FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I have minetest 0.4.10 64 bit and ubuntu 14.04 64 bit. It is on a computer with an Intel Celeron 1.8 GHz single core CPU, 2 GB RAM, and a new graphics card I put in several months ago (I forgot which one but if it is important I could look in my amazon order history to try to find it). With the default viewing range FPS varies between 20-37 and drawtime is around 25, but when I press R for full viewing range the FPS drops to 7 and drawtime spikes around 100 then drops slowly back down. I build with the default viewing range because otherwise it lags, blocks I place disappear and then reappear. However sometimes I want to look at the entire range to see what I'm building and to get a screenshot. With full viewing range minetest has trouble loading my entire build (a baseball stadium) since it won't load everything. Is there a fix for this besides using another computer when I want a screenshot?

It's normal for me to have 20 FPS at normal gameplay, 10 at PvP and 5 at full range view.

EDIT: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=156&p=146192#p146192
EDIT3 removed EDIT2

superschizo wrote:Intel Celeron 1.8 GHz single core CPU, 2 GB RAM

That's not exactly a fast machine; yet it may suffice for Minetest.

superschizo wrote:a new graphics card

Those graphic cards come in extremly diffrent versions and speeds. Without more details, nobody will know if it's a card that's slower than what's included in processors these days (quite likely according to your description) or if it's the cutting edge technology gamers seem to pay a lot of money for (rather unlikely as you'd most likely know more about the specs if you'd have payed that much). Under Linux, it may also be a question of which driver is more suitable. There're usually free ones and closed-source-ones.

Performance drops with view on far and hardware that can't deal with it (at least under Minetest) are normal. If I load many chunks and go to far view, fps may drop to 1 or 3. But then, it's only the IGP of a Celeron G1610 that's doing the job; Gamers look down on that with a frown. Yet it works well enough for everyday usage.

I found the graphics card, it is a EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 1 GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 DVI/HDMI/VGA Graphics Card, 01G-P3-1302-LR

Specs are
520 MHz core clock
PCI Express 2.0
1024 MB 64-bit DDR3 memory
600 MHz memory clock and 1230 MHz shader clock
8 CUDA Cores
8 CUDA Cores. Max Analog : 2048x1536, Max Digital : 1920x1200

The driver is Gallium 0.4 on NVA8

That card sells for $32 on amazon.com, so it's not exactly a gamer graphics card. Those cost hundreds of $$$. It is a new card, but not a very powerful one.

The Freeminer MT fork has far mesh optimization now which should allow better viewing range than MT. Unfortunately FM is slow for other reasons (overloaded default gameplay).

I finally installed the proprietary driver instead of the default, and there is a noticeable improvement. I'm able to see the entire structure now, though there is still takes a moment to load. There isn't as much lag either, I might be able to build with full viewing range enabled now. FPS is still around 7 and drawtime stays up around 100 though. Thank you for the idea of trying different drivers, Sokomine.

EDIT: now I'm using NVIDIA propriety binary driver 331.38 from NVIDIA 331 updates
system details says GeForce 8400GS/PCIe/SSE2

Morn76 wrote:That card sells for $32 on amazon.com, so it's not exactly a gamer graphics card. Those cost hundreds of $$$. It is a new card, but not a very powerful one.

The Freeminer MT fork has far mesh optimization now which should allow better viewing range than MT. Unfortunately FM is slow for other reasons (overloaded default gameplay).

It's a card which was first released in 2007 or so. There are “gaming” graphic cards for about $ 120 today, so it's less than what you think.

Calinou wrote:It's a card which was first released in 2007 or so. There are “gaming” graphic cards for about $ 120 today, so it's less than what you think.

True, and I think the power of high-end graphics cards is mostly needed for shaders and driving multiple high-resolution displays anyway. So the benefits of a truly high-end graphics card would probably not be worth it for MT. But a $32-card is probably not much better than onboard graphics.

I helped my brother find a ~$50US Nvidia GT 620 with 1GB of RAM on Amazon.com for my nephew's old computer. It has made a large difference to his gaming as he had an old Nvidia card in the computer before that. My nephew's new card even beats my current graphics card because I have a 440 from Nvidia. :)

R7s from ATi are way better than the price suggests... I might buy an R9 when I get around to building my tower.

As for my own current specs, it is a dual core Celeron @1.9 GHz with an intel HD 2500 and 4 GB of RAM. Recommended minimum specs for Minetest. I get a nice enough viewrange

With Minetest, you are better off getting a better CPU (8 cores should do it.) Minetest never has made much use of graphics cards, nor will it ever do so. It doesn't matter how many years go by...

Inocudom wrote:8 cores should do it.

Since when may Minetest make use of more than one CPU in an efficient way? Yes, there are situations where multiple cores may work together, but that seems to be more at mapgen time. The original poster mentioned an old, slow single core CPU, so that may stilll be a bottleneck. Unless it's a laptop, updating to a newer CPU might help for more than playing Minetest. Until then, playing on servers may keep the load lower and increase the fun anyway :-)

I tried the same map on a different computer with dual cores. It does noticeably load the view faster, but in full view range the FPS is 6 and drawtime around 150. What numbers do I look at to quantify the performance of minetest on a computer? Apparently I'm looking at the wrong numbers to quantify performance.

Here is a screenshot from another computer, which I'm unfortunately not able to use much until school starts because I have a big family that uses this computer a lot.



I'm not even half done with the stadium and I see that I need to adjust the flat area of the stadium at the bottom of the screen. The specs of the computer (which I bought new in 2010) are:
Ubuntu 14.04
AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250u dual core processor 1.6 Ghz
4 Gb RAM
ATI Radeon R5450 graphics card (bought in 2010 from Radio Shack)
fglrx-updates proprietary driver VESA: CEDAR

So does the view load faster because of the dual cores, or maybe because it has twice the RAM? I'd have to research whether my single core computer can even handle more RAM.

It is normal. View range is capped to make the game draw faster, so if you uncap then it will draw slower.

superschizo wrote:I tried the same map on a different computer with dual cores. It does noticeably load the view faster, but in full view range the FPS is 6 and drawtime around 150. What numbers do I look at to quantify the performance of minetest on a computer? Apparently I'm looking at the wrong numbers to quantify performance.

Here is a screenshot from another computer, which I'm unfortunately not able to use much until school starts because I have a big family that uses this computer a lot.



I'm not even half done with the stadium and I see that I need to adjust the flat area of the stadium at the bottom of the screen. The specs of the computer (which I bought new in 2010) are:
Ubuntu 14.04
AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250u dual core processor 1.6 Ghz
4 Gb RAM
ATI Radeon R5450 graphics card (bought in 2010 from Radio Shack)
fglrx-updates proprietary driver VESA: CEDAR

So does the view load faster because of the dual cores, or maybe because it has twice the RAM? I'd have to research whether my single core computer can even handle more RAM.

I think its all about processor. I have 1gb of ram and Intel Pentium D Dual-Core 3.5 Ghz Extreme Edition and I got the same performance.