Updating the position of enemy hp bar every turn?

Would it be better to check if the hp bar needs to be updated before updating it or should I just update the hp bar positions every frame without checking? Which option is best for performance? I'm making a very fast paced game and the health bar changes position about 3/4 of the updates and 1/4 it doesn't need to be updated. Is this meaningless optimization?

 

I dont think this matters. The screen is going to redraw it's self every frame anyways. Changing a value from 15% to 14% is not going to affect performance at all. The engine is still going to draw it.

 

Thank you a lot.

 

If you're talking about the UI, the cost will not quite be zero, maybe: If nothing at all changes in the Canvas, it's smart enough to not rebuild its mesh. However, if any UI element moves, they're all rebuilt. But even so, this is a tiny, tiny cost, and I'd be shocked if it ever caused a measurable difference.

Ultimately, this is definitely a case a "premature optimization". Don't worry about such small details until you have run the profiler and determined that A) they are a problem, and B) to what extent they are a problem. If you optimize before profiling, you'll never know whether your optimization was needed, and you'll also never know how much your optimization saved (if anything).