[Shipping] Bad Performance on Low End PC Devices

riandrake · June 22, 2016, 1:01am

UPDATE: I just build the Tappy Chicken project to a Windows Shipping build, and according to the Steam FPS counter I was getting a consistent 15 fps on the Surface Pro 4

I started making a simple 2D game in UE4, to test out how it might perform on low end devices. The device that I was testing it on was the Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

Details:

Intel Iris Graphics 540
Intel Core i7-6650U CPU @ 2.20GHz
8GB RAM
250GB SSD

I loaded up the 2D side scroller demo as a new C++ project, made some small changes and built it in Shipping - in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. Tests on my PC were fine (120 fps), but when I tested it on the Surface, the performance was terrible (20 fps).

The game was played in full-screen, with a 1920x1080 resolution.

What I did to the basic template:

Replaced the character in the scene with an image of a fish, with only one frame of animation. The fish was relatively small in resolution.
Added some basic Slate UI for a Start Screen, In-Game UI and a Game-Over screen.
Lowered all graphics settings I could find to the absolute minimum such as setting the performance preset to “Scalable 2D/3D”, disabling Mobile HDR, disabling lighting, removing the post-process volume from the scene, etc etc.

Is there anything I can do here? Or is it just not going to run well on this device?

Tim_Hobson · July 13, 2016, 12:03pm

Hi riandrake,

Low-end specs are going to be a bottleneck for sure when it comes to performance. There are some things you can do to help curb this though.

Disable different Post Processing settings
Use Lower Resolutions for your game screen (1920x1080 is more expensive than using lower resolutions. See this page for common Screen Resolutions as a test.)
Engine Scalability. Use this as a reference for the console variables that you’ll want to set in your config files or setup through BPs/C++ to be editable in a menu system.

Lastly, you’ll want to profile your game to get the clearest image of what is going on performance wise and where you’re being hit with the bottleneck in your FPS.

Use the following documentation to help you investigate:

I hope this helps.

Tim