Set Up a Trigger
Triggers enable you to capture a frame or a trace automatically when a certain condition is satisfied. The conditions are specified in the form of custom logical expressions.
For example, you can configure the Graphics Monitor to capture a frame when the
Frame Time
is high and either of the
EU Stall
or the
Sampler Cache Misses
values are high. This combination that can be observed when occasional stutters occur within a game.

Such triggers can be useful for solving sporadic performance issues that are difficult to isolate manually.
Follow these steps to set up a trigger:
- In the Graphics Monitor Launcher screen, click theOptionsbutton.
- Open theTriggerstab and click the ON/OFF toggle to enable a trigger.
- Select the desired action from theDodrop-down. You can choose betweenFrame Capture,Trace Capture, andSystem Trace Capture.
- SelectFrame Captureoption if you aim at analyzing a problematic scene and need to understand GPU activity during the process of rendering a particular frame.
- SelectTrace Captureif you aim at analyzing a problematic scene in a particular application that can be related to synchronization issues or CPU and GPU activity during execution.
- SelectSystem Trace Captureif you need to analyze how the processes interact within the system. In this mode, data about CPU and GPU activity is collected from various applications at a time.
- In theWhenbox, specify your condition for the trigger. Conditions are true/false expressions that contain metrics, numbers, logical operators, and simple functions. To create an expression:
- Type "" (double quotes) to get a drop-down list of available metrics and choose a metric.
- Treat the metrics as operands in a Boolean expression and use the available operators and functions to create a custom logical expression. Available operators and functions:+, -, *, /Basic arithmetic operations&&Logical AND||Logical OR!Logical NOT>, <Greater than, Less than>=, <=Greater or equal, Less or equal==Equal!=NOT Equalmax(value1, value2)Returns the largest of two valuesmin(value1, value2)Returns the lowest of two values
- The list of available metrics depends on the GPU sampling interval selected in theMetricstab.
- The max() and min() functions can be nested and support metric values as parameters.
- Graphics Monitor checks the expression correctness dynamically and displays an error or warning icon in theWhenbox if an issue is detected.
- In the expression, you can combine metrics from multiple sources, including both CPU and Intel GPU metrics.
- Select the action to perform after the trigger execution from thePost Actiondrop-down menu. Available options are:
- Nothing: no action is performed
- Terminate: close the application
- Specify the retrigger delay. The retrigger delay is the amount of time since the last trigger activation during which the trigger is ignored. This option can be used to prevent multiple subsequent trigger activations and to avoid capturing multiple duplicate frames or traces. The delay also provides time to write the capture files to disk.
- (Optional) Add another trigger by clicking theAdd new triggerbutton to have multiple triggers working simultaneously.This option is only available for Microsoft DirectX* and Vulkan* APIs.