The performance impact from processing clipped triangles in state-of-the-art games.

Background. Modern game applications pressures hardware to its limits, and affects how graphics hardware and APIs are designed. In games, rendering geometry plays a vital role, and the implementation of optimization techniques, such as view frustum culling, is generally necessary to meet the quality expected by the customers. Failing to optimize a game application can potentially lead to higher system requirements or less quality in terms of visual effects and content. Many optimization techniques, and studies of the performance of such techniques exist. However, no research was found where the utilization of computational resources in the GPU, in state-of-the-art games, was analyzed. Objectives. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the potential problem of commercial game applications wasting computational resources. Specifically, the focus was set on the triangle data processed in the geometry stage of the graphics pipeline, and the amount of triangles discarded through clipping. Methods. The objectives were met by conducting a case study and an empirical data analysis of the amount triangles and entire draw calls that were discarded through clipping, as well as the vertex data size and the time spent on processing these triangles, in eight games. The data was collected using Triangelplockaren, a tool which collects the triangle data that reaches the rasterizer stage. This data was then analyzed and discussed through relational findings in the results. Results. The results produced consisted of 30 captures of benchmark and gameplay sessions. The average of each captured session was used to make observations and to draw conclusions. Conclusions. This study showed evidence of noteworthy amounts of data being processed in the GPU which is discarded through clipping later in the graphics pipeline. This was seen in all of the game applications included in this study. While it was impossible to draw conclusions regarding the direct impact on performance, it was safe to say that the performance relative to the geometry processed was significant in each of the analyzed cases, and in many cases extreme