• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root [International] Galaxy S3 - poor performance in new games?

M

moeburn

Newbie
I have a rooted Galaxy S3 (SGH-I747M) with Bell Canada, with stock rom. I believe this is the 2-core version, not the quad-core, because I only have two CPUs listed in SystemPanel.

I have seen videos of people playing the latest games like NOVA 3 and Modern Combat 4 on their Galaxy S3. My S3 can play games like Dead Trigger, Dead Trigger 2, SG: Deadzone, Asphalt 8, at 45-60fps (using FPS Meter app) on 'low' settings, and 30-45fps on 'high' settings.

But when I try to play NOVA 3, I get a horribly unplayable framerate of 10-15fps. Is this because I only have the dual core CPU? Could someone else with a Canadian GS3 confirm this?
 
It's nothing to do with the amount of cores, it's probably the case that the Galaxy S3 your comparing to is just a different version to yours, different GPU's.

Maybe Gameloft did a rushed job optimizing the game for your version of the Galaxy S3, that's probably why is runs like crap.

Then again I know for a fact the Galaxy S3 can't maintain 30-45fps in some if not all the games you listed on high settings, so I question where your getting this information.

Even the Galaxy S4 can't maintain those framerates in all these games and it's massively faster than the S3, I mean Asphalt 8 30-45fps on high? really? no chance, even on my Galaxy S4 it struggles to average 30fps.
 
Shocky said:
It's nothing to do with the amount of cores, it's probably the case that the Galaxy S3 your comparing to is just a different version to yours, different GPU's.

Maybe Gameloft did a rushed job optimizing the game for your version of the Galaxy S3, that's probably why is runs like crap.

Then again I know for a fact the Galaxy S3 can't maintain 30-45fps in some if not all the games you listed on high settings, so I question where your getting this information.

Even the Galaxy S4 can't maintain those framerates in all these games and it's massively faster than the S3, I mean Asphalt 8 30-45fps on high? really? no chance, even on my Galaxy S4 it struggles to average 30fps.
Click to expand...

My apologies, you're right, I thought I was running Asphalt 8 on high, turns out it was on medium. I get 30-40fps on medium, but only 15-20 on high. I am getting this info from FPS Meter app, which can also show min, max, and average for the last minute.

Also for some reason, my gamepad is no longer working with Asphalt 8. I had it working before. But the tests I did on Dead Trigger 1 and 2, and SG: Deadzone, were using my gamepad. I was getting 45-60 fps on medium on DT1, and 30-45fps on high on DT1. DT2 only has low and high, and it's the same story. 45-60 on low, 30-45 on high, except for split second major dips when, for example, I explode a dozen zombies at once, then the framerate kinda fails for a bit, but the game is more than playable on high on my S3.

SG: Deadzone is difficult to test, because when a poor wifi internet connection causes in-game lag, the framerate dips too. And for some reason, SG: Deadzone's net coding causes a lot of missing ACKs over wifi, so it lags quite often. FPS Meter told me my average framerate was 26 when graphics were set to "high", but when it wasn't lagging, I was seeing framerates from 25-35, usually around 30. Very playable.

And man, it is a huge difference to go from low to high. The character models go from being like N64 characters to Xbox 360 characters. What appears to be bloom, SSAO, enhanced reflections and real shadows, and a greater number of total polygons everywhere, they all suddenly appear when graphics are set to 'high', and they all contribute to making the game look less like Quake, and more like FarCry 3. 60 fps is nice, but I'm used to playing 30-fps on my medium-spec PC. So I don't mind having a medium spec phone that I only paid $50 for :D

But I couldn't even get NOVA 3 running on 'low' without 15fps framerates.

edit: nevermind, it appears NOVA 3 has no graphics settings.
 
The Galaxy S3 regardless of the version does not have a fast GPU, it's passable in most games but in more complex games the developers have to do allot more work optimizing to get playable framerates. Basically some games developers put the effort in and some don't.

So i'm not surprised some games have low framerates, also it's worth noting there is overhead from using FPS Meter which means your framerate is a little lower when using it, please bare that in mind.
 
Shocky said:
The Galaxy S3 regardless of the version does not have a fast GPU, it's passable in most games but in more complex games the developers have to do allot more work optimizing to get playable framerates. Basically some games developers put the effort in and some don't.

So i'm not surprised some games have low framerates, also it's worth noting there is overhead from using FPS Meter which means your framerate is a little lower when using it, please bare that in mind.
Click to expand...

Well I found out that my Canadian SGH-I747M has both the weaker CPU and the weaker GPU, out of all the Galaxy S3 variants. Only a dual core CPU, and only the Adreno 225 GPU. It does have 2GB of RAM, which I believe is pretty high for smartphones (my last phone was an Atrix, I don't get new ones very often, so I don't really know whats good and whats not), but I don't seem to be benefiting from the extra RAM at all; Even the games that perform well on my S3, even the best performer on my phone which is Dead Trigger 1, they all suffer from "stutters", which is to say that they can maintain a 30-60fps framerate, but every 15-30 seconds or so, that will drop to 1-2fps for sometimes a full second, while the game loads a different texture or model or whatever from the EMMC. Now I know some games will intentionally pause when you walk into a new room while it loads the next part of the level, thats not what I'm talking about. Nor am I talking about the expected loss in framerate when there's a ton of actors or enemies or particles on screen. These microstutters seem to happen at random, and that fits the symptom description of having too little RAM.

So while it worries me that every new Android game made from this day on will be too graphically complex to play on my S3 at a decent framerate, I'm still having loads of fun with all the current and older gamepad-supported games on my DIY Android gameklip-like thing.

But now that the incredibly powerful nVidia Shield has come out and made gamepad-supported Android games high in demand, I'm worried that what I desire most - more awesome-looking, well performing, fun gamepad games - will instead be designed for more powerful devices like the Shield.
 
Really simple thing but you arent running on Power Saving mode are you? That underclocks the CPU.
Im not a big gamer but ive never had a problem with graphics with my cpu+gpu at stock speeds. Im on the quad core but the dual core runs a bit faster :thumbup:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom