My app usually runs using approx 8% of the CPU. If I enable GL_POINT_SMOOTH, and render a couple points, the CPU goes to 100% and the FPS drops by 40%. If I render some lines too, then basically I’m in a software renderer path with 1FPS (note that I did not enable line smoothing!). Even if I just enable/disable point smoothing, and don’t actually render any points, CPU usage goes up by 30%!
It may be a combination of things like your pointsize too but it doesn’t entirely surprise me. Antialiased lines and perhaps points are (were) positioned as a DCC feature (professional digital content creation) for the more expensive Quadro range of cards.
You could try point sprites as a better option for a game card and load a nice round antialiased texture you may also desire the projective scaling of that sprite.
I know one isuue about point smoothing and fragment programs.
If you enable point smooth and draw points with fragment program enabled (this is strange, I know, points with fragment program, , then GL falls to software mode.
hmm, that would explain it, as that’s exactly what I do too. I don’t use the fixed function pipeline at all, everything uses fragment and vertex shaders.
i guess in the end we’ll just use point sprites anyway…