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NEZNAMY edited this page Oct 23, 2024 · 85 revisions

This guide will explain all primary ways you can reduce plugin's CPU usage besides the obvious things like "don't spam animations" or "disable features you don't want".
The usage can be checked at any time using /tab cpu command. If the numbers appear to be higher than they should be, check this guide for various ways to optimize the plugin. Most of these apply for all platforms, but some of them are only specific for some platforms.

Content

#1 - [All platforms] Static text instead of placeholders

Static text doesn't need to be refreshed periorically, resulting in better performance. Some placeholders can be replaced with static text, such as placeholder for max player counts, since that value doesn't change at runtime. Another option is to configure prefixes per-group in config instead of using placeholders to take those values from permission plugin.

#2 - [All platforms] Placeholder refresh intervals

Some placeholders take a long time to process and result in high cpu usage. However, this can be optimized by configuring refresh interval of placeholders.

This only works for PlaceholderAPI placeholders. Internal ones have an interval hardcoded already with values I found the most appropriate.

To begin, find this part in your config

placeholderapi-refresh-intervals:
  default-refresh-interval: 500
  "%server_uptime%": 1000
  "%server_tps_1_colored%": 1000
  "%player_health%": 200
  "%player_ping%": 1000
  "%vault_prefix%": 1000
  "%rel_factionsuuid_relation_color%": 500

Refresh interval is in milliseconds. It must be divisible by 50.

default-refresh-interval is refresh interval for all unlisted PlaceholderAPI placeholders.

Keep in mind that CPU measurement is reset every 10 seconds. This means that if you configure a higher refresh interval than 10000, there will be intervals when placeholder didn't refresh at all, making it look like the CPU is perfect, while on the next refresh it may be high. For this reason, if you want to cleanly track usage, keep interval at 10000 at most. Using a higher interval will help if needed, but may lead to misleading info in cpu output.

#3 - [All platforms] Don't use RGB

Though RGB colors look good, they require the text to be split into several components with color field used instead of the whole text pasted into the text field. This is a complicated process that takes quite some time. Sticking to legacy colors results in better performance.

#4 - [All platforms] Disable anti-override

By default, TAB prevents other plugins from overriding it. This is because many server owners are not competent enough to configure their plugins correctly, such as disabling CMI collision handling which breaks nametags or even disabling team handling in paper. This obviously causes higher CPU usage. TAB logs all override attemps of teams into anti-override.log file. If you didn't get the file, it looks like you configured your plugins correctly. In that case, you can disable anti-override for teams in TAB.

scoreboard-teams:
  anti-override: false

Tablist formatting is tricker, as override attempts are not logged, because it would have a lot of false positives. You will need to try and see.

tablist-name-formatting:
  anti-override: false

#5 - [All platforms] Disable tablist name formatting

As we already know from Client-sided mechanics page, nametag format appears in tablist if tablist name is not defined. You can take advantage of this to effectively disable one entire feature and its cpu usage, while not losing on anything. However, you can only do this if:

  • You are fine with nametag and tablist formats being identical, which also means all nametag limitations will transfer to tablist as well
  • You don't have any plugin formatting the tablist names

Whether you have another plugin attempting to handle them or not may not be easy to identify with a lot of plugins and not enough time spent configuring them. In that case, your best choice is to try it and see. If tablist names break, it means you have another plugin and cannot take advantage of this optimization option.

#6 - [All platforms] Increase permission refresh interval

Plugin needs to constantly check permissions for:

  • Permission checks in conditions
  • Permission checks if sorting by permissions
  • Group retrieving from permission plugin (for sorting / per-group properties)
  • Prefix/suffix placeholders taking data from permission plugin

Default value

permission-refresh-interval: 1000

refreshes them every second. If you don't need any permission/group changes to take effect within a second, you can increase this value for better performance.

#7 - [BungeeCord / Velocity] Disable TAB expansion

In order to maximize performance of TAB's response to PlaceholderAPI request, values are tracked in advance and then quickly returned. This process takes resources and is especially heavy on proxy installation, where values must be constantly sent to bridge using plugin messages.
Disabling TAB's PlaceholderAPI expansion if you don't use it improves performance.
config.yml:

placeholders:
  register-tab-expansion: false

#8 - [BungeeCord / Velocity] Disable update-latency option in global playerlist

When Global playerlist is enabled, you can enable / disable update-latency option (open the link for detailed description of the option). Disabling this option massively improves performance.

#9 - [BungeeCord] Disable ByteBuf deserialization

In order for anti-override to work properly, some packets must be manually deserialized due to BungeeCord not doing it. If you don't need it, you can disable those functions, which will also disable the deserialization completely. To do so, you must disable 2 functions (only having 1 disabled is not enough):
#1 - Anti-override for teams

scoreboard-teams:
  anti-override: false

Whether you need anti-override or not depends on configuration of your plugins. The easiest way is to have it enabled and see if you get anti-override.log file in TAB folder. If you don't, you don't need it. If you do, you'll need to do some configuring. Here are a few examples of software and their team names, which you may find helpful.

#2 - Scoreboard detection of other plugins TAB checks for packets sent by other plugins and if another plugin sends a scoreboard, TAB hides its own and resends it after the other plugin removes it. This check cannot be disabled if scoreboard is enabled.

#10 - [Velocity] Disable header/footer translation

Velocity offers header/footer translation of translatable components, however, TAB does not use these. Despite that, attempts to "translate" it are still there, causing the whole feature to use up to 3x more CPU than it would without it. There is no way to disable this inside Velocit itself, however, there is a third party fork that offers it.
Use at your own risk.
After installing, default velocity.toml file will contain translate-header-footer = true option. If just upgrading, you will need to add it there yourself. Setting it to false will disable this function.

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