3D runs slower on x50v/x51v than on HP4700

[hidefguy]

FYI, if anyone's interested - I program in both Direct3D Mobile and OpenGL on the x50v/x51v. I've just upgraded my HX4700 to Windows Mobile 5.0, and have been able to compare the efficiency of a medical viz program that I've written on it. Amazingly, the HX4700 renders the 3D more efficiently than on the x51v. This is a little surprising since the x51v has hardware 3D acceleration via Intel's 2700G GPU, whereas the HX4700 has only 2D acceleration via an ATI Imageon 3220 chip. This could mean a few things; it's known that the Direct3D driver on the axim is not very good in dealing with large amounts of polygon rendering and using lighting, but this makes that very clear. Secondly, HP (ATI?) must have done a great job leveraging the 2D acceleration in the HX4700 (which is a very nice piece of hardware). Microsoft has a D3DM lighting demo at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181020.aspx which runs at less than half the speed on the x51v as it does on the HP - go figure. [correction - I went back and rechecked, and the x51v runs the lighting demo program only slightly slower - I must have had it in power save mode when I first tried.]

Overall, I would add that WM5 seems to be a much nicer user experience on the HX4700 than on the x51v.

[bluevolume]

That demo is a very simple app that doesn't really tell us much. There are some openGL demos for the x50v/x51v that really show what it can do (search around here for it).

It very possible that HP has better 2D drivers, the Axim's have always fallen behind in that category.

[hidefguy]

That demo is a very simple app that doesn't really tell us much. There are some openGL demos for the x50v/x51v that really show what it can do (search around here for it).

It very possible that HP has better 2D drivers, the Axim's have always fallen behind in that category.

Oh I agree, it is a simple demo, but that's not the point - I'm not hammering on the X50v/x51v - I've written programs in OpenGL|ES on the x50v that fly, I was pointing out that the drivers to do 3D programming in the Direct3D API to all intents and purposes are broken for anything but relatively simplistic use. I've written a medical application with D3D that runs faster on the HP than on the dell, so something's seriously wrong.

I've put a side-by-side comparison movie on my web site of the Dell and the HP running the lighting demo - note the obvious FPS difference:
http://mobile.sdsc.edu/devices.html#pdadell

[bluevolume]

Oh I agree, it is a simple demo, but that's not the point - I'm not hammering on the X50v/x51v - I've written programs in OpenGL|ES on the x50v that fly, I was pointing out that the drivers to do 3D programming in the Direct3D API to all intents and purposes are broken for anything but relatively simplistic use. I've written a medical application with D3D that runs faster on the HP than on the dell, so something's seriously wrong.

I've put a side-by-side comparison movie on my web site of the Dell and the HP running the lighting demo - note the obvious FPS difference:
http://mobile.sdsc.edu/devices.html#pdadell

I see what you're saying. My x51v performed the same as your video showed, interresting to see how well the HP handled it. Watching my Dell, it looks like something is wrong with that app, the device is working too hard for a simple demo. Maybe the Dell drivers are bad, or maybe the Intel chip isn't compatible with the new D3D standard.

Let us know if you figure anything out. There is a ROM update coming for the x51v soon so maybe we'll see some improvements there.

Edit -- I Googled a bit and found this: http://blogs.msdn.com/markprenticems/
Doesn't look good!

I've put a side-by-side comparison movie on my web site of the Dell and the HP running the lighting demo - note the obvious FPS difference:
http://mobile.sdsc.edu/devices.html#pdadell

That's pretty sad for the dell. Have you checked to see your demo app would run faster if rendered in software on the dell?

Is the HP always faster or is it just with this demo app? If the hp is always faster, then is the 3d hardware on the axim pointless? If the dell is faster in your other 3d apps, then perhaps you can figure out what 3d features used in your demo app are causing a bottlenecking the dell.

[hidefguy]

I Googled a bit and found this: http://blogs.msdn.com/markprenticems/

Yes thanks, that's a great article from Mark Prentice.

That's pretty sad for the dell. Have you checked to see your demo app would run faster if rendered in software on the dell?

Is the HP always faster or is it just with this demo app? If the hp is always faster, then is the 3d hardware on the axim pointless? If the dell is faster in your other 3d apps, then perhaps you can figure out what 3d features used in your demo app are causing a bottlenecking the dell.

It's worth remembering that this relates to the Intel 2700G D3D 3D driver only, and not the Intel 2700G OpenGL ES driver. As bluevolume pointed out, the PowerVR demos for the x50v/x51v are written with the OpenGL|ES API and are just awesome and show how 3D capable the device is, not to mention that excellent pool program written for the x50v who's name I've forgotten. No, the HP is not always faster - with Pocket-Jongg, which is written in CF with Managed D3D, the axim is faster, but it still runs OK on the HP. For my medical application, which shows simple skinned 3D organ model meshes, it runs faster on the HP. This is relevant since I upgraded the HP to WM5 with the idea of showing at a meeting how much faster the app runs on a hardware-accelerated device (x51v) than in software (HX4700) - it's just as well I checked this out before the presentation..!

Bottom line is that the x50v/x51v remains a very cool and capable device, but the Microsoft 3D API support on it needs further work. They've been aware of this for sometime at Microsoft, so I'm sure they're pushing Dell/Intel for a solution. Since most 3D games and 3D applications written for the x50v/x51v use the OpenGL|ES 3D API, this is less of a problem than it sounds.