Minecraft on Pandora


Even off it could run minecraft is slow on regular computers let alone something 1/5 the size and pocket addition was somewhat of a disappointment .
Again with the slow. Can you do a test? Press F3 to bring up the debug window and find out exactly how many FPS you're getting. What OS are you running? What version of Java? 32 or 64 bit? What video card?


I've got a 2.4Ghz processor running the same JRE as is on the Pandora and with full depth, fancy graphics, full screen, and I get 120FPS, sometimes 90FPS if I'm in the middle of dense forests. If I then reduce that to short distance, fast graphics, and an approximately 800x480 window, I get over 400FPS. Scaling this back to 1/4 (600Mhz, with the caveat that 1 Mhz != 1 Mhz, but bear with me) you're still looking at between 30 and 100 frames, depending on the settings.


The only time I've noticed any relative slowness is when I run in Windows instead, getting maybe half as many frames at worst, but still a consistent 60-80FPS, nothing that I would consider slow. I don't have the greatest video card, the greatest CPU, or the best RAM; my PC is just over 5 years old at this point in time. I can't figure out what exactly is going on for the people that say it is slow. Every test I've done is blisteringly fast, or can be made blisteringly fast.


That being said, Minecraft is very floating point intensive, and if someone were to make the argument that it wouldn't run well because of the Pandora's difficulty with floating point math then I would consider that, but in all my tests on both Pandora and desktop I have seen nothing to suggest any major slowness on desktops that would necessarily make a Pandora port slow. It confuses the heck out of me, that so many would complain about slowness when I can't find any means of replicating that, and I don't like to be confused. :(
 
I run Minecraft on my machine. Intel core i5 2.6GHz, 3GB RAM and Minecraft runs at about 20fps with the latest update; previously it would run at between 5 and 10. It's a great game, but runs like a dog.


D.
 
You've probly got a 64bit system then(right clicking 'my computer' & selecting 'properties' will tell you if it is). If you've got a 64-bit system & don't have 64 bit Java installed(it doesn't by default when you install Java. You've gotta hunt it down on their site), then it'll run terribly.
 
You've probly got a 64bit system then(right clicking 'my computer' & selecting 'properties' will tell you if it is). If you've got a 64-bit system & don't have 64 bit Java installed(it doesn't by default when you install Java. You've gotta hunt it down on their site), then it'll run terribly.

Yeah, I have 64bit Java installed.


D.
 
I run Minecraft on my machine. Intel core i5 2.6GHz, 3GB RAM and Minecraft runs at about 20fps with the latest update; previously it would run at between 5 and 10. It's a great game, but runs like a dog.
So weird. I've got the Q6600, quad core @2.4Ghz. The number of cores shouldn't matter as Minecraft is single threaded. Only thing I can think of that could possibly make any kind of difference would be the Q6600's 2x4MB of L2 cache vs the i5's 256KB, but L2 cache couldn't have THAT much of an affect, could it? *turns on the Exophase signal*


Notch built in a very convenient profiler into the F3 debug screen. Can you see where most of your time is spent? 90% of my CPU is used in rendering (60% for the level, 25% for the GUI (WTF?), and 5-10% across other stuff) breaking down further into 25% for terrain and 15% for entities and 20% spread across everything else. I'm curious if yours is doing something different, spending more time in tick or lighting or something. For a brief time on the multiplayer server we had, we were experiencing major slowdowns due to spending a lot of time in "updateChunks" and "lighting": turns out someone had built a really fast lighthouse.
 
just tried on my core i5 2500 and got around 250 fps in windowed. and that's with the 32bit jre...
 
that's the C++ re-written pocket version, not the Java version for PC.


and even then its running around 5 to 10fps.
I'm sure the Minecraft Mobile would be the only possible versiion to run on the Pandora. No way, the "PC Minecraft" will ever run on the Pandora, at least not playable. I'm not even sure if LWJGL supports ARM.


The more effective way would be to just code a similar game dedicated straight for the Pandora. :) Something like Minecraft should actualy run very well, when it is not dependigng on Java. ^^
 
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Well, Intel does make low-power graphics cards(usually for laptops). They're good if you do casual usage, but garbage for games. My HP laptop had a dual graphics card setup & the option to switch between the two depending on whether you needed to save power or play some serious games(like Serious Sam 3). But, generally, you only get one & the Intels are bad for any demanding gaming.
 
250fps windowed on an i5 2500 with an AMD HD6950 using windows 7 64bits
 
So weird. I've got the Q6600, quad core @2.4Ghz. The number of cores shouldn't matter as Minecraft is single threaded. Only thing I can think of that could possibly make any kind of difference would be the Q6600's 2x4MB of L2 cache vs the i5's 256KB, but L2 cache couldn't have THAT much of an affect, could it? *turns on the Exophase signal*

No way is the big difference in performance due to the CPU, clearly it's the GPU. He doesn't say what generation i5 but "HD graphics" w/o a number attached suggests an Arrandale or Clarkdale.. I don't know what GPU you're using but it's probably many times better.


You wouldn't think a game like this would be so heavy on the GPU but lo and behold, that 90% CPU time in rendering is probably spent largely waiting on the GPU to finish (not everything is good about idling). That you get such different performance based on resolution is another big hint, rarely does a game's CPU requirements scale with resolution. On that note I don't think Dunny specified what resolution he's running at..


The game is probably just not very GPU friendly, if it's really using a lot of alpha test that's no real surprise, every modern GPU dislikes that.
 
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So weird. I've got the Q6600, quad core @2.4Ghz. The number of cores shouldn't matter as Minecraft is single threaded. Only thing I can think of that could possibly make any kind of difference would be the Q6600's 2x4MB of L2 cache vs the i5's 256KB, but L2 cache couldn't have THAT much of an affect, could it? *turns on the Exophase signal*

No way is the big difference in performance due to the CPU, clearly it's the GPU. He doesn't say what generation i5 but "HD graphics" w/o a number attached suggests an Arrandale or Clarkdale.. I don't know what GPU you're using but it's probably many times better.


You wouldn't think a game like this would be so heavy on the GPU but lo and behold, that 90% CPU time in rendering is probably spent largely waiting on the GPU to finish (not everything is good about idling). That you get such different performance based on resolution is another big hint, rarely does a game's CPU requirements scale with resolution. On that note I don't think Dunny specified what resolution he's running at..


The game is probably just not very GPU friendly, if it's really using a lot of alpha test that's no real surprise, every modern GPU dislikes that.

Core i5-480M on my laptop :)


And I run minecraft fullscreen, which is 1366x768.


D.
 
Right, that would be an old Arrandale, running at a pretty modest resolution. Its your GPU.
 
Right, that would be an old Arrandale, running at a pretty modest resolution. Its your GPU.

Yeah, I gathered as much - I bought the laptop because it was cheap and I needed to something to sit on the sofa with and code on, rather than play games. I don't tend to play games anymore unless I fire up a speccy emulator so graphical performance isn't quite so important.


Shame about minecraft though!


D.
 
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