firestormviewer Firestorm 6.4.12 Texture Cashing Issue - Please Help

[PatricaC]

5 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

The tooltip on Enable Streamed VBOs says that AMD cards might have poor performance when enabled, but in my experience this is not true. What I meant is that the tooltip was written long before the RX 4xx/5xx series of cards was made. Turn on VBOs and see how it goes. 

I turned that on but haven't reloggoed since I'll let you know if i see any improvement

[Aishagain]

I think you are losing sight of the crux of the issue.  The Viewer is not recognising the GPU VRAM.  It can tell that the GPU has more than 2GB otherwise it would not even offer 2048MB as a limit.  The issue must lie either with the card, its driver (which is my choice).  Or the Operating system, which is clearly Windows 10, so the remarks about Linux, while interesting, are irrelevant.I am running this version of Firestorm on the same OS, using an NVidia GTX1660Ti 6GB card which is being detected fine. The GPU driver is not the most recent, or even close, since they have  more bugs than I care to list. If memory serves it is 457.something forced on me by Windows update.

I think the focus of this must be around the GPU and its driver.

[Qie Niangao]

As far as I understand this thread, it's all down to Firestorm's 2GB VRAM cap, which comes up occasionally; here's a relevant thread about it from almost a year ago I guess.

If I had that card, I'd try a different viewer and see if it thrashes less. (My card is ancient so I use Catznip just to limp along until Bitcoin tanks even more and the miners let the rest of us buy GPUs again.)

[Aishagain]

@Qie NiangaoYou mention the "Firestorm 2GB VRAM cap".   It isn't capped at 2048MB in the current version, 6.4.12. If your card has say, 6GB like mine, it permits 4096MB! This change for the current release was a significant upgrade, but whether some bug in the code that permits it is at the root of the OP's issue I do not know. Considering the bug-ridden mess that is EEP, anything is possible!

And that thread you reference is one of the most confused rambles I've read in years, confusing GPU VRAM with system RAM on several occasions!😵

Edited February 26, 2021 by Aishagain

[Qie Niangao]

4 minutes ago, Aishagain said:

@Qie NiangaoYou mention the "Firestorm 2GB VRAM cap"  it isn't capped at 2048MB in the current version. If your card has, say, 6GB like mine, it permits 4096MB!

And that thread you reference is one of the most confused rambles I've read in years, confusing GPU VRAM with system RAM on several occasions!😵

Oh, that "in the current version" was news to me, but sure enough, since December it's apparently been possible:

Quote

A new setting, Dynamic Texture Memory, which allows the viewer to use more than 2GB of texture memory.
Dynamic Texture Memory only works on 64-bit viewers with at least 512MB VRAM and GPUs supporting either atimeminfo or nxmeminfo vendor-specific OpenGL extensions. It will allow using all currently available VRAM, or at least the value specified in minimum viewer texture memory capped at physical VRAM, minus VRAM reserve for allocating textures. That value minus cache reserve is the texture memory available for textures actually rendered. Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Settings.

(That's probably well known to Firestorm enthusiasts but as I mentioned I limp along with an ancient graphics card and Firestorm has a hard time getting out of its own way when I try to run it anywhere busy, so I generally stick to Catznip or a Linden project viewer these days.)

[Solar Legion]

And did either of you happen to notice that in one of the images tat was posted to this thread that the option to use the Dynamic Texture Memory system was checked but wholly grayed out for this user?

So yes, it is presently capped for them at 2048.

The question ought - now - to be why is that option and relevant settings disabled?

[Aishagain]

5 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

And did either of you happen to notice that in one of the images tat was posted to this thread that the option to use the Dynamic Texture Memory system was checked but wholly grayed out for this user?

So yes, it is presently capped for them at 2048.

Yes I did notice it, Solar, which is why I said it might be either the viewer or OS that was wrong....possibly due to being misled by the GPU driver software. Indeed WHY it is greyed out is what needs an answer.  It being both checked AND greyed out clearly suggests an issue to me, but I do not know what the issue is.

[Coffee Pancake]

VRAM and SL is problematic. Lots of high end new cards have lots of VRAM. The bulk of SL doesn't have those cards. A notable selection of the GPU's people do have will outright lie to SL about how much VRAM they have or can use. If SL asks for more VRAM or goes a bit OTT, it can (for all practical purposes)  take the whole system down - which would be bad.

Now, keeping all that in mind ...

From an entirely pragmatic perspective, there are very few locations in SL that will use more than ~1.5GB of VRAM.

... plot twist ...

The way the SL render engine works if you could give SL all the VRAM and get it to use it, it would probably slow to a crawl and suck! It's like setting your draw distance to 512 and trying to fly over mainland, sure you can do it .. but don't kid yourself that there is some magical way to make it not 💩

 

Bottom line is it's better for the viewer to be conservative when it comes to asking for and using VRAM. If you're able to allocate 2GB of VRAM and still have texture issues, maybe work out what's causing that problem (reduce draw distance, remove HUDS, consider your own avatars ARC or pick up some of the gatcha clutter).

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by Coffee Pancake

[PatricaC]

I have the latest driver for the Amd Rx 580 so it can't be the driver itself i think maybe its a bug in the viewer itself why I can't click that other thing.

Since enabling the VBO the texture trashing is a whole lot less

@Coffee Pancake I don't have any Huds on what so ever only thing on my land is a Inverse house, furniture, campfire, pool and with only me and my bf there it was happening but not as much anymore.

[Aishagain]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

and GPUs supporting either atimeminfo or nxmeminfo vendor-specific OpenGL extensions.

I wonder if when interfacing with the latest AMD/ATI GPU driver this function is messed up?  The question then would be "was it the driver or the viewer" that is at fault?  Maybe one of the Firestorm devs who wander these pages at the weekend would care to comment?  I'd be surprised if it is the GPU driver OR the  viewer, frankly, unless there is some corrupted code in there.

By the way, @PatricaC, just because you have the latest driver does not mean it cannot be bugged, both AMD and NVidia have issued badly bugged drivers in the very recent past.

[PatricaC]

@Aishagain Oh trust me I know I had issues with  Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.2.1 Optional     of installing that one and I seen many reddit.com about issues with other one's as well including other AMD video cards and Nvidia video card issues as well.

Edited February 27, 2021 by PatricaC

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Could you drop the ATI stuff, please? 15 years really isn't that long, I know, but you gotta start somewhere...

[Aishagain]

@Lillith Hapmouche Nope.  ATi/AMD applications to OpenGL are still and have been for as long as I've used computers, vastly inferior to NVidia.  It's not an opinion it's a proven fact, notwithstanding the recent issues with an ATi GPU driver causing colour issues in most viewers to SL.

If you mean we should not the calling AMD stuff ATi, tell them, not me.  I am not purblind to the inadequacies of NVidia gear, it's just less problematical (and granted a lot more expensive).

[Lillith Hapmouche]

ATI ... is ... no ... more... for frigging 15 years!

 

Is that clear to you?

[Aishagain]

@Lillith HapmoucheCrystal.  Tell AMD!!

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Sure.