Display Lists Speed

Hello!

My question is: Does the use of display lists really improve the performance of modern games A LOT? Is it frequently used??

Thank you!

Irvine

Yes it does, but it depends on what you were using before.

Display lists store data on the graphics card memory (or in AGP mapped system memory)in an optimal way. However there are disadvantages, for example you cannot change things once the display list is created. In addition other methods of sending data to the graphics card efficiently over the graphics bus exist, like VAR.

More recently VBO has been introduced to send data to the card quickly, or store data on the card with different modes depending on your intended use of the data.

I’d say games tend to manage their data efficiently using extensions like VAR and newer games will be using the common VBO extension that will become mainstream. You can display list these too but they may not get much faster even if you do.