Better way to draw a hexagon?

[Accname]

Hi guys.

Just a question about performance of draw calls to a graphics card.
Which is the faster way to draw a hexagon with triangles?

Version 1).
Using a triangle strip and 6 vertices. [Look at picture]

Version 2).
Using a triangle fan and 7 vertices. [Look at picture]

I know the second version needs one more vertice but maybe it might be faster. I dont know, maybe its more efficient or something.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: On a sidenote; what would be the best way to wrap a quadratic texture around these? I really dont like the idea to have hexagon-shaped textures, there is too much cutoff.

 

[s3rius]

In the end you can only be sure by testing it out. The result might be different for different kinds of graphics cards or drivers.

But in general I would say you're better off with V1. Less vertex data can never be bad and a drawing triangle strips is much more common than drawing fans (I think) so they are more likely to be well optimized.
Also, you end up with 2 triangles less, which means less work for the GPU in certain cases (for example clipping).

Regarding the texture: You can take the triangle edges and put them together to form a second rectangle. Rotate this rect to align with the other and you have saved as much space as I think it possible.

^ Just turn the orange-teal rectangle by 45° to align it with the purple-green one. Paint is too stupid to do that :/

 

[Accname]

Yeah, you are probably right. This hardware stuff is so hard to rate. I never know what i should do. (or rather what is the better way to do it.)

 

[Darthfett]

Yeah, you are probably right. This hardware stuff is so hard to rate. I never know what i should do. (or rather what is the better way to do it.)

See rules of optimization. If it were me, i would just choose one version and stick with it, unless I already knew this was the bottleneck of the program (very rarely do you truly know this until you've actually implemented it). Optimize later, when it's actually a problem!

 

[Accname]

Oh i am not writing a programme using hexagon-shaped tiles or anything. This was more of a theoretical question. I prefer quadratic tiles.