Very low performance on Intel HD Graphics

I was testing the HDRP on various machines and apparently the framerate is extremely bad on integrated Intel HD graphics adapters I was using a basic scene with lowest settings (disabled all shadows and effects, no custom shaders etc) and never got more than 10 fps on an Intel HD Graphics 630 (Windows 10, i7-7700HQ, 16 GB RAM, DX11).

I experienced the same issue on a Mac mini (late 2014, Intel Iris Graphics 5100), in fact performace was slightly worse there (but the graphics adapter is actually less powerful).

I ran the same scene on an old AMD Radeon HD 7770 (Windows 7, PhenomII X4, 8 GB RAM) and got more than 100 fps Granted, the Radeon is more powerful, but it still scares me that a game using the HDRP would be seemingly unplayable on an Intel HD adapter...

Didn't experience any issues with other, more powerful machines.

I know the HDRP is targeting rather powerful hardware, but when shipping on PC, there are always people out there who try to run the game on a crappy Intel HD adapter. Obviously they cannot expect great performance or good visuals, but if the game runs with 10 fps or less even on newer generation Intel HD adapters, it can be considered unplayable.

Is this a known issue, a bug, or a limitation by design? I know the Intel drivers had serious bugs a few years ago, but I don't know if they still suffer from similar issues nowadays?

Using the 2019.3.0f6 and HDRP 7.1.8 btw.

 

I mean, how many recent high end AAA quality titles are playable with an intelHD?

 

We all know that Intel HDs are crappy, but in fact most AAA games are at least somewhat playable with that hardware. According to notebookcheck.com, you get (on minimum settings) ~ 50 fps in GTA V, 34 fps in Battlefield 1, 44 fps in Titalfall 2, 25 fps in SW Battlefront 2 etc. for an Intel HD 630.

Considering that I wasn't able to achieve more than 10 fps in an almost empty scene (no custom effects or shaders), and around 6 fps in a more complex world, it proves that the HDRP provides great scalability, but it's still a pity that it's unplayable on an Intel HD adapter on minimum settings. Since I got more than 100 fps with a Radeon HD 7770, I'd expect to get at least 20-30 fps on an Intel HD 630 (at least in an almost empty scene).

 

Yes and that's why it would be nice if the resolution dialog came back. at least for development.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/whats-the-resolution-dialog-replacement.762551/#post-5431035 :

 

Thanks, I do have a mac, so its seems its not supported.

 

@Remy_Unity Thanks a lot for your response, and thanks for pointing that out! Actually I was using a resolution of 1920x1080, testing both in fullscreen and windowed mode.

I ran another test with 1280x720 (and lower) and this had a bigger impact on performance than I thought On 720p, I get ~ 23 fps, and on 800x600 (lol), I almost got 35 fps. There wasn't a big difference between an almost empty scene and a more complex one, which shows again the great scalability of the HDRP.

It would still be great if there was a way to get a few extra fps (even if the scene looks uglier then), but I guess these framerates are acceptable for that hardware

 

@Remy_Unity I did try to select the lowest possible settings, i.e. I disabled almost all rendering settings I could find (motion vectors, custom passes etc), SSAO, volumetrics, reflections and decals. I also disabled all shadows (I set shadow atlas resolutions to 1024, even though this probably has no impact if there aren't any shadows at all) and was using a basic gradient sky. No AA and no contact shadows or screen space shadows.
I'm not sure if I missed any settings...

I didn't touch the lighting quality settings, since there were no shadows or AO in the scene anyway (so I thought that doesn't have an impact).

Only other thing that was enabled (which certainly comes at a cost) was the deferred rendering mode for lit shaders (there were 10 realtime lights in the scene).

It was just scary that I easily got more than 100 fps with an old Radeon HD 7770 in the same scene (and around 260 fps with a GTX 980, but of course we can't compare that to an Intel HD) But it really looks like the resolution plays a big role in this regard.

 

Okay. So it very bad situation here. I've got the Asus Rog i7, 8th generation, 16 GB RAM, RTX 2070 laptop what Unity is not running properly, and whenever I do the script change or test the play mode it's just that some loader come most of the time and the FPS is around 5-10. even after making the build and running that build is giving the same FPS.
I check the empty scene but surprisingly still I'm not able to test as well as the run build above 10 FPS while running the same empty build on my friend's laptop with lower configuration given 400 FPS.
I wonder what the problem is?
If anyone can help me that'll be really appreciated. I'm Running window 10 Version 1909 (OS Build 18363.1198)

 

Make sure that the nvidia driver force the RTX 2070 to be used for unity or windows might not swith it over from the integraded GPU from the CPU
Check the 3D settings in the nvidia driver for that.

 

@saru15 like the comment above your issue is most certainly because your Laptop is not using the dedicated GPU and you need to look into enabling it via the graphics settings, Nvidia settings and also I think some laptops will not enable the dedicated GPU unless you are plugged in.

I myself just upgraded from a Radeon HD 5750 and I was getting 5 x the fps in Unity standard compared to Unity HDRP.
That means in a similar scene I got 100fps and in HDRP I got 20fps in the demo scene.
My RTX 3070 gets over a thousand fps in the same Unity standard and gets 350fps in the Demo scene for HDRP.

I had a discussion about this as one of the problems with HDRP is there seems to be an underlying bottleneck that is eating up huge fps even with many settings turned off. I was told this performance bottle necking was required as part of the way the pipeline needed to work for the advanced features.

That's my biggest fear is that I can't get people with lower end hardware to play my game even if they run the game on very low because HDRP just won't allow it due to the unknown bottlenecking.

Unless I'm wrong and things have changed but I would need a unity rep to say so.
At least I can tell my peers to run the HDRP games on 720p if they absolutely need to run on it on old hardware.

 

@SilverStorm @fffMalzbier Thanks for you advise. Guess there was something wrong with the window configuration but with the current latest update of window fixed everything and it smooth and now I'm able to see the power of my machine during Unity at last.

 

Gl

Glad you figured it out, it was only 2 weeks ago that I found out that by enabling windows Aero in windows 7 I was able to solve a performance issue I had been having for 7 years and blaming Unity for it!

 

Hi,

Does anyone know what may have changed from HDRP 7.5.x to 10.2, and i get exponentially lower performance ?

Before was getting 15ms CPU and 3.8ms GPU and now 25ms CPU and 11.6ms GPU in the exact same project, with zero changes.

Seems every camera rendering in my scene takes up a lot more ms than in 7.5.x or 7.4.3, so they add up to something unsuable, while in 7.4.3 performance was great.

Is 10.2 still in Beta also, or is a true release version ?

Thanks

 

You are making me scared to try it now haha but in general I would stay away from anything still in beta.
I am using 2020.1 and version 7 of the HDRP and while I like some of the new features I am pretty good with where I am at now.

This is what I can say to try:
-Revert back to version 7 in the same project and see if performance returns to normal. If it does report a bug.
-Turn on Windows Aero if you have Windows 7.
-If performance doesn't return to normal after reverting then you made a change in one of the numerous HDRP Frame or Render settings assets which affects the global project and so you can try a new project with 10.2 and see if you still get performance losses.

 

I think there is no way to move back to 7 in newer unity, i will check it out.

I noticed that in the older unity the vertices count is not affected if i put more cameras, while in new unity and later hdrp version is doubled or tripled.

Now i cant tell if this is an error in older unity statistics reporting or actually was better optimized to do the polygon setup only once for all scene cameras, so at this point can be anything.

So one possibility is that fps is about same, but older or newer unity reports it wrongly. Though the issue is that in hdrp 10.2 i also see an actual lag in my water projected grid plane, that was not there in hdrp 7 or 8, so this is an indication that there is some actual problem besides the possible issues in statistics reporting.

 

Ohh yeah I read a while back that HDRP adding multiple camera's is a NO NO.
They had a workaround in the fps sample scene where you can add arms without adding another camera trick it's on a youtube video I can't remember which.
But you can't do multiple camera in SRP I think without huge cost because the way it's changed.

 

This would be a very strange choice i have to say, as for some effects is not possible to use a single camera.

I constantly get this feeling that the Standard pipeline is vastly superior to the SRP ones.

 

I am not sure what you are making but the only reason to use HDRP is if you are focused on maximum graphics like I am & more importantly don't want to purchase missing features because there are a LOT that standard is missing.
Just to get decent graphics you need to buy HBAO, UBER and find a Subsurface Scattering solution. You'll need to buy a Shader Tool or buy UV Free Shaders. I had spent literally hundreds to make the standard shader look decent but now all of those things are built into HDRP for free.

Every other case should be using Unity Standard and even then Unity Standard with the right tools can achieve close to HDRP but it missing features that bring it to cinematic quality.

Alternatively the URP version of Unity is a middleground which performs just as good as Unity but looks much better with Shaders features closer to HDRP and it also supports HBAO with double bounce to simulate a kind of fake GI.
You only need to buy 2 solutions for URP and it's ready to go-it's the https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/lux-urp-essentials-150355 and it's on sale.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...effects/horizon-based-ambient-occlusion-54780
Together those cost USD$25 with the sale so that's pretty darn cheap for great performing and great quality games.

 

@SilverStorm Hii there, I read your post on few thread , I'm solo dev as well and and building my first big release game (but I'm not an expert) it's a story driven game and I was using HDRP as I really wanted Outlast 2 quality or better graphics but I too am having performance hits and it really made me think if I should go with HDRP or switch to URP my project is in pre production so won't be much hassle but I really wanted your opinion on this . Thank you

 

Thanks for reaching out. After a major bug anyway with HDRP 2020.2 that messed up the skybox lighting I switched to URP and the performance gain in URP is great! It turns out you can achieve similar quality lighting in URP as well as long as you know how to use Skybox lighting and some good post process effects!
The Skybox lighting is real time in URP but because of the bug you still need to press bake for it to show up. Just press bake without anything static and it will work. This is the graphics I have with URP and I think it looks fantastic because it still running 300fps!

 

@SilverStorm , Thanks for the opinion if URP has such a massive boost on performance I think I should look into it.

 

I could say that i see the same kind of problem. I was using HDRP 9 with Unity 2020.1. It was kind of okay for performance and I setup the night scene that running with 60 fps on console. After upgrading to Unity 2020.2.1 and HDRP 10.2.2 I see performance drop from 60 fps to 45 fps without any changes.
As I looked at snapshots I see that few gaps between main rendering steps become bigger but I can not identify what exactly happening.
I also tried with high pc hardware and there is also performance drop. My method PostLateUpdate.FinishFrameRendering was 2.9 - 3 ms and it scaled to 3.8 - 4 ms. As it looks as small change but when I use lower hardware this 30% is super important.

 

The way Unity is handling this is completely busted. I have officially decided that from now on I will skip all tech releases only jumping between the LTS releases of Unity. I finally was happy with HDRP and then they stuffed it up. Like you I could not find where the source problem was. You are probably far too ahead in production to jump to URP but you can try jumping to 2019 LTS and using the HDRP version of that one maybe it will help.

If you file a bug report Unity may attempt to fix it in the next update but meh.
Last resort is to see if somehow you can try to export everything and try the version of Unity you were in before but getting your hands on that HDRP version might be tricky.

 

I am actually at the beginning of the project. I can say on the prototyping step. it is possible for me to stay on Unity 2020.1 and HDRP 9 because it is working ok but I am working on cross srp project and URP 9 has a very painful bug that I cannot fix Shader that was made in shadergraph breaks srp batching sometime in URP 9 and they fixed it in URP 10.2.2.

So I will file a bug report and I will have to wait until fix is arriving or sacrifice some performance for now.

 

URP 9 and HDRP 9 were experimental packages and will not be maintained:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/9-x-x-package-status-and-end-of-life.983965/

For 2020.1 you should use 8.x.

 

I know but version 8 do not have cross pipeline shader generation so i can not use it. I waited for Unity 2020.2.1 and HDRP 10.2.2 especially because version 9 is experimental.

 

Then you have your anwser: Unity will no longer make fixes or changes to version 9.

 

I know about it that is why I am thinking of sacrificing some performance and upgrading to hdrp 10.2.2. It will fix that bug but i am no longer have 60 fps.
What is actually bothering me if it will be fixed or it is some kind of architecture changes that cannot be fixed?

 

What graphic card do you have. Getting only 60 fps for HDRP is pretty bad if you have a powerful graphics card.
You should be using 2019 Long Term Support if you are planning to produce a game. 2020 is still in production and is subject to the winds of drastic change, do not use them for serious production.

In any case I would suggest using Mesh Combine Studio on the asset store. It is currently the most powerful fps saver on the store. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/mesh-combine-studio-2-101956
It should help you get to your 60fps target despite the Unity.

 

Sorry for confusion. It was done on purpose to understand maximum triangle/vertex cound that can be used for our project with stable 60 fps. So it is not empty scene. It has little bit of gameplay and some graphics. The problem is that after upgrade fps decreased to 45.

I am aware that 2020 is still in production but it is a prototype for game and I need specific feature of srp 9.x and higher. I filled a report with sample project and I will wait for any updates.

Thank you for asset recomendation! Interesting to test it with srp batching combination. As I understood MCS + SRP batching can give even more performance.

 

Don't torture yourself with false dilemmas.

Only if you plan to do a 2D game or 3D cartoon aesthetics, then yes, Intel integrated GPU is important.
Nobody would run a high-end (AAA) 3D game on integrated GPU but only clueless people by mistake.

Simply ignore these cases and spec your graphics for at least GTX 860+
Genshin Impact has done this masterfully.


Alternatively use this to guide your product choices.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

If your market research shows that your game running on intel GPU is important, think of an art style and visualization method that would not suffer much from lack of GPU power. Many games can be presented simply fine in 2D or with a minimalistic/abstract art style.