Orbiting, zooming, textures all have slow performance - 9800GT

Hi all,

A friend has been using Sketchup to complete a TAFE course assessment and we've hit some problems with a new hardware upgrade.

His original system had Vista 32-bit, ATI X550 GPU, Intel E6300 CPU which allowed him to do some simple drawings but he was finding that when he started adding more detail in the textures that Sketchup wasn't running as smoothly as when he started (drawing, orbiting, and zooming become somewhat frustrating/unusable). As his system doesn't really meet the recommended specs for Sketchup, I loaned him a 6600GT that I had lying around thinking that the GPU upgrade might help. We installed it and Sketchup immediately performed excellently (meaning smooth performance when drawing, orbiting, zooming even with many textures) and he finished his assessment project with quite a detailed, textured drawing.

Having had success with the GPU upgrade, we went out and bought a 9800GT thinking this would make Sketchup sing. However, it's quite the opposite. It doesn't perform even remotely close to the 6600GT.

We have read through the Sketchup forums and tried adjusting some setting in Sketchup and the GPU settings. We've updated all the drivers for the GPU and DirectX and downloaded an OpenGL rendering test program (OpenGL Extension Viewer from www.realtech-vr.com/glview/ - which stated, after testing, that the 9800GT passed 100% of the tests for all OpenGL versions except 3.0). We've come to the end of what we think we can try - does anyone have any other suggestions?

As another test I installed Sketchup on my own system which uses Vista 64-bit, ATI 4870 GPU, Intel Q9400, and with some surprise found that it performed just as poorly as his system (we used the same drawing to compare).

I am wondering whether it has something to do with DirectX10 graphics cards seeing as though this is the major difference between when Sketchup worked well and didn't work well through our experiences. I

know Sketchup uses OpenGL for its computations but I'm stumped on what else it could be and what to try. Thanks for your time,

Wayne.

Wayne,

Have you tried older drivers as well? Sometimes they work better than the 'newest' driver. Example:

https://sites.google.com/site/sketchupsage/problems/gpu#TOC-Update-or-downgrade-the-graphics-driver

________________

I looked at...

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

...and found four drivers for the nVidia 9800GT.

GeForce Release 178.24, Oct 15, 2008

GeForce Release 178.13, Sep 25, 2008

GeForce Release 177.79, Jul 29, 2008

GeForce Release 177.92, Aug 26, 2008

Any help there?

All I can suggest is to experiment with these.

________________

My driver "widget" permits the setting of the OpenGL functions. I've read that "conformant texture clamp" can affect SketchUp's performance. Checking my driver settings, I do find that "conformant texture clamp" is turned off. Perhaps you can check your driver-interface program, and describe which settings are available for experimentation.

My driver permits me to define custom settings for individual programs, not just 'global' settings. Maybe yours does, too. Here are my current settings, recommended by nVidia/SketchUp, should they be of any use to you:

Ansitropic filtering : Off

Antialiasing - Gamma correction : Off

Antialiasing - Setting : Application-controlled

Antialiasing - Transparency : Off

Buffer-flipping mode : Auto-select

Conformant texture clamp : Off

Enable overlay : Off

Error reporting : Off

Exported pixel types : Color indexed overlays (8 bpp)

Extension limit : Off

Force stereo shuttering : Off

Maximize texture memory : On

Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration : Multiple display performance mode

Stereo - Display mode : Use on-board DIN connector

Stereo - Enable : Off

Stereo - Swap eyes : Off

Threaded optimization : Auto

Triple buffering : Off

Unified back/depth buffer : On

Vertical sync : Use the 3D application setting

(Acknowledged - you may not have all these settings available on the 9800GT.)

Regards,

Taff

______________________________

SketchUp Pro / Version 6.4.112

Windows XP Pro / SP3

DELL Precision M90 / 2 GB RAM

nVidia Quadro FX 1500M / 256 MB

nVidia driver: Forceware 162.65

Hi Taff,

Thanks for the quick reply!

I've tried two different drivers for the 9800GT, however I will try

the rest from the ones you listed and let you (and the forum) know if

any work. Thanks also for your list of custom settings for the

Quadro, I'll give them a try on the 9800GT (whatever ones we find) and

let you know if there's any change. May be a few days before I reply

though (weekend activities happening).

Cheers,

Wayne.

Wayne,

The attached image more clearly delineates which settings are global defaults, and which have been customized for SketchUp. (nVidia did the customizing, as part of their 'Partner Certified Drivers' program for Quadro cards.)

http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

Taff