Sluggish graphics performance on Surface Pro 3 [Archive]

darrenan

March 3rd, 2016, 19:42

I don't think this is related to the other performance threads I've seen, because I routinely shut down (not sleep/hibernate) my Surface Pro 3 whenever I'm not using it to save battery.

I am going to be using FG this weekend on my Surface to run a live session of LMoP. The issue I'm having is not a show-stopper by any means, but it will slow down my game a bit, so I thought I'd just post the symptoms here in case anyone has any ideas.

FG starts up just fine, that part doesn't seem to be affected. Likewise, opening story or image entries doesn't seem too slow (although it is a bit slower than on my desktop).

The issues are mainly around graphics performance, and maybe it's just that the Surface is underpowered in that area. I get really low framerate when rolling dice. When I click on window to drag it I normally have a 2-3 second delay before it starts moving. And when utilizing scrollbars there's also a 2-3 second lag between clicking and the window refreshing.

My Surface has 8GB of RAM, so I wouldn't expect this to be memory pressure or paging issue, and Task Manager confirms that I'm only using about 40% of my available memory. CPU utilization does jump up into the 20% range when doing stuff in FG, so maybe it is offloading most or all of the graphics work to the CPU.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew of any settings in FG or Windows 10 that might speed things up. If not, like I said, I can just live with it, it isn't a show-stopper.

Thanks.

darrenan

March 3rd, 2016, 19:48

In case it matters, the tech specs are:
8 GB RAM
Intel Core i5-4300U 1.90 GHz
64-bit OS Windows 10 Pro

ddavison

March 3rd, 2016, 20:09

I know that you mentioned that it may not be related to the other performance threads, but there are a few floating around there. Are you using the default 5E Theme? If so, we have had at least a few people report that this was causing issues for people on some of their computers but not on others. Moon Wizard posted a fix for this that is loaded onto the TEST channel. If you have some free time, it might be worth opening your Settings window, switching to TEST mode and then re-running a Check for Updates to see if that resolves the issue for you. This issue was actually prevalent on a few different rulesets.

darrenan

March 3rd, 2016, 20:20

That doesn't appear to be the issue in my case. Switching over to TEST didn't seem to make any difference.

Also, switching to the Wizards theme doesn't make any difference either.

Trenloe

March 3rd, 2016, 21:37

Another poster recently mentioned a Windows 10 update fixed their issue - might be worth checking that out.

darrenan

March 3rd, 2016, 22:28

I'm up to date on updates. Checked this morning just to be sure.

Moon Wizard

March 3rd, 2016, 23:08

Are you running another screen attached to the Surface Pro? If so, do you get the same issue without the extra monitor attached?

Have you looked to see if the company that makes the GPU (such as NVidia/ATI) has a utility which can set application profiles. You might be able to toggle certain 3D features on/off to see if they are impacting frame rate.

Also, which ruleset are you running?

JPG

darrenan

March 3rd, 2016, 23:12

Are you running another screen attached to the Surface Pro? If so, do you get the same issue without the extra monitor attached? No

Have you looked to see if the company that makes the GPU (such as NVidia/ATI) has a utility which can set application profiles. You might be able to toggle certain 3D features on/off to see if they are impacting frame rate. That's a good idea. I will look into that this evening and report back tomorrow.

Also, which ruleset are you running? All my testing thus far has been with the 5E ruleset with either no extensions loaded, or the Wizard's Theme loaded. I will try a couple of other rulesets and report back on that as well.

darrenan

March 4th, 2016, 00:16

I managed to get the Intel HD graphics control panel installed so I could muck around with the driver settings. I've tried pretty much everything in there and nothing makes a difference: Turning off MSAA, turning on CMAA, changing power mode settings, changing overall performance settings, etc. Nothing made any difference at all.

I tried Windows 7 and 8 compatibility mode, and I also tried turning off the dynamic scaling option under Compatibility. None of those made a difference.

I tried 4E, 3.5/PFRPG, and Numenera rulesets. In all of these the lag between clicking/dragging and seeing the window move was still noticeable, but not the multi-second lag I see with the 5E ruleset, and definitely more responsive. Dice rolling was still pretty stuttery though.

JohnD

March 4th, 2016, 01:17

Hmm this makes me pensive on my planned Surface Pro 4 purchase.

damned

March 4th, 2016, 06:34

Another posted has Surface Pro 3 issues recently....

midas

March 4th, 2016, 21:58

I have never seen good 3D performance with dice on an integrated Intel graphics chipset.

darrenan

March 4th, 2016, 22:24

Dice rolling I can understand, at least there's some actual 3D and math going on there, and I plan on using real dice anyway in this upcoming live session. The thing that baffles me is the sluggishness with just moving windows and scrolling window contents which are pretty basic 2D operations, I would think.

ddavison

March 4th, 2016, 22:44

Can you try manually installing DirectX 9.0C from this link?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34429

You will probably need to try running the installation as Administrator and you may need to also mark the compatibility as Windows Vista mode for the DXSetup.exe file. Please try it first as Administrator and then if it says that it won't work for your version of Windows, then try the compatibility setting.

Moon Wizard

March 4th, 2016, 23:25

The slowness has to do with the frame rate of drawing all the elements on the screen. It just happens to noticeably affect dice rolling the most, but can affect other aspects.

Also, check in your FG settings to make sure that cross platform compatibility mode is off.

JPG

darrenan

March 4th, 2016, 23:25

Do I need to do anything else to tell FG to use that version of directX? It didn't seem to make any difference, or might even be slightly worse.
If I run dxdiag it still says version 12, is that expected?

darrenan

March 4th, 2016, 23:29

Trenloe

March 5th, 2016, 00:33

I've got a Surface Pro 3 and did some testing today. With a second display (1080p) attached the dice rolling was basically the start and end of the roll, nothing in between. Moving Windows around was very sluggish too - but then I noticed that some apps were updating in the background and using the CPU. After they'd completed and the CPU use had reduced it was a little better but not much.

Removing the external display helped some, but still jittery dice.

While running the external display I noticed that 150% scaling was on by default within Windows (not FG). Right-click on the desktop, select "Display Settings" and see what the "Change the size of the text, apps and other items" slider is set at, 150% seems to be the default. Reducing this down to 100% made things run a bit smoother for me - but this might make the details very hard to see.

So, I'd suggest a couple of things - see if there is anything taking up the CPU using Windows task manager, and see if playing around with the Windows display scaling makes any difference.

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 01:45

Turned off scaling, even tried reducing overall screen resolution. No difference.
Nothing really running the background. A few percentages of Skype and Steam is all.

damned

March 5th, 2016, 04:20

I have never seen good 3D performance with dice on an integrated Intel graphics chipset.

Certainly not for modern games but my laptop has an integrated Intel gfx chipset and it copes fine with FG (thats about the only game I play so its the only one I can comment on).

I've got a Surface Pro 3 and did some testing today. With a second display (1080p) attached the dice rolling was basically the start and end of the roll, nothing in between. Moving Windows around was very sluggish too - but then I noticed that some apps were updating in the background and using the CPU. After they'd completed and the CPU use had reduced it was a little better but not much.

Removing the external display helped some, but still jittery dice.

While running the external display I noticed that 150% scaling was on by default within Windows (not FG). Right-click on the desktop, select "Display Settings" and see what the "Change the size of the text, apps and other items" slider is set at, 150% seems to be the default. Reducing this down to 100% made things run a bit smoother for me - but this might make the details very hard to see.

So, I'd suggest a couple of things - see if there is anything taking up the CPU using Windows task manager, and see if playing around with the Windows display scaling makes any difference.

The very high res of the Surface Screens may have something to do with it?
If you try putting the display ONLY on your external monitor - eg forcing it to scale the resolution down I wonder if the gfx can cope with that?

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 16:59

No, I tried going down to 1400x900 at the lowest and it didn't make a lick of difference. I don't think it's related to resolution or scaling. The issue is somewhat moot at this point though. Because of a plumbing emergency at my house today, my trip and live game session got cancelled. Long-term I'd still like to figure this out, but I won't be using my Surface for FG any time soon.

Valarian

March 5th, 2016, 17:35

Very strange. I've not had any problems running on my Surface Pro 3. If I remember correctly, I did have to do something to get DirectX 9 to install. The installer didn't want to install in Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.
Try: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=8109

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 17:44

I did that already (see above), it made no difference. Is there something I need to do after installing DX9 to make FG use it?

Trenloe

March 5th, 2016, 17:46

A few percentages of Skype and Steam is all.
Do you have the Steam overlay enabled?

I am running fine on an i5 Surface Pro 3. I haven't had to install DirectX (Windows 8 and 10 come with it embedded). The only noticeable degradation I see if there is some other relatively intensive app working (like DropBox synching my non-FG data soon after startup).

You might want to check the power sleep settings. The defaults on mine were 4 minutes on battery and 10 minutes on power. This pretty much means that even on power, it's going to be going into and out of sleep fairly regularly. Others have mentioned that Windows going into sleep has introduced laggy/jumpy graphics performance.

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 18:29

My current settings are Never sleep and Never Turn off display, whether on battery or plugged in.
Turning off Steam overlay made no difference.

Trenloe

March 5th, 2016, 19:56

These are the info/versions for my graphics setup, are yours the same?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39085830/Screenshots/Fantasy%20Grounds/SPRO3%20Graphics.JPG

May also be worth seeing if the issue occurs in Safe Mode: https://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 20:06

Yep, same.

Trenloe

March 5th, 2016, 20:08

Yep, same.
And running in Safe Mode?

darrenan

March 5th, 2016, 20:16

Ahhh, works fine in Safe Mode. Well, now to begin trial and error...

damned

March 5th, 2016, 21:51

Wow... the plot thickens! The Surface are really nice devices. I hope you can find out what it is.

TMO

February 21st, 2017, 05:17

I see that this thread never advanced past last March. Last year I was using both a Surface Pro 3 and then a Surface Book. My experiences were about the same. I then migrated to a ThinkPad X1 Yoga. In all cases I am running with a Core i7, 16 GB RAM, and 500GB (or larger) SSD drive. Windows 10 64bit always patched up.

Even when I am just running FG locally, which I do often to update my game in preparation for the next session, I experience nearly unbearable lag. Just placing the cursor in front of a word and Shift+Ctrl+RightArrow to select a word can take 3 seconds. Same with right-clicking to bring up the radial-menu. Ironically, this is less noticeable in game sessions because there is so much activity and talking going on.

I have not yet attempted every suggestion to minimize background apps, resolution scaling, external monitors, etc., etc. I will do so, but I would very much like to know if there is a very specific way that I can give FG the highest priority in terms of resources. While my machine is not a gaming machine, it has the highest specs a business machine can have and I do not have lag with actual games (like Diablo or TF2).

I appreciate any ideas.

darrenan

February 21st, 2017, 05:35

Yeah, I gave up running FG on my Surface. Haven't looked at it since I started this thread.

LordEntrails

February 21st, 2017, 07:17

The only specific suggestion I would make is to check your graphics settings and turn off anti-aliasing if it is on.

Gwydion

February 21st, 2017, 13:29

The only specific suggestion I would make is to check your graphics settings and turn off anti-aliasing if it is on.

Just for my info as I'm always trying to learn, what doe turning anti-aliasing off do? Thanks!

LordEntrails

February 21st, 2017, 15:39

Just for my info as I'm always trying to learn, what doe turning anti-aliasing off do? Thanks!
I can't find a good picture demonstrating it at the moment, but if you take a straight black line and draw it at an angle across a white screen. Think about how you have to break that into pixels. Your pixels are then either black or white right? And if your screen resolution (pixel per inch) is low enough, your line looks jagged. Got that?

Anti-aliasing instead "smoothes" that line. Not by adding pixels, but rather by changing the colors of the pixels of the line and the background. It softens the color (black and white becomes 50 Shades of Grey) as you get near to one of this line/pixel breaks so that it looks smooth(er) to your eye.

On high pixel per inch screens, you may not really need it. Such as on a HD phone, you would have to look really close to see a single pixel.

LordEntrails

February 21st, 2017, 15:42

Of course, now I found a good example image;
https://i.stack.imgur.com/pA7uy.png

Topdecker

February 21st, 2017, 16:58

I know it doesn't help, but I can confirm that there are no problems with the Surface 4 (i5, integrated graphics, 8gb memory). The dice have no delay, but obviously do not render every frame. Scrolling maps or text has no lag.

Nekkroe

March 16th, 2017, 07:23

I can confirm that on my Surface 3 the dice roll fine until one window gets opened (say the story tab) then the frames drop to &^%#.

sigh*

Allmight

March 24th, 2017, 14:38

I have the same problem. I run FG on a gaming rig (I5-4690K 3.5GHz, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB Samsung 850-EVO SSD, GeForce 970 GTX, Windows 10 Pro), and everything in FG feels sluggish and choppy. I have tried almost everything, including disabling Antialiasing and Anistrophic Filtering, but no noticable change.

It's still usable, but anoyingly slow.

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 14:55

I have not yet attempted every suggestion to minimize background apps, resolution scaling, external monitors, etc., etc. I will do so, but I would very much like to know if there is a very specific way that I can give FG the highest priority in terms of resources. While my machine is not a gaming machine, it has the highest specs a business machine can have and I do not have lag with actual games (like Diablo or TF2).

Okay, I have finally gone through all of the recommended configurations and nothing helps. Fantasy Grounds definitely needs some specific specs to work optimally but I don't know what those are. In an unrelated thread that Zacchaeus started, I commented how smoothly his new video tutorials were running. He provided me his machine specs but, IIRC, he also noted that due to Fantasy Grounds being single-threaded 32-bit software, beefier specs will not guarantee better performance.

Fair enough. I'm will to invest in a new box just for Fantasy Grounds but I don't want to put money down without some assurance that I am using good specs. Is there a place where minimum or recommended specs are published? I looked but couldn't find anything. Can the developers offer some wisdom here since they know best the underlying technology that runs Fantasy Grounds?

Allmight

March 24th, 2017, 16:02

Trenloe

March 24th, 2017, 16:59

Is there a place where minimum or recommended specs are published?
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/features/systemreqs.xcp

The big issue with dice looking choppy etc. is the DirectX v9 architecture used for 3D.

As far as the Surface Pro 3 goes - it really isn't built for high end graphical performance, and the large screen resolution (more than full HD) means that more of the system shared memory is used for graphics rather than the application.

You can try the usual things: update graphics driver, tune graphics settings, reduce the screen resolution, etc. that might help to give more acceptable performance. I run on a Surface Pro 3 and it's "OK" for me, but when I add another screen to it (lay flat on the table for battle maps) the screen refresh/update get very slow. But, I accept it as it's fine for displaying full size battle maps.

LordEntrails

March 24th, 2017, 17:00

I solved my problem.

I went into the BIOS/UEFI settings and disabled the integrated graphic chip, and now FG runs smoothly.

Seems the integrated CPU based graphic chip slow's FG down, even if it was not used (Nothing pluged into it).
Hmm, didn't know you could disable the onboard graphics. Might help me with other graphics issues I have from time to time (I don't have any problems with FG performance, but have seen it with games like Beseiged and others.)

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 17:15

I solved my problem.

I went into the BIOS/UEFI settings and disabled the integrated graphic chip, and now FG runs smoothly.

Seems the integrated CPU based graphic chip slow's FG down, even if it was not used (Nothing pluged into it).

That is very good information to know if/when I get a full PC built. At the moment, I'm using a laptop so disabling the integrated graphic chip would basically disable all video. :)

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 17:37

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/features/systemreqs.xcp

Thank you for posting that. Were you able to navigate to that page from the home page or did you just know where to find it? I simply do not see that page listed under the Features dropdown menu.

However, those are some very generic specs so I'm hoping we can get some recommendations based on the underlying technology in Fantasy Grounds. There is a big difference between specs that will run software and specs that will allow software to run well. I'm looking for the latter.

The big issue with dice looking choppy etc. is the DirectX v9 architecture used for 3D.

Well, choppy dice isn't really my issue. I'm encounter general slowness in everything...including typing.

As far as the Surface Pro 3 goes - it really isn't built for high end graphical performance, and the large screen resolution (more than full HD) means that more of the system shared memory is used for graphics rather than the application.

I realize this is a long thread and it began as a discussion related to the Surface Pro 3, but when I renewed the thread I noted my device is an X1 Yoga. I'm not saying this changes the nature of the beast, but I wanted to point out that this affects more than just Surface devices (which I also have a Pro 3 and a Book).

The link you provided has relatively low requirements:

Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
DirectX 9.0 or better
DirectX 9.0 compatible video adapter
RAM: 4 GB
Internet Connection

I'm running Windows 10 64bit, DirectX 12, 16GB RAM, 250/25MBs internet, and an 8MB Intel HD 520 card.

So, I'm going to assume that the weak link in this chain is my video card...although I would have expected it to be more than adequate for Fantasy Grounds. I don't have video problems with other games like TF2 or Diablo (although I'm not sure those are fair comparisons).

You can try the usual things: update graphics driver, tune graphics settings, reduce the screen resolution, etc. that might help to give more acceptable performance. I run on a Surface Pro 3 and it's "OK" for me, but when I add another screen to it (lay flat on the table for battle maps) the screen refresh/update get very slow. But, I accept it as it's fine for displaying full size battle maps.

The only thing I haven't tried is to reduce the screen resolution. I have made sure I'm not scaling my font size as I had read that can affect performance...but it didn't help matters in my case. My reservation about reducing screen resolution that Fantasy Grounds doesn't provide an easy way to switch between open windows. To remedy this I like to run a higher resolutions (which, BTW, are my native and recommended resolutions for my device). Otherwise, my screen gets cluttered (different topic and different thread).

Trenloe

March 24th, 2017, 18:12

LordEntrails

March 24th, 2017, 20:34

I agree with Trenloe on this, it's more likely to be the graphics driver and/or DirectX related.

DirectX 9 is pretty old, and it doesn't always play nice with newer versions of things. That's why I wouldn't recommend a new system for FG. I would even try dropping the graphics performance settings overall if you are having problems.

Though it did not cause problems with FG, I did have an issue with the graphics of a CAD program because of a driver for my USB docking station (a DELL). The CAD program was crashing Windows with an error about dlkmd.sys, which actually had nothing to do with the CAD program. Once uninstalling the USB docking station drivers, the problem went away.

All that is to say, consider your other graphic related drivers that might be causing the problems.

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 21:17

The specs are linked from the individual license page in the store.

Your specs are fine, it will more than likely be 3D/graphics card/drivers/config issues. Have you tried different driver versions? Have you tried the bog standard Microsoft generic driver? (Just as a test).

What resolution do you run at?

Native resolution is 2560 x 1440. I have not tried different driver versions nor a bog standard Microsoft generic driver. I'll try out those options. I'll report back when I do. Thanks.

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 21:19

Allmight

March 24th, 2017, 21:57

Native resolution is 2560 x 1440. I have not tried different driver versions nor a bog standard Microsoft generic driver. I'll try out those options. I'll report back when I do. Thanks.

That is a very high resolution. Without a dedicated graphics card that is able to power higher than standard HD resolutions you will most often get lag issues that makes the game/app feel very sluggish. This is common on tablets that use very high resolutions, and some notebooks, this is most likely the case. I would recomend going down to a normal HD resolution, see if that makes it better.

TMO

March 24th, 2017, 22:02

That is a very high resolution. Without a dedicated graphics card that is able to power higher than standard HD resolutions you will most often get lag issues that makes the game/app feel very sluggish. This is common on tablets that use very high resolutions, and some notebooks, this is most likely the case. I would recomend going down to a normal HD resolution, see if that makes it better.

Yes, it is a high resolution because it is a business machine designed for apps like AutoCAD and other graphic intensive applications. I know that this doesn't always translate to other applications, especially if they are written with different imaging libraries...but I did think it was worth noting that the machine was designed to work well with these specs.

BenKimball

May 12th, 2017, 04:11

I'm having exactly the same problem on a new Dell Inspiron 13" with a 2.5 GHz processor, built-in Intel 620 graphics, DirectX 12, and 8 GB RAM on an upgraded SSD. I'm about to give up on FG altogether... it takes 4 to 5 seconds to move a window. It even takes about 2 seconds between a right-click and the time the radial menu opens. It's ridiculous. Especially considering I bought the laptop specifically and only to run Fantasy Grounds, then spent $200ish on FG itself. Right now it appears to be a total loss.

Ben

Moon Wizard

May 12th, 2017, 04:41

There are s few things you should check first:
* In FG Settings, make sure cross-platform compatibility mode is off.
* If running Steam, make sure Steam overlay is disabled for Fantasy Grounds.
* If running any other overlay software, make sure to disable for FG. (FRAPS, etc)
* Check to see if Intel has any other drivers on their web site, or any graphic options for your current driver. Sometimes options such as antialiasing can have a big impact for certain drivers. Try playing with any options you can find.

Some of the other forum folks might have other ideas too.

Regards,
JPG

Kinoto

May 11th, 2018, 10:52

I feel like I am beating a dead horse at this point...but I would like to add my 2 cents. I just got a new 5th gen surface pro, and I have noticed that fantasy grounds runs just fine and dandy....its only until I start opening up story entries that it starts lagging. Opening up the Story or Story entries cause the dice and dragging windows around to slow down quite a bit. BUT if I just open pictures or maps, nothing slows down at all, which is REALLY WIERD. I don't get it >.< lol.

Bidmaron

May 11th, 2018, 11:52

Welcome to the forums, kinoto. I am sorry I cannot help you on this though.

RoleforFun

May 11th, 2018, 16:32