3 replies to this topic

[EvilSmile]

Hey folks,

I know why we have double buffering. The other day, I was talking to one of my pals and we couldn't come to a conclusion about why we need triple buffers.

Could someone shed some light on this...

Thanks

S_ES

[davepermen]

if you have vsync enabled, doublebuffering stalls when you do the swap, taking away cpu and gpu cycles to wait till you can swap the image to screen.

you don't have this with trible buffering (well, you still have, but only for a minimal time).

so you're not limited to 60fps or similar like before when using vsync. the screen will still display only 60fps. but that way, you can get 100% cpu power back again. wich can be important.

[EvilSmile]

davepermen said:

if you have vsync enabled, doublebuffering stalls when you do the swap, taking away cpu and gpu cycles to wait till you can swap the image to screen.

you don't have this with trible buffering (well, you still have, but only for a minimal time).

so you're not limited to 60fps or similar like before when using vsync. the screen will still display only 60fps. but that way, you can get 100% cpu power back again. wich can be important.

Could you elaborate upon that.
i.e, is it constantly drawing by alternating between the two backbuffers or is it drawing in the two backbuffers and waitign for the drawing to finish to start drawing again....
(or is it something completely different?)

[davepermen]

on swapbuffers it normally waits for vsync (if enabled). now it doesn't, and at vsync it copies to a third buffer, wich is the primary buffer..

that way you don't get the stall