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Does this happen for all apps, or just this one app/game in particular? So try something like gpasample.exe (you can find this in the folder where the rest of the Intel GPA binaries are installed) to see whether you get similar results.
But if you do have access to another GPU, try running on this as well, and post the results of these two experiments here.
Also, it would help to have you right-click on the Intel GPA Monitor icon in the notification tray and post the "About..." info here as well.
Regards,
Neal
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1. Ok so i run the gpasample.exe test on the same machine.
.
The machine has the following Intel GPA details
Windows 7, 64-bit DEP enabled
Num Processors: 4
Memory: 12271MB
System BIOS: Hewlett-Packard 786G3 v03.15 (10/29/2010)
Video BIOS: Version 70.04.2E.00.A0 (11/23/10)
Driver 0:
Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE
Provider: NVIDIA
Date: 8-3-2011
Version: 8.17.12.8026
VendorId: 10de
ProductId: e23
Stepping: a1
No support for GPA Instrumentation
GPA install directory: C:\Program Files\Intel\GPA\2012 R1\
GPA version: 12.1.166792
Current user is in Administrators group: YES
Current GPA 2012 R1 (12.1.166792)
.
And the DX CPU and DX GPU track seems ok with the CPU roughly 2 frames ahead of the GPU
.
2. Then i run my original app on a computer that has integrated intel graphics
.
The machine has the following Intel GPA details
Windows 7, 64-bit DEP enabled
Num Processors: 8
Memory: 3982MB
System BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. ASNBCPT1.86C.0045.P00.1010071143 (10/07/2010)
Video BIOS: Hardware Version 0.0 (10/03/20)
Driver 0:
Device: Intel HD Graphics Family
Provider: Intel Corporation
Date: 12-15-2011
Version: 8.15.10.2598
VendorId: 8086
ProductId: 126 (Intel HD Graphics 3000)
Stepping: 8
Supports GPA Instrumentation
GPA install directory: C:\Program Files\Intel\GPA\2012 R1\
GPA version: 12.1.166792
Current user is in Administrators group: NO
Current GPA 2012 R1 (12.1.166792)
.
And the DX CPU and DX GPU track seems ok with the CPU roughly 2 frames ahead of the GPU again.
.
So the question is why does my app's test result seems weird on the first computer in which the CPU is around 107 frames ahead. Is there some prob with the way i did the instrumentation? It shouldnt be.. since the logical tracks(DX CPU and DX GPU) does not depend on the code instrumentation correct?
Additional questions
So on a side note, I have some additional questions to ask as well.
1. I am trying to find out if my app is GPU or CPU bound on a nvidia graphic card. But currently there is no clear way to do it since the metrics do not include the GPU busy stats as well as the "NULL hardware" override state is missing on machine running non-intel graphics card. All i can do is to disable draw calls and it does increase the FPS by alot but there is no way to say if the bottleneck is coming from GPU or CPU(driver) and i can see from the task manager that my CPU is not fully utilised. Is there any other ways to do it?
2. What is the difference between using "__itt_frame_begin_v3" and "__itt_task_begin" to instrument your code. I know that task can appear in different threads. But what about frames? where does it appear. Also can you let me know of any examples where i would prefer one over the other and vice versa?
3. Last question is about relations. We can add tasks to a task groups. We can also add task to a parent task. But what is the main difference between them? I understand the task groups can be useful if we want to find out the total cost of related tasks. But what about when you add a task to a parent task, what do we usually use it for?
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my queries. Thanks!
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I'm doing some checking on the original question/issue, and hope to get back to you soon on this.
As to your other questions:
- Am I CPU or GPU bound?
You are correct that some options available on Intel Processor Graphics are not available with NVIDIA hardware; we don't have access to some overrides on that hardware platform. With only "disable draw calls" showing a large improvement, you are correct that you can't say for sure which piece of the system is the bottleneck. If your code treats both Intel HD Graphics and NVIDIA the same, you could take the game over to the Intel HD Graphics platform and run "null hardware" tests to help nail this one down (since you're just trying to see the impact of an infinitely fast GPU, it doesn't really matter what GPU you use). If you're using DX11, then you might want to see if you can find an Ivy Bridge system, since the code path should be similar since Ivy Bridge supports DX11 in the GPU. So try this and see if this helps. - "frame begin" vs. "task begin"?
The advantage of frames is that they will appear in a separate track in the Intel GPA Platform Analyzer application. See this link for an example that shows this feature. Let me know if this isn't clear, and I can gather some more info for you. - task groups vs. parent tasks
I believe that the two methods allow you to see the tasks in different ways within Intel GPA Platform Analyzer. In other words, it's a logical grouping that you're creating, and in some cases you may want to see things collected in one way versus another -- we give you the flexibility of seeing this information in various ways within the tool. Also, have you seen the "relations" sample? This may provide some additional guidance on the topic. Again, if I've not fully answered your question, please let me know and I'll find some other info that might help.
So I still owe you an answer on your first question -- I'll let you know what I find out.
Regards,
Neal
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Regarding your original question about why you have as much as 100 buffer delay between processing on the CPU and the GPU, one of the developers has suggested that you run the BasicHLSL sample from the DX SDK on both platforms -- he indicated that this may be better than gpasample for tracking down this issue.
Also, how "big" are each of the buffers? Are you sending a single triangle in each, or many more primitives?
Thanks!
Neal
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The reason I'm asking about the buffer size is that if you are putting just a small amount of data into each buffer, the nvidia drivers may be holding onto that data until it needs to process it. In other words, the nvidia internal buffer may be much larger than what you see with Intel HD graphics, which may explain why you are so far "behind" on processing the GPU buffers.
You can force the buffer to flush (and be processed) by introducing locks or by other techniques, but it's not clear whether this improves your overall throughput or not. In other words, if the delay doesn't cause an issue, then don't worry about it.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Neal
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As you indicated you're really trying to find out whether you are CPU or GPU bound with your app on a specific NVIDIA system.
Unfortunately Intel GPA Platform Analyzer won't necessarily provide this information to you -- this specific tool is usually most useful when you already know that you have a CPU-bound app, and are trying to visually understand the relationships between different tasks running on the CPU/GPU. Usually Intel GPA System Analyzer is the tool that can provide insight into the CPU vs. GPU issue.
Also, without access to your source code it'll be hard to figure out why Intel GPA shows that the NVIDIA GPU is processing "old" buffers, especially when using Intel HD graphics the buffers seem to be synchronized. Similarly, I can't guess why PIX and Intel GPA would show different results without access to your code. As I suggested, we might be able to deduce whether the issue is with your app or just the way things work on your NVIDIA system by running the HLSL example. This example might provide some hints as to whether the issue with being 100 buffers behind is specific to your app, or whether this is just the way things work on the NVIDIA platform.
So back to your original question... One of the experiments you already tried is to use the "disable draw calls" override on NVIDIA; the results showed that you possibly have a bottleneck in the driver and/or the GPU. You really wanted to use "null hardware", but this is not available on your specific graphics device (such as Intel HD graphics). Did you try other overrides, such as "simple pixel shader" or "2x2 textures"? Also, you can create a frame capture file, and look at the frame in detail to see if there are specific regions or individual ergs that are bottlenecks. In other words, assume that you are GPU bound, and dig deep into a frame to see if this hypothesis is correct or not. You might find something that is an obvious issue on your NVIDIA platform for that frame, and/or try using overrides for some more experiments. Also, you mentioned that you have access to an Intel HD graphics device -- did you try to run "null hardware" on this platform to see if this provides any useful info? I know it's a different graphics device, but when using "null hardware" you won't really be using the device at all, so it shouldn't matter. This experiment should provide some useful info, especially if the CPU specs are similar.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Neal
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