optimized by post-T&L vertex cache

Sorry I meant to also ask how large are the triangles with the "large" case. Are any being clipped or off-screen culled?
I've been trying to think if might be due to fill-rate behaviour but I need a bit more information. Do you know the frame rates for four situations? What's the resolution of the image?

This probably won't have much effect, but could you try removing your "FIFO pre-load" of the vertices or, if you still want to have some effect on XBox (or perhaps all Nvidia chips???), just preload say, vertices 1 to 4? I suspect it's not helping you with the ATI HW.

 

Do you just do two strips next to each other (+ the first cache filling "strip")?

What I'm interested in is what happens after vertex 44 in your case. New PrimeVertexCache or a new strip like 44, 30, 30, 45, 31, 46, ... .
If it's the second case, how many parallel strips do you do between each PrimeVertex? (I would call the example you gave 1+2 strips.)

Btw, what's the framerates in the two small-poly cases?

I have a theory, but don't know if it holds water.

 

OK I'm guessing here.....

Your performance probably becomes partially setup bound as you reduce the tri size, and the optimised version has more degenerate tris in it than the none optimised version. Abrash's suggestion is spoecifically for NV2X which has a special case for degenerate setup which will in most cases prevent this, R9XXX may or may not.

 

Do you mean the optimized code with reduced tri size is slower than the unoptimized code with small tris, or slower than the optimized code with large tris?

 

Then ERP's explanation is perfectly possible.

 

Ok.

Would you be so kind enough to tell us how the post-T&L vertex cache of the R300 operates?

1. How many vertices can the cache hold? (I know that the DX9 optimization docs say to query the driver but the result is "not-supported".)

2. Does the cache has a FIFO or LRU organization, or something else?

3. Does the R300 benefiting from using optimized triangle strips instead of optimized triangle lists?

4. Are the degenerate triangles are rejected with triangle setup rate, or are they rejected much faster by detecting repeated indices?

5. Is the content of the cache preserved between DIP calls if there's no render state / VB changes between them?

If you cannot give the answers (or get them), please say so, I'll try dev-support next.
(But I think it would be better to publish the info - it's in ATI's interest!)

 

When it comes to ATI hardware I only comment on things I have read on the public internet, I sleep better that way, so I'm afraid you'll have to try dev support unless one of the other ATI guys here can answer.

I would observe that if a DX9 query says 'not supported' then you cannot assume anything.