The heck is this? - "Waiting for GPU"

I went on a quest to find what was making my game run slow (40 fps when it should be 60.) Naturally the first thing I did was open up Scout, and this shows up a ton:
http://imgur.com/agnc9

What the heck is “waiting for GPU”? Is it a problem with my code, or my computer? And is there something I can do about it? I’m not using Stage3D, also.

Your GPU is your graphics card. The information to render on the screen has to go through that first, and then go to the screen. The same thing applies to everything you see on your screen.

In any case, a lot of computers (especially older ones) won’t be able to run a game at 60FPS with very much going on on-screen at once. 60 seems a little excessive. Besides, after about 45FPS, the visible difference is almost unnoticable to humans.

I understand what GPU is, what I’m wondering is why Flash decides to fill all the time I didn’t use, with that time.

Plus, I like 60 FPS. I made one of my first prototypes and now 30FPS looks really choppy for me.

E: I tried 48 FPS and I like it. Feels like 60 but runs closer to 30.

If you look closely it says inactive, which means that everything you want has completely and that waiting for GPU time is just a filler.

How do I actually install Scout? I’ve got the creative cloud license, and downloaded it, but whenever I try to run the installer, nothing happens. Using Vista, 32bit.

EDIT: Turns out the version I have is 64 bit. Is there any way to get a 32 bit version of Scout?

Originally posted by qwerber:

If you look closely it says inactive, which means that everything you want has completely and that waiting for GPU time is just a filler.

But why does it fill over the time I need? For example, 60fps allows for approx. 16.6 ms per frame, so why is it filling in 30-40ms at times?

Originally posted by RTL_Shadow:

But why does it fill over the time I need? For example, 60fps allows for approx. 16.6 ms per frame, so why is it filling in 30-40ms at times?

you or some library you’re using is making a call to something to get info from the GPU; or contacting it in some other way. perhaps just rendering the screen at all is going through the GPU (regardless of Stage3D: just standard hardware acceleration). if it’s the latter, your graphics are too intense

What is Scout actually? I can’t find it on Google.

Originally posted by JohnnyBohnny:

What is Scout actually? I can’t find it on Google.

http://gaming.adobe.com/technologies/scout/

Alright, what would trigger getting info from the GPU? Are there certain things I need to look out for?

Originally posted by RTL_Shadow:

Alright, what would trigger getting info from the GPU? Are there certain things I need to look out for?

graphics :D

E: perhaps you can tell us what codes you area doing in the frame?

Originally posted by qwerber:

Originally posted by RTL_Shadow:

Alright, what would trigger getting info from the GPU? Are there certain things I need to look out for?

E: perhaps you can tell us what codes you area doing in the frame?

what?

Originally posted by feartehstickman:

How do I actually install Scout? I’ve got the creative cloud license, and downloaded it, but whenever I try to run the installer, nothing happens. Using Vista, 32bit.

EDIT: Turns out the version I have is 64 bit. Is there any way to get a 32 bit version of Scout?

I would like to find out that too, i can’t install Scount on windows xp 32 bit.

Originally posted by AMD_Paulius_J:

Originally posted by feartehstickman:

How do I actually install Scout? I’ve got the creative cloud license, and downloaded it, but whenever I try to run the installer, nothing happens. Using Vista, 32bit.

EDIT: Turns out the version I have is 64 bit. Is there any way to get a 32 bit version of Scout?

I would like to find out that too, i can’t install Scount on windows xp 32 bit.

Do all the people using it in this thread have a 64bit OS, or am I failing to see somthing blatantly obvious?

Originally posted by feartehstickman:

Originally posted by AMD_Paulius_J:

Originally posted by feartehstickman:

How do I actually install Scout? I’ve got the creative cloud license, and downloaded it, but whenever I try to run the installer, nothing happens. Using Vista, 32bit.

EDIT: Turns out the version I have is 64 bit. Is there any way to get a 32 bit version of Scout?

I would like to find out that too, i can’t install Scount on windows xp 32 bit.

Do all the people using it in this thread have a 64bit OS, or am I failing to see somthing blatantly obvious?

It seems so; I have it on the lap but had no luck trying to install it on the desktop.

I’m still a bit confused on whats going on here, it seems “Waiting for GPU” stacks on way more than it should, up to 680%.

Alright so it seems that every fourth frame is the one that adds on a lot more than it should, often just with “Waiting for next frame”. For example, in this screenshot:

You can see every fourth frame, the light grey line shoots up, athough nothing in particular is happening that frame. My budget time is 21, but it adds 33ms. Any idea why this happens?

Maybe I’m just stupid, but I feel as if it shouldn’t be happening.

You are looking at the wrong thing I think. That gray bar in the background isn’t any of those. I think that is the Waiting for next frame, which is fine.

Originally posted by UnknownGuardian:

You are looking at the wrong thing I think. That gray bar in the background isn’t any of those. I think that is the Waiting for next frame, which is fine.

Yeah, but “Waiting for Next Frame” is 33ms, my budget is 21. This causes a stutter during gameplay.

More info: I started a new project with 48FPS and with nothing in it, the same thing happens. If I up the FPS, the jumps in “Waiting for next frame” happen less frequently, until I get to 60FPS, at which the jump is nonexistant.

isn’t 30 fps pretty good? Also I’ve had similar problems, try swapping around with different versions of flash player.

Originally posted by qwerberberber:

isn’t 30 fps pretty good? Also I’ve had similar problems, try swapping around with different versions of flash player.

No, it’s pretty terrible, to be honest. Any GPU that isn’t older than ten years should be having 200+ fps at the very least when doing basic stuff like this.

I’ve made multiple prototypes and 30FPS looks like crap to my eyes for some reason.
This is getting ridiculous. Now when I play my game at 60fps it runs at 30fps because of this stupid Waiting for GPU thing. My budget is 17ms at 60fps, yet Waiting for GPU fills up 30ms. I’m so sick of Flash.

example: http://i.imgur.com/jkw4e.png

So, I just found this from over here
If your framerate is jittering, oscillating, or following a sawtooth pattern, you could be experiencing a Flash Player problem relating to synchronization between the CPU and GPU. Adobe is working on this.

So that probably means I can’t do anything about it.

Would that be a problem particular to your machine? Or with the swf itself?

Originally posted by feartehstickman:

Would that be a problem particular to your machine? Or with the swf itself?

I hope to God it’s my machine. FP has been acting really funky lately, here’s a small list:
- Whenever first built in FlashDevelop, the bar in the bottom left will start, saying “Waiting for Flash Player to Connect to Debugger”. It doesn’t reach the end for about 5 minutes or so, and then it does not allow me to press the “Stop Debugging” button
- Scout problem
- Sometimes processes freeze up (i.e. FlashPlayerDebugger.exe). I then have to manually end them

There’s more but I can’t think of them.

I see the same issues, I decided to to scout a few swf online and the sawtooth problem practically vanish for me when using chrome and is most prominent with FireFox and the flash debugger. I am using 11.6.602.171 for chrome, and x.×.×.168 in FF and standalone debugger.