William - got a chance to try out the code and it did have a positive effect but I am having a hard time measuring how much of an effect because I did a naughty change management thing and also updated my driver at the same time.

I am finding an increase in refresh time for all models (regardless of whether overlay/transparency is being used or not) after the driver update. LOL. So I now have to run some scenarios to reset my baseline with the new driver. But I have be able to show a positive improvement with your material definition.

Thanks again for your help.

After I updated to the 6.4 public beta I get such a jump too.
My Level usualy runs with a refresh by 0,7 but somtimes it jumps up to over 230.

Here are two pics of my level:



Has got someone of you an idea were the problem is?

I am going to guess that whatever entity is completely filling the screen in the last shot has alpha transparency on? Is there a reason for that camera to be there? It is an odd shot.

My terrain has no alpha transparency on.
The cam is turned to the ground because that´s the position where I got most times this high refresh rate.

Sorry I have not clue. If my refresh jumped that high my pc would blow up.

The letters and numbers on your debug panel look as if you had anti-aliasing enabled. Maybe this has something to do with it?

I found another thing that effects refresh times for my configuration is tga skins. TGA skins seem to put a higher demand on refresh times than say a pcx skin with overlay.

it is YOUR graphic card man
a whole cards have problems with ALPHA CHANNELS like TGA textures
its not a 3DGS fault. the problem is your graphic card.

I am not claiming it is 3dgs' fault. Do any of my posts sound like I am saying it is 3dgs' fault?

I am trying to optimise for lower end cards. So every little bit helps. And the problem is just less of a problem without tga textures. And some of the others posters indicate having seen the same problem - so the information is for those interested.