We have tested the shipped version of our UE4 game on two different notebooks, with Intel Core i7-4720HQ and Nvidia GTX 970M. On both machines the game runs fine with constant 60 FPS. Then we tested the same build on a desktop PC, Intel Core i5 and Nvidia GTX 660 Ti, there it runs with constant 60 FPS as well.
Now we tested the same build on another notebook, with Intel Core i5-2430 and NVIDIA GT540M. Here the game runs with ~5 FPS, and more than 110 ms frame time. When running “stat scenerendering” in the console on that notebook we can see that most time is spent in “RenderQuery Result”, with ~100 ms:
Unfortunately it is a bit hard for us to find the issue here, because there is such a huge gap between that one notebook and all other machines we have tested the game on yet. That notebook is not great, but also not that bad. I have played a few modern (AAA) games with medium gfx settings on it.
We use the new 4.8 foliage tool with about 2k mesh instances. That mesh is quite simple, only one plane with a texture on it (which includes transparent areas). Beside that I think nothing special…
Does this “RenderQuery Result” issue ring any bell with you guys?
Well, I know that GPU is not great. But as said, it is fast enough to play for example the latest Wasteland on medium settings with ~25-30 FPS. I have not expected that notebook to run the game as fast as the other machines. However, why is it that bad?
It’s bad because it’s a mobile GPU, which in general aren’t very powerful, and it’s also near the bottom of that series of GPU’s, and it’s 4 years old, even the best GPU’s of that time aren’t that great anymore.
Adding to Darthviper’s answer: Mobile GPUs are generally weaker, sometimes even significant weaker, than their desktop counterparts and unless you have a notebook/laptop with gaming in mind you will have to sacrifice graphical fidelity for FPS, there is no way around that.
Well, I am aware of that fact and I don’t expect that notebook to be as fast as a PC equivalent.
I am however surprised that it has such a bad performance, I was not expecting this at all.
I’m not at all, it’s not even as powerful as a (nearly) decade old GTX 8800… It’s well below the min specs of the engine, I’m actually surprised it runs at all…
I had a more powerful mobile GPU in an old laptop that ran Mass Effect 2 @ 5 FPS.
if you really want your game to work on any PC give it possibility to downgrade graphics by a lot, you cant just make it work, unreal is not that kind of game engine
We did, the game allows to set all those quality settings down to a bare minimum.
It helps a bit, but performance on that older notebook is still quite bad…
