Android Tegra 2 performances slower than iPad

Hello,
i switched a project to android from iPad. Then i tested with framerate and the ipad1 was better then the tegra2 tablet!
There were about 10fps of difference.
I think it's a problem of the engine. Tegra 2 should be about 2 times faster on 3d engines than iPad1.

Does anyone know anything about this?

thank you

 

A lot depends also on the drivers used. If you let a noob driving a Ferrari it will be much slower than an F1 pilot driving a go kart

 

Thats pretty much it, the driver quality on Tegra and many other Android devices is where apple was with iOS2 to early iOS3 and its not getting better at a comparable rate as on iOS where iOS4 made a major difference as not Google is doing them but each hardware manufacturer creates the base and the handset creator further ops them (fragmentation problem on responsibility and same hw = same experience) ... or doesn't one should say, I think the Xperia Play is the only android to day with driver optimizations on a level competitive to iOS, the rest is on a level below Linux driver quality as you will find out when you search for Galaxy S or more or less all HTC / LG devices as well for example. They stutter around in a range of 50% of their theoretical capabilities and alike. With the current driver quality, android will need the NGPs hardware specs to compete with the iPad2 / iPhone5

 

The device tested was an Acer Iconia Tab A500.....
I'll wait for the new Asus Tranformer tab and pray for a driver optimization...

 

keep in mind that tegra2 is not tegra2. there are 4 models, 2 being tablet targeted and 2 being phone targeted. unhappily the later get used far too often on tablets and that although they suffer with the tablet resolution (as did the SGX535 on ipad1).

also keep in mind to not compare against the ipad2, cause against that, there is no competitive android device even purely on the hardware at the time, as it comes equipped with dual gpu

 

I'm comparing with ipad 1, and it's worse

 

I don't think this is a Tegra driver issue on the device. For example, there are many games developed for Honeycomb that are impressive graphics-wise and that run perfectly fine on my tab. However, running my Galaxy Tab from Unity grants me 50+ FPS. Running the exact same build on the A500 tab gets me ~10 FPS. Not to mention that Open GL 1.1 mode doesn't even work.

I think this isn't a hardware issue and is just something that Unity should look in to. You can't just sweep it under the rug and say that all the manufacturers have poor graphics drivers.

This is an impressive spec'ed machine compared to the Galaxy Tab.

 

maybe google should google to find a solution.

 

If on the galaxy it run fast and not on A500 i think it's a driver issue, why not?

 

Because its not the same hardware actually.
Galaxy is a PowerVR SGX540, which is a real mobile gpu, while nvidia found it funny to take a crap GF5 or GF6 and shrink it (I think its about the only OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware that has no unified shader units. they really went the desktop stone age way of dedicated vertex and dedicated pixel units and you just pay badly for that for games that focus on using only one, which most actually do as most of the favor pixel shaders near exclusively)

But naturally the reference drivers might be pretty bad as well or the modification the hardware manufacturer did.
Google are not involved with this as they don't impact it. As with windows its the endusers decision which driver is used, just that the "enduser" for this driver decision is the hardware maker, not you, but you can always hope for a custom rom that overcomes it by using other drivers

 

I have to wait for Asus Transformer and see about the drivers....
if the drivers are not good i have to move to the ipad2

 

well against the ipad 2 it has no chance anyway. the tegra2 can compete with a single SGX543, but not with the dual SGX543 in the ipad2

 

I have same problem like evildingo, I have the trial version of Unity 3.3 for android, on my iphone 4 with my lagoon scene opengles 1.1 shaders, I have over 30 fps in HD, but on my asus transformer tablet I have only 10-12fps. Antialiasing don't work, pro effect don't work.

 

That seems to be an ASUS issue. There are many threads out there claiming 5-10fps on titles, video, etc. that get 35-40fps on Galaxy Tab.


EDIT: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1135471&page=2

 

Yes, it seems...

But I have Riptide GP (beautiful game, tegra II optimized : water reflection, mesh deformation, multiple particles, and more), and I don't have any lag (all graphic to high-spec), and at shop I saw Samuray II and Guerilla Bob that runs pretty good...

I don't understand, why on device with lower spec (iPhone4) I have more fps, than with my tablet.

Ok, iphone have a resolution lower than asus transformer, but the difference is impressive.

 

Drivers.

 

Maybe, but why others games like Riptide Gp work very well with same drivers? that's illogical...

I think Unity don't work with Hardware Accelerated mode on Android 3.x, but in Software mode

 

Unity can not even run in software. If a device has no HW GPU acceleration it fails plain out to even start. Please don't spread such rumors.

Reason that other games run better on it are varying.
Games that are optimized for it just run better, one of that optimizations includes keeping in mind that Tegra sux like hell.
Not from the theoretical performance point of view, but from the practical way NVIDIA short cutted the required and expected research. The Tegra2 has the only mobile OpenGL ES 2.0 gpu that does not use unified shader units but which is on "GeForce 5 / 6" class 2005 style hardware where a shader unit can only do vertex shader or pixel shader. consequence of that is that the platform is significantly weaker at adapting to games that are primarily vertex shader heavy or primarily pixel shader heavy.
Thats a problem no iOS device ever had, nor do Samsung, LG, HTC devices have that problem for example.

Also, depending on the device, there is the problem that the drivers are outdated, not as optimized or are not integrated in the custom environment of the corresponding device well enough. As a worst case, look at the xoom, its basically impossible to F*** it up even worse than they do and they got the well deserved punishment in form of a total flop with the device

 

its simple. if you take rendering path a on a gpu with bad drivers it will lag like hell, while rendering path b won't lag like hell. that driving game was tailored for it in mind. this doesn't mean unity sucks, it means the drivers suck.

 

LMAO, you are a wise man.

 

anyone think its just the fact that tegra 2 has problems with overdraw that ipad doesnt have... I think i heard that somewhere on these forums. Basically you gotta build the game a certain way to make it run better. For instance maybe the tegra 2 can push more polygons (just guessing .. not stating fact), but... maybe the overdraw is killing your framerate. I know it hurt one of my apps bad where i had some pretty dense models overlapping... when i was zoomed out perfect frame rate, but when it took up the entire screen... its like every pixel had to do the over draw thing and it dropped me to like 5 fps.