of them).

Our games that support 64bit device:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.divmob.eternitylegends.leagueofgods

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.divmob.heroesinfinity

 

As mentioned earlier, please submit a bug-report if you want the issue to get fixed:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/hug...ps-arm64-unity-2017-4-20.682018/#post-4712507

Only posting in the forum, without a project to reproduce the issue, will most likely not lead to a fix.

 

After many test, we found that build il2cpp 32bit (we tried to build il2cpp 32bit and 64bit separately) is very lag and easy to crash.

 

Does anybody found a solution?

 

I had the similar problem and the reason was Debug.Log. This doesn't to affect performance much for the ARM7, but for the ARM64 the impact is just huge.

 

I'm experiencing an slowdown in 64bit build compared to the same 32bit build, and my devices are also Huawei (tested both on Huawei P10 lite with a kirin CPU and a G8 huawei with Snapdragon CPU)

 

I tried profiling the 32bit and 64bit builds and comparing them using profile analyzer.
I see about 40 miliseconds spent on Semaphore.WaitForSignal every single frame in the 64bit build, while the 32bit build spends nothing on it.
This happens on the dispatcher thread.
Any solution?

 

I have a similar problem: I use Unity 2019.2.6, it works well with Mono build, but laggy with IL2CPP 64-bit build(ARMv7 and ARM64). Then I found that IL2CPP 64-bit lag happens on some devices, the other work fine.

I used Firebase Test Lab to test my IL2CPP 64-bit apk, and I got the following result:

1. Samsung Galaxy S3(API level 18): Laggy
2. Pixel 2(API level 28): Normal
3. Razer Phone(API level 25): Normal

It is also laggy on my old phone Samsung Galaxy S2 with IL2CPP, the game almost freezed with 64-bit while it had roughly 40 FPS with 32-bit running. I don't think the problem is from the optimization of my game, because it couldn't explain why it runs well with 32-bit build and has huge lag with 64-bit build on the same phone.

Still, I can't make a conclusion saying that latest devices do not have this issue, because I borrowed a Nvidia tablet with Android 7.0 to test, it had less than 15 FPS, completely unplayable. Hopefully I will find the reason after testing more devices.

 

Hi Tomas1856, I already did that since the beginning of the development. I knew that it will produce extra overhead, no matter which ARM is. I turned it off on both Android and iOS. The lag issue still exists. The apk I tested is a release version, so I won't put console log anywhere.



Also I did another Firebase testing, I got the following result:

1. Pixel 3(API level 28): Very smooth
2. LG G3(API level 19): Normal
3. HTC U11(API level 26): Normal

I still have no clue, this time all these 3 devices run smoothly. Some devices have this issue, some don't have. I have never seen this lag with Mono build, but for IL2CPP 64-bit build, it probably happens, depending on which device.

And I'd like to describe the lag a little more: It doesn't look like the lag of unoptimized rendering, it is laggy even when I turn the camera facing to an empty place(no 3d objects except for a flat plane, and a skybox).

If you have any solution, please let me know.

 

I continue testing different devices using Firebase Test Lab:

1. Nexus 7 2013(API level 19): Normal
2. Samsung Galaxy S3(API level 18): Frame rates are fine, but the graphics look like in X-ray
3. Galaxy S7 edge(API level 23): Normal
4. Galaxy Note 9 USA(API level 27): Normal
5. Huawei Mate 9(API level 24): Normal
6. Moto X(API level 19): Didn't reach 60 FPS, but basically worked fine
7. LG K4(API level 23): Supper laggy
8. Nexus 5(API level 21): A little bit laggy
9. Galaxy Note 3 Duos(API level 19): Abnormally flashing, including UI and 3D objects

I would say that this problem isn't related to API level. A high API level cannot guarantee it is error-free. I believe that IL2CPP 64-bit build is still not as stable as Mono build.

 

Hey everyone. We've been experiencing the same issue with Unity 2018.4, 2019.1 and 2019.2. The performance issue seems to happen only on Android ARM64 IL2CPP builds. ARMv7 IL2CPP performs absolutely fine, but because of the Google Play 64-bit requirement we can't fall back to using 32-bit builds only. We have created a bug ticket for this issue on which can be found here.

From what we can tell this is a known issue and has been fixed in Unity 2017.4 according to this ticket, but the fix has not been ported to Unity 2018 and above. At this point we can not downgrade to Unity 2017, so we're kinda stuck with bad performance on select few devices. For us, the issue seems to come from Physics.Processing creating enormous spikes several times per second which makes for a very poor gameplay experience.

Hopefully the issue can be resolved soon because we're receiving a lot of complaints regarding performance since we pushed out our ARM64 builds.

 

Can anyone else confirm this issue is only reproducible in Unity 2018/2019 and not the latest versions of 2017 LTS? As the subject of this issue notes, it appears that it was an issue in earlier 2017 versions (2017.4.20). It looks like from the ticket mentioned (1120019), it was fixed in 2017.4.0, which indicates that we may be talking about multiple ARM64 bugs.

 

We haven't tested on Unity 2017.4 so I can't say for certain if it suffers from the same bug or not. It seems a new ticket has opened up on the Unity issue tracker (check it out here) which indicates the issue was also found in Unity 2017.4 (assuming it's the same bug). The ticket is currently active, hopefully it'll be resolved soon.

 

I have the same issue with my game. FPS in ARMv64 build drop too low, But fine in Armv7 .
Edit : just found a temporary solution , disable all Debug.Log messages so now fps same on both architectures .

 

Yah that's issue i think .

 

Interesting stuff, I am seeing similar behavior, going to test some things out now.

 

I have same issue, 2019.2 arm64 laggy, sometimes crashing and looks not convenient

 

Disabling Stack Trace Logging Fix my Problem. Thanks

 

Im Working with Hololens the problem is that builds on Hololens 1 works perfectly, yet builds for Hololens2 require ARM architecture and disabling a stacktrace doesn't help. Does anyone found any other solutions?

 

Yes hololens is Windows only, and it is build On UniversalWindowsPlatform with il2cpp.
Hololens 1 requires your build to be x86 or x64
Hololens 2 requires build to be ARM or ARM64
And we have a dramatic frame drop. When debug stack is enabled single error crashes whole app when it tries to output a stacktrace(so disabling it gave us a slight boost). From stable 60 -58 fps we went to 50-25 fps. By my guess the problem lies in processor architecture.
I already did perform a downgrade from 2019 to 2018.4.10 LTS (it was quiet hard). That gave us some improvements yet we still cant reach 60 fps

 

Thanks then I'll try to dig this thing on my own

 

This problem is still valid in 2019.3.6f1. When I change scripting backend from Mono to IL2CPP 64 bit, without changing anything else, the fps drops from 40 to 10. Stacktrace debugs are off. Profiler results are _relatively_ the same: meaning the same methods take most time in both builds, but in 64 bit build everything takes about 4 * more time.

 

Anyone manage to solve the problem? I've updated to 2019.3.4 but FPS still bad on 64bit build.

 

I just realized that the issue is not only with 64 bit, but also 32 bit IL2CPP build suffers from the significantly lower performance. Only Mono build runs as expected.

 

I am also troubled by this problem Does anyone have a better solution?

 

Lets open a bug report together and vote on it?

 

Same here, after updating project to 2019.3.5f from 2019.2.6f we had 50% fps drop on android. Mono windows did not suffer any fps drop.
Settings we use are ARMv7/ARM64 IL2CPP. Disabled all stacktrace except errors.
We did try to use different GPU APIs. Did not help. Il update you, if i find something important.

 

I have a similar issue on 2019.3.14. The game runs fast on my Sony Z1 (ARMv7) and slow on Samsung Galaxy J7 and Huawei P Smart (both ARM 64). But the thing is whether I build Mono or IL2CPP the result is the same. Also I have noticed they both have Mali-T830 GPU.
I'm using 2D Lights but I don't think that is the problem.
Did anyone find a solution? I disabled Stack Trace options and also OpenGLES2 solution did not work.

 

I had this problem on Huawei P10 Lite with the same GPU
But also on Huawei G8, with Adreno 405 GPU

 

We're still experiencing this issue in Unity 2019.4.5f1 using an ARM64 IL2CPP build. Testing on an Samsung Galaxy S7 gives us buttery smooth 60fps but testing on an Huawei Mate 20 Lite yields 25 fps. However, when we do a Mono build we achieve 60fps on both devices. Since Mono only supports 32-bits it is not an option for us due to the Google Play Store 64-bit requirement so we hope this gets picked up soon.

 

any fix?

 

Have you guys fixed it yet? What did you do?

 

We have the same issue. Any updates?

 

Application.targetFrameRate = 60

 

Same here ! Strange how it isn't fixed yet after all these years -_- Especially when 64 bit is now essential to Release on Google Play !

 

I got huge improvements on Galaxy A20S while doing it:

* Avoid ANY garbage generation on Update, LateUpdate, FixedUpdate, OnTriggerStay or any other function that repeats a lot. Garbage generated via temporary objects or strings seems to be waaay worse on 64-bit for Android with this problematic il2cpp/native code.

* Avoid ANY try... catch blocks on the same Update functions (it's ok using them on loading, not during normal gameplays). My project has mods created by users, so I was using a lot of try... catch inside Update functions. That's really bad! I got rid of many of them and the 64-bit performance got way better. If you are not sure if some object exists or not, make more comparisons with ==null instead of relying on catch... when possible.

* At Player Settings - Logging, set everything to None (you may do it through code if you need to enable those items at runtime for some parts of your game).

This problem seems to be with something on Unity or on the System, since it does not happen with the same intensity on all devices. But it may affect many popular devices out there. On some devices the game became just unplayable at 4, 3fps... It's hard to debug if it does not happen on your device. My team tested a lot on Galaxy S8, S9, S10, S20, J7 Prime, Moto G5, G5S, G6... and could not reproduce it properly. So I bought some devices that users reported: Moto G6 Play or Plus, Galaxy A20S... And voila: the bad performance was there!

Unfortunately since the last year I had to process many refunds and bad reviews due to this problematic update. My game went from 30~60 fps to 3~11 on many popular devices. It should never happen! Google should allow a more flexible time for 32-bit apps until il2cpp become more stable, since Unity is one of the most famous engines used by thousands of popular games... We were forced to use an unstable software in production, something really not great for companies of that size...

Garbage generation and the try... catch seems to be a lot slower on 64-bit Android builds. I'm refactoring many parts of my code and now the game runs better. Not as good as 32-bit Mono builds, but much better than 64-bit builds before.

 

I was able to fix the issue by turning on Incremental Garbage Collection.

Reference: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/11/26/feature-preview-incremental-garbage-collection/