Feedback Unity 2019.3 Performance Overview

Hi there! I have a huge performance regression from 2019.2.21f to 2019.3.14f(or 4)
My app is totally UI based, so here are results for two dev builds for the same user action.
2019.2

2019.3(or 4)


Also the same for another profiler part
2019.2

2019.3(4)

 

Easiest thing to get this sorted would be to submit a bug-report as described in this document, IF the issue still exists in the latest 2019.4 release:
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.

 

Agree with Peter77 Please file a bug report.

 

This post is almost a year old, and seems the issue haven't been fixed.

I use 2019.4 and tried to build my project on Android.
There's FPS "hiccup" every few second to the point of making the game unplayable on Samsung note FE. Which doesn't happen in unity 2018. The problem even happen on fresh project that only got terrain.

 

Just did it. Case 1267040

 

Hi there!
Thanks for your work @Peter77 !

I had to upgrade from 2019.1.14 to 2019.4.22 LTS for the new input system to work and I think I'm seeing a big performance drop, specifically with 2D physics.
Has that version been tested to some extent?
I haven't really had time to investigate with the upgrade work so I figured I'd ask here.
Given the trend with 2019 I'm trying to figure out which version I should take time to switch to now...

Edit : I skimmed through the other threads, I've seen some data for 2019.4 and checked the Incremental GC was disabled.

 

I upgraded my 2018 2d physics-based project to 2019LTS and now I have max 30FPS. It had stable 60 on 4x weaker phone 3 years ago.

 

Ok, I've done some profiling in the same vein as the original post and in my case it seems to be the EditorLoop that went from almost nothing to 6-12ms with spikes at 16+ ms between 2019.1 and 2019.4.
I recorded no significant variation in 1-second samples of Time.deltaTime averages.



It has definitely degraded the editor experience but I assume the built games will hardly be differentiable.

 

I think the very introduction of the pipeline created a massive drop in overall performance due to the new programmable not hardcoded layer, so there is no turning back to such thing as good performance now, all my tests show clearly that pipelines are much worse (URP) to MASSIVE slower (HDRP) than standard, doing the same things.

HDRP shader for example is a total overkill for things 99% wont be used or be so noticable in a game and is also unoptimized for those things. Most can be programmed with Standard and be much much faster.

So if only we could go back to Unity 2018, Standard Pipeline and improve on that, this would be the real future of Unity, not the bloated meaningless new versions and pipelines.

Indeed, Editor has also a slowdown comparing to previous versions. Script and shader compilation too.

I wish the teams could stop making new versions and focus on optimizing for few years.

 

That's one of the priorities for Unity 2021:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/11/09/the-road-to-2021-the-performance-optimization-team/

 

Thanks for the info, fingers crossed

 

I read the text, seems like they do this as an afterthough, so noone can be sure if things can be optimized much, this should have gone in during the pipelines creation, so now is a 50/50 if can see real improvements. But hopefully can get back close to previous unity versions and standard pipelines massively better performance.

 

I mean we are half way through the 2021 lifecycle and not much has changed?

 

yeah, if we are lucky by October, Unity 2021 will be close to running on your device as fast and Unity 2014 with the same quality settings. Finger crossed! 7 years to go back to the same performance and quality we already had. Wohoooo!

 

I think I already wrote about this, but in my case I saw a decrease of performance going from standard to HDRP.
BUT
A massive performance improvement from standard to URP. It's not measured, but I'm not talking about a 5 or 10% improvement. It's more 50% (of that I'm confident), and maybe even more than 100%. I was all the more impressed because I added more fx / post process with time (when I switched to HDRP, then URP) and I remember measuring my HLSL shaders optimization trying to get some little % improvements with the standard pipeline.
Sometimes, reading through this forum subject, it really looks that Unity has just only regressed performance wise.
I, for one, don't want to go back to the previous situation, I would really have to cut on a lot of things.

 

That's probably because you are using standard shaders which are super slow. Most of us were using the non pbr version in the old days and they are as fast if not fastest as the "new" urp. Basically, URP is doing what the old Unity 4 was already doing by default with the shaders performance-wise.

 

I'm not convinced. If it was just a shader problem that could be dealt with by rewriting the lighting model, I don't see why you could not do it on URP. You could also modify / rewrite the pipeline.
Also, the performance problems I see i this thread seems like very small overhead problems except for projects on mobile phones. I can fully understand how that would be a problem in this case.
I'm not saying that there are no performance problems at some points. I'm just saying that, in my case, (custom shading, custom post processing, etc...), It's much faster with the URP. And also : very happy to have been able to get rid of my custom auto-resizing spot light shadowmap on the standard engine.

 

You can rewrite and redo it and get it to work. The point is that we already had this performance and even faster, several years ago. A project you wrote in 2010 that ran super fast on mobile, would need a full rewrite for the current version of unity just to achieve similar performance. That's the issue. And I know for sure because my game was released with Unity in an iphone 3gs over a decade ago and it's running now at the same framerate as in 2010 but with a phone that is orders of magnitude more powerful. If performance in Unity had just stayed as before, my game should be running now so fast on the latest iPhone that I could improve the quality drastically. And that's not the case. I literally need to turn down quality on an iphone X to run the same things I was running on a iphone 4! Same game. Same stuff. Only difference is that back then Unity 3/4 ran FAST. Nowadays Unity 2021 compiled games need much more power to achieve the same.

 

could you share your benchmark scene on github for example? and if possible apk for each unity version

 

That is exactly what i was afraid of, that the crazy huge delays and slow editor comparing to older Unity versions may also translate to actually be a slower overall core than just the editor.

And is going to the worse for sure, Unity 2018 was a breeze to work with, 2019 a lot slower but still passable, 2020-21 are like comparing a cheetah to a sloth, slowdowns everywhere, hangs, forever stops of editor with some progress bar that can stay for any amount of time etc

And all that for about the same editor and rendering, frankly i dont see anything better in URP or HDRP than what i could do with good shader work in standard in Unity 2018, it is like same but a vastly more times slower in every way. Image effects in URP also seem way slower than in standard etc

Generally every year we see a vast downgrade of Unity and is going exponentially worse. What is needed now is stop any, even the slightest, new feature and focus on regressions to get back to the previous performance. I would still suggest do away with the pipelines if still possible, as they really bring a huge overhead and there is zero point to them imo.