Intel HD 4000 and max vertex count (unity)

shanemarks

Hey, was wondering if anyone out there has had some experience with on-board graphics cards and unity (web player)? I am wondering what the max mesh resolution that those chips can handle is? Assuming that drawcalls / filesize is not an issue :)

dislekcia

I have no idea how to answer this question. I assume you've looked up the stats on that specific card and know the fill-rate, clock speeds, etc?

There really isn't a limit to how many vertices you can render with anything, stuff just gets slower and slower depending on the hardware you're working with. But your actual performance is bounded by how many verts are getting automatically clipped per frame, how much graphics memory you need, etc. For instance, the biggest slowdown with high-poly meshes is usually transferring the huge textures that "invisibly" come with a model like that. The whole model can probably be stored in graphics memory easily, so it just gets churned through, but if the textures are too large to be stored between frames, you have to wait for main memory to transfer them to the card every frame.

shanemarks

Yeah I am getting the stats:) (good idea:P), was just wondering if anyone had experience running unity builds with them. I don't have a machine with low-end onboard stuff, so I am trying to make sure that I don't build something that will never run in real-time on the target machine haha. Given that I wont really have many textures (1x 1024 map) I should be safe (I hope ! ):)

Thanks for the reply :)

Elyaradine

I think in our experience making games for high end mobile (low end PCs, I guess? :P), vertex count has seldom been the bottleneck. It's pretty much always been something else, especially shaders that do complicated fill, overdraw, draw calls.

I think I've been asked to add verts (to alleviate performance in any of the other departments) more often than I've been asked to lower them. Depends a lot on context, camera and type of game though, I imagine. Though if you're developing for a target machine that you don't own, I think you're already in trouble. :P

shanemarks

Yeah fair point, seems it might be worth taking the plunge and buying one, could probably pick up that kinda of spec machine for < 3000 if one looks in the right places, then I suppose once I have it, I will always have a test machine / paperweight handy :D

Elyaradine

My mom just got a new PC. If you're in Joburg, maybe we could work out a really cheapo deal for her old one (which would otherwise have ended up as a cheapo home theatre thing). :)

shanemarks

Thanks for the offer:D Unfortunately I am in Cape Town :/, and to make matters worse I am going to be travelling around for the next few months hehe. If I could afford it I would get a mac mini and take it with me, but just on principle I can't shell out R6 - 9k for a glorified calculator (apologies to the mac fans out there).