Very low FPS in editor and standalone build with default project and scene.

Hello, I hope someone can help. I'm getting really low frame rates when playing a project in the editor or a standalone build. I've tested a couple versions of unity using a clean project and it's default scene with the same result. Maximising the screen has a significant impact. For example with a windowed resolution set to 1024 by 768 I get 60 fps., when maximised it I get only 15 fps. I'm running it on a Surface Book Performance base which has Geforce 960M, Intel Core 6600U and 16GB of ram. Now, obviously not the best machine for for the job but It ought to be able to achieve higher frame rates than this, right? After all I can play GTA5 on it no problem.

Running on a fully updated Windows 10.
Latest graphics driver.
Tested on Unity 2019.2.2f1 and Unity 2019.1.9f1.

I'm wondering since the native resolution on these machines are pretty high, especially for the GPU it's running, whether that would effect things? I have noticed that when running a standalone build it seems to be using the native resolution rather than the specified resolution? I remove the graphics setting from the registry each time I play a new build but it makes no difference.

 

Hello,
You mentioned that you have a laptop with a dedicated nvidia gpu, that probably means that you have a hybrid gpu laptop.
Usually with these, you have to tell it what gpu to use in wich programs. Are you setting unity to run using the 960M? Maybe its using the intel integrated gpu instead of the nvidia one, and due to your high screen resolution the intel gpu can't keep up.

If i'm not mistaken you have a resolution of 3000 x 2000 right? Does it loose frames when in 1080p?

Also are you using too much effects, particles? How many objects are being rendered in the scene?

Also your drivers are from the manufacturer's website (nvidia website, etc) or windows 10's?

 

Hi Eduaavila1, thank you very much for taking the time to reply.

It is indeed a hybrid setup. I have tried forcing unity to use the dedicated GPU via the context menu but because unity loads via the unity hub I'm not convinced it effects the editor. Although I'm pretty sure i tried it on a standalone build with no effect. When I look at the system manager there does seem to be activity on the nvidia card suggesting that it is being used. But I would have thought that the frame rates would be more indicative of the Intel chip.

Regarding the particles effects and complexity of the scene. I noticed the issue on my project which is fancy looking asteroids rip off but then I checked to see if the issue happened with a fresh project using the default scene and it did which leads me to believe that it's not due to my poor development skills.

I updated the drivers from from Nvidia's website as Microsoft don't appear to have any new ones and from what i can tell they use windows update anyway. Sadly they made no difference to the performance, the only thing it achieved is random app whiteouts requiring frequent restarts of Unity. Yah.

I reduced Windows 10 resolution down to 1080 as you suggested and the game seems to run pretty smoothly in the unity editor, even when maximised. There is still a huge drop in frame rate though compared to it's smaller windowed counterpart but i guess that's to be expected. I also revisited the screen modes and by setting it to 'Full Screen Window' and clearing the registry keys I was able to get the standalone player to change the resolution. This resulting in a smooth performance at full hd. Result. So it would just seem that the native resolution of the Surface book is far to great for even the simplest of scenes which is very surprising. So surprising I'm still not convinced there isn't a deeper issue going on than just resolution. None the less at least now I'm able to play and test the game. Just need to fix this white screen syndrome. :-(

Thanks again for you input Eduaavila1, it was much appreciated.

 

Possibly only unity hub is opening with nvidia, but not unity itself. But there is a way to do it.
Open unity with a project, then open up the nvidia pannel and there go to 3d settings, then to the program settings, click in the dropdown box, then find the unity executable there and then select the graphical processor nvidia. Now even if unity hub calls it, it will use the nvidia gpu.

About the white screen syndrome, i'm sorry, but you may fix it, installing the intel and nvidia drivers from the surface's support page. If it doesn't exist, then try to uninstall the drivers from the device manager and then reboot and right click them and click update drivers, it will download windows 10 drivers instead of nvidia ones. Do that first for the intel hd graphics then to the nvidia graphics.

 

Have you tried deselecting everything? I have noticed a frame drop when my Inspector has a lot of components in it.

 

Yeah i deselected everything, that's something I've noticed myself so these days I do it as a matter of course. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

So in my investigation to stop unity crashing all the time i changed the graphics API from DirectX11 to Vulkan. Not only did this cure the random white screen of deaths but my frame rates have improved considerably. In full screen I'm in the 70 to 80 fps. I read a few posts saying the Nvidia 695M doesn't fully support DX11 so I think my graphics card is just getting left behind.