Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA)
Improve your game's performance by quickly specifying problem areas

Would like to see some new features added to GPA

Ronan_Bel
Beginner
1,050 Views
Hi, would it be possible to :

Add in the texture tab, textures bound to VS & GS stages (not only PS stage) ?
Add a buffer tab displaying buffers (Index, Vertex, Constant ...) bound to each stage ?
Be able to "view" the content of a buffer bound to the StreamOutput of a GS program ?
Display the value of a texture according to its format (float, ushort, uint, ...) ?
Display the value of the depthbuffer where the mouse cursor is ? (already working in ColorBuffer, Overdraw modes)

Thanks in advance :)

PS : your tool is really great. it lacks only a few little things to be THE gpu tool (and uninstall all the others)

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20 Replies
Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
1,038 Views
Hello,

Yes, I'll add these today to the list of customer-requested enhancements to the product.

Thanks for using Intel GPA, and for letting us know what we can do to improve it!

Regards,

Neal
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Benoît_Vimont
Beginner
1,038 Views
Hi,

+1 for all Ronan said.
Plus:
  • Being able to see the alpha channel of textures/surfaces
  • Why changing the current draw call does switch the render target view to backbuffer instead of still showing the currently render target? This is extremely annoying when debugging : ( Also, "Scrub Mode" should be the active mode by default imho)
GPA is the greatest tool for PC GPU profiling, 99% perfect. Add these features and it will be 100% ;p
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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
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Hello,

Thanks for the additional suggestions (I've sent your comments to the marketing manager and the technical product owner), and for your kind words about the product.

By the way, if you're at GDC this year stop by the Intel booth and say hello to some of the Intel GPA team members!

Regards,

Neal
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Ronan_Bel
Beginner
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Hi. We (Benoit and me) won't be at the GDC this year, but Julien of our team (From Dust) will be there. He maybe will have the time to visit you :)

By the way, I found another (small) "bug" :
when you use a mipmap level of a texture as RenderTarget, GPA displays the "resource" (LOD0) as RenderTarget, and displays the "texture level" (the right RTV) only when you click on it.
(so I think it selects the RT according to the resource instead of the used RTV)
(which is not what we I expect)
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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
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Hello,

I'm awaiting a response back from the dev team on the issue you mentioned; let's see what they say.

Also, hopefully Julien will have a chance to stop by the booth and see some of the latest things that we've been doing with the tools. By the way, note that we have been listening to your suggestions! :-)

Regards,

Neal
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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
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Hello again...

We've got a new version of Intel GPA now available from the GPA Home Page -- release 2012 R1. This version contains a couple of the enhancements that you and your team have requested.

>>> Add in the texture tab, textures bound to VS & GS stages (not only PS stage)

We now show textures bound to all pipeline stages (and also textures bound to compute shaders):

  • DirectX 9: Vertex Shader (VS), Pixel Shader (PS)
  • DirectX 10: Vertex Shader (VS), Geometry Shader (GS), Pixel Shader (PS)
  • DirectX 11: Vertex Shader (VS), Hull Shader (HS), Domain Shader (DS), Geometry Shader (GS), Pixel Shader (PS), Compute Shader (CS)
Our online help has more details: http://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/gpa/12.1/Texture_Tab.htm


>>> Display the value of a texture according to its format (float, ushort, uint, )

Textures can now be viewed as images (if the texture format is known and the texture is available) or data. For data, we have a hex viewer control. The user can specify the byte stride and the data format:

  • 8-bit unsigned, signed
  • 16-bit unsigned, signed, float
  • 32-bit unsigned, signed, float
  • 64-bit float
Our online help has more details: http://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/gpa/12.1/Texture_Tab.htm#Data_Viewer

Thanks again for your suggestions, and hopefully we can address more of your requests in the next version of the product!

Regards,

Neal
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Benoît_Vimont
Beginner
1,038 Views
Great, thanks!

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kegetys
Beginner
1,038 Views
Hello and thanks for the update, I have found GPA to be very helpful tool.

I have a few suggestions myself for the frame analyzer, these are mainly for D3D9 as thats what I'm using:

* Ability to view and modify shader constants. I feel this is quite important as a lot is defined today with them.

* Ability to view vertex data post- and pre vertex shader (like in pix: http://members.gamedev.net/jhoxley/PIX/PIX_MeshDebuggingHighlight.png )

* Ability to replace textures in the scene

* The HLSL "shader replacer" dialog does not seem to remember the include path setting, it needs to be set again every time when applying changes. In addition, I would suggest adding a separate button for setting the properties in "shader replacer" dialog instead of making it open from the apply button (so I can set the properties once, then just click apply and will use them without opening the dialog again)

* Ability to "bookmark" erg selections. Maybe with keyboard shortcuts like ctrl + number key to create a selection and number key to select it again. Shift + number to add to the current selection.

* Make the 'large view' window remember its position, I like to keep it maximized on another monitor

* When saving a ARGB render target image as png the alpha channel data is not saved to the file

* Ability to feed some custom information to GPA from the application. For example, I would like to be able to see names of materials used internally in the application in the frame analyzer. Maybe this could be done by getting an interface to GPA in the application with QueryInterface where some debug information could be fed to the capture (it could be displayed in its own tab)
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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
1,038 Views
Hello,

Thanks for using the tool and for your recommendations. I've forwarded these to the team responsible for prioritizing user requests.

Regards,

Neal
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kegetys
Beginner
1,038 Views
A few additional issues/siggestions (D3D9 still):

- Viewing of depth and stencil buffers (by selecting ie. "depth" from the render target view) is somehow strange - it seems to show the depth buffer data, but the text information is from the color buffer. The RT number and size are the same, and the format is obviously wrong for depth/stencil (like A2B10G10R10).

- With the above if the depth/stencil buffer is of different size than the color buffer the depth buffer image on the RT view appears corrupted, and viewing the stencil buffer crashes GPA monitor (I sent the crash report using the window crash dialog). The depth preview looks like it uses the color buffer size to display the image so the data does not line up.

- Using the "disable erg(s)" experiment option seems to have no effect on "stretchrect" and "clear" style ergs. It would also be nice to be able to see more detail on these ergs, like what is being stretchrected to where.

- More details on the "api details" window would be nice, mainly information on parameters passed to functions. For example, for SetViewport it can show me the parameter passed is a D3DVIEWPORT9 object but not what what it actually contained so it is not of that much use.

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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
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Hello,

I've added your suggestions regarding "disable ergs" and "api details" -- they've been added to the enhancement queue. Thanks for these ideas!

For your comments about depth and stencil buffers, this sounds more like a bug than an enhancement request. Do you have a specific frame capture file that shows this issue, along with info on which ergs exhibit the problem? I'll probably need this file so the development team can duplicate this.

Also, it would help if you could provide me information on your system configuration (right-click on the Intel GPA Monitor icon in the notification tray, then copy the "About..." output here).

Thanks!

Regards,

Neal

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pthiben
Beginner
1,038 Views
Any news / ETA on displaying the constant buffers for a given shader ? This would be tremendously useful for us here in Montreal.
Thanks
Benjamin
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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
1,038 Views
Hello,

This is still on our list... hopefully we'll be able to get this added in an upcoming release.

Regards,

Neal
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MPere15
Novice
1,038 Views

Hello,

I think the software is great, you're doing a great job. Looking forward to use the new Intel GPA 2012 R3.

Now, it may sound silly, but I'd like to include additional documentation/description fields in the report.

If I'm not mistaken, I think we only have available a 'Version' field.

Additional fields would help to compare different test scenarios, and different reports, and I find that somewhat messy to do at the moment.

Many thanks.

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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
1,038 Views
Hello,

I'm not quite sure what you are asking for, in particular which report are you talking about?

Could you provide a more detailed write-up about what you would like to see? I'm interested to see what this would look like.

thanks!

Neal
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MPere15
Novice
1,038 Views

Hello Neal,

Sorry for the confusion, as I was mixing Intel Graphics Checker and Intel GPA, but I guess it could be applied to both. I've tested GPA 2012 R3 and I see that it doesn't support Graphics Checker yet. Anyway here is the point:

What I'm asking for is additional custom fields to allow to classify different Intel Graphics Checker reports for the same software.

Ideally this would mean an update in the web pages too, allowing to filter the reports by these fields in a list, where major key performance indicators would be displayed, as like it is now.

Currently I can see this:

Current Report List

I know all the reports belong to the same software but, how do I discern one report from another? Did they have different testing conditions or they were all the same? Which were these differences? The only fact that I can see right now is 'Game Resolution', which is a good thing, but I would like to see something like this:

Improved Report List - Custom Fields

That way I would be able to test and easily compare results of the same software under different user configurations, development versions, optimizations, etc, depending on my needs, the complexity of my software and its particular development life cycle, what I want to analyze in a particular change or scenario, etc.

For Intel Graphics Checker, all I've found so far is this tiny version field, that I have to code to have my needs satisfied and, at least, it could be included in the previous report that I mention above. This is when we can enter such info:

Current Custom Field: Version

That only can be viewed here, without any other test info apart from date:

Current Version Info

What it would be needed is to let the use to enter by report one or more:

- Custom field description (column header)

- Custom field value (column value)

- Other basic KPIs to show, not only 'Game Resolution'


Maybe this would be entered best when generating the report with Graphics Checker.
If there is another way to do this just please let me know. I know I could create different software profiles, but I find this cumbersome too.

Does that make sense?

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Neal_Pierman
Valued Contributor I
1,038 Views
Hello,

Thanks for your comments and suggestions about how to improve the Graphics Checker -- I've forwarded your comment to the team responsible for this tool.

Regards,

Neal
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MPere15
Novice
1,038 Views
@Neal, great to hear that. Thank you.
Please let me know if any further explanation is needed.
Best regards.

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engagedotscrm
Beginner
1,038 Views
Hi , Found the thread very informative. Thanks for sharing.
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shin
Beginner
935 Views
hi neal intel GPA is good tool for GPU, ill be looking forward if some new feature added in this tool :D
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