Textures: A8R8G8B8 vs. DXT5 in-game performance

Hi all,
Does anyone know what sort of effect, if any, using A8R8G8B8 have on the running of the game, compared to DXT5?
When viewed in Slimtex, A8R8G8B8 is a much nicer looking result than a DXT5 image of higher resolution, but at the cost of a much larger size on-disk: A 2048x A8R8G8B8 .tex (from a 4096x TGA; Full Transparency) is about the same size on disk as a 4096x DXT5 .tex (with Full Transparency).
I assume that this outcome - better quality with larger file size - is simply the result of there being much less compression, and so I'd think that, if there was a performance gain to be had, it would be when the texture is loaded into memory by the game.
But this gain would only happen if the game uncompressed the textures before loading them into memory I think?

I can't think of how using A8R8G8B8 would negatively affect performance compared to DXT5, unless there wasn't enough memory to hold the textures.
If somebody (with a better idea than I of what they're talking about) has any idea, I'd love to hear it.

---

F1 Graphics Swapper --- Lensdump - Renders and Screenshots --- GP4 Performance Generator

A8R8G8B8 resolution works fine, but as you mentioned it needs enough memory (if lots of textures uses A8R8G8B8). I did have my tyres and some car textures on A8R8G8B8 resolution but the game started the slow down alot (PO went sky high) and gpxpatch couldn´t take screenshots and gave an error message *NOT ENOUGH MEMORY etc* but these problems were sorted once I patched gp4.exe (removed the 2gb limit with cff explorer) . Now everything runs smoothly without any performance slow down and with A8R8G8B8 resolution ( texture sizes either 2048 or 4096, my cars.wad size is now 1,4GB).

A8R8G8B8 brings much better texture quality, sometimes for example black coloured textures had green tint on them after they were compressed, but with A8R8G8B8 they are gone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2017 07:01AM by vesuvius.

Interesting this guys,and how will I be able to convert a dxt5 to A8R8G8B8 through slimtex?because I never saw this option I now I can convert it to tag or gpi but never heard of A8R8G8B8 format?

Greetings
Alessio


CoM3 oN McL4R3n.....

Alessio88 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Interesting this guys,and how will I be able to
> convert a dxt5 to A8R8G8B8 through slimtex?because
> I never saw this option I now I can convert it to
> tag or gpi but never heard of A8R8G8B8 format?



yes, with slimtex (through image format tab)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2017 01:20PM by vesuvius.

> yes, with slimtex (through image format tab)


Oh I can see it now thanks,and will it be better to convert the tex file straight to A8R8G8B8 format or from tex to tga and then from tga to A8R8G8B8? thanks again

Alessio88 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > yes, with slimtex (through image format tab)
>
>
> Oh I can see it now thanks,and will it be better
> to convert the tex file straight to A8R8G8B8
> format or from tex to tga and then from tga to
> A8R8G8B8? thanks again


it doesn´t improve already ready .tex files, you should have the original .tga file (or your edited tga) and from there to convert straight to A8R8G8B8 format

Yep, ARGB are basically uncompressed .tga files. So they don't have compression artifacts .tex files have.
So converting .tex back to ARGB is like converting a bad .jpg to .bmp
.bmp has no compression loss but you will still get original jpg compression artifacts after the conversion.