2d - Framebuffer FBO render to texture is very slow, using OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android, why?

Question

I am programming an Android 2d game using opengl es 2.0. After I draw my sprites to the backbuffer I draw lights to a FBO and try to blend it to the back buffer again. When I draw the FBO to the framebuffer, even trasparent without any color, the framerates drops from 60 to 30 on a Samsung Galaxy w (it has an adreno 205 as gpu). I searched everywhere and tried everything, even if I draw a single sprite on the scene and blend a trasparent FBO texture to the screen the framerate drops. I tried other games with lighting effects on that phone and they run fine, almost every game is fine on that phone, I believe they use the framebuffer as well. On the Galaxy SII (mali 400 gpu) runs fine, I am quite new to opengl so I believe I am making a mistake somewhere, I share my code.

// Create a framebuffer and renderbuffer
GLES20.glGenFramebuffers(1, fb, offset);
GLES20.glGenRenderbuffers(1, depthRb, offset);

// Create a texture to hold the frame buffer
GLES20.glGenTextures(1, renderTex, offset);
GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[offset]);

GLES20.glTexImage2D(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GLES20.GL_RGBA,
                    screenWidth, screenHeight, 0,
                    GLES20.GL_RGBA, GLES20.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,
                    null);


GLES20.glTexParameteri(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S,
                       GLES20.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
GLES20.glTexParameteri(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T,
                       GLES20.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
GLES20.glTexParameteri(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER,
                       GLES20.GL_LINEAR);
GLES20.glTexParameteri(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER,
                       GLES20.GL_LINEAR);

//bind renderbuffer
GLES20.glBindRenderbuffer(GLES20.GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthRb[offset]);

GLES20.glRenderbufferStorage(GLES20.GL_RENDERBUFFER, GLES20.GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT16,
                             screenWidth, screenHeight);

// bind the framebuffer
GLES20.glBindFramebuffer(GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fb[offset]);

// specify texture as color attachment
GLES20.glFramebufferTexture2D(GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GLES20.GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0,
                              GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderTex[offset], 0);

// specify depth_renderbufer as depth attachment
GLES20.glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GLES20.GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT,
                                 GLES20.GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthRb[0]);

// Check FBO status.
int status = GLES20.glCheckFramebufferStatus(GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER);

if ( status == GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE )
{
    Log.d("GLGame framebuffer creation", "Framebuffer complete");
}


// set default framebuffer
GLES20.glBindFramebuffer(GLES20.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0);

I do this once on surface creation. Not sure if is correct. I keep the texture and framebuffer ids to switch to them when I need. My drawing code:

GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureId);
ShaderProgram program = glgame.getProgram();

//put vertices in the floatbuffer
mTriangleVertices.put(vertices, 0, len);
mTriangleVertices.flip();

GLES20.glVertexAttribPointer(program.POSITION_LOCATION, 2, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false,
                             TRIANGLE_VERTICES_DATA_STRIDE_BYTES, mTriangleVertices);

//preparing parameter for texture position
mTriangleVertices.position(TRIANGLE_VERTICES_DATA_UV_OFFSET);
GLES20.glEnableVertexAttribArray(program.POSITION_LOCATION);

//preparing parameter for texture coords
GLES20.glVertexAttribPointer(program.TEXTURECOORD_LOCATION, 2, GLES20.GL_FLOAT,
                             false, TRIANGLE_VERTICES_DATA_STRIDE_BYTES,
                             mTriangleVertices);

//set projection matrix
GLES20.glEnableVertexAttribArray(program.TEXTURECOORD_LOCATION);
GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(program.MATRIX_LOCATION, 1, false, matrix, 0);

//draw triangle with indices to form a rectangle
GLES20.glDrawElements(GLES20.GL_TRIANGLES, numSprites * 6, GLES20.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT,
                      indicesbuf);

//clear buffers
mTriangleVertices.clear();
mVertexColors.clear();

Everything is rendered on screen correctly, but the performance are ruined just when I draw the FBO texture. Thank you very much for your help. I worked very hard on this and didn't find a solution.

Answer 1

According to qualcomm docs, you need to glclear after every glbindframebuffer, this is a problem related to tiled architecture, if you are switching framebuffers, data need to get copied from fastmem to normal memory to save current framebuffer and from slowmem to fast mem to get contents of newly binded frame, in case you are clearing just after glbind no data is copied from slowmem to fastmem and you are saving time, but you need to redesign your render pipeline often, so it will avoid reading data back and forth between slow and fast memory, so try to do glclear after each bind and it should help, you can also use adreno profiler to get additional information about problematic calls, but i doubt it will help with adreno200 i am trying to get two buffers for blur and i am ending with 10fps, bindframebuffer call can take up to 20msec if its not cleared, if it is it should end at 2ms.