Introduction
Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) provides tools for graphics analysis and optimizations for making games and other graphics-intensive applications run even faster. The tools support the platforms based on the latest generations of Intel® Core™ and Intel Atom® processor families, for applications developed for Windows* or Ubuntu*.
Intel® GPA provides a common and integrated user interface for collecting performance data. Using it, you can quickly see performance opportunities in your application, saving time and getting products to market faster.
Click a version to expand the summary of new features and changes for that version. Click the Release Notes links to access detailed release notes for each release, which include important information, such as pre-requisites, software compatibility, installation instructions, and known issues.
All files are in PDF format - Adobe Reader* (or compatible) required.
Versions
OVERVIEW
What's New
Intel GPA 2019 R4 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
Intel GPA 2019 R4 offers the following new features:
New Features for Analyzing All Graphics APIs
Graphics Monitor
- The ability to view, open, and delete any frame, stream, or trace file directly from Graphics Monitor
- Customize the hotkey used to trigger the start/stop of a stream capture and keyframe creation
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Preview stream files in the Open File window
- Group GPU events by custom regions both in the API Log and Bar Chart
- Added Multiframe View improvements:
- Smaller default track size
- Added navigation tree for metric tracks
- Improved the functionality of reordering metric tracks
- Improved range selection
- Fixed the intermediate shader code in Python Plugins
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Collect system-wide time-based GPU metrics together with the metrics used for building the Parallel Event Execution track.
- Additional improvements:
- Range selection
- Summary table
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX* 11 Applications
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- GPU frame track for analyzing DirectX 11 applications.
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX 12 Applications
Graphics Monitor
- Trigger the start/stop of a stream capture for DirectX 12 applications using a hotkey
New Features for Intel® GPA Framework
- New forward compatible stream file format. Streams taken from Intel(R) GPA Framework 2019.4 release and on, will always be replayable with future gpa-player releases.
- Added support for capturing D3D12 streams from an arbitrary moment during the application run. This mode can be enabled with the capture layer parameter "deferred=<1/true>".
- Added support for user-configurable and programmable action mapping system for more flexible user control over capture and playback.
- Added asynchronous screenshot support for D3D12 and ability to specify output format (JPG, BMP, PNG) to screenshot layer.
- Added ability to filter stream events by queue.
- Added new Callable::Argument() function to allow for requesting output parameters from callables.
- Added support for side-by-side installations of multiple versions of the Intel(R) GPA Framework.
- Improved feature set of D3D12 stream analysis including:
- Added ability to extract D3D12 metadata (information associated with the resource) via MetadataExtractor such as buffers, textures, pipelines, shaders, etc.
- Added ability to extract texture resource data from render targets, resolves, clears, copies and barriers.
- Added support for metric collection via MetricsExtractor.
- Improved resource data and metadata extraction. New improved interfaces and a compatibility layer have been added to help ease the transition from previous interfaces.
- Improved status reporting of capture events in HUD layer as well as ability to issue custom HUD message events from user created layers.
- Misc. bug fixes affecting capture, playback and stream analysis of several titles.
OVERVIEW
What's New
Intel GPA 2019 R3 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
Intel GPA 2019 R3 offers the following new features:
New Features for Analyzing All Graphics APIs
All Tools
- Added User Interface scaling with small, medium, and large scales available.
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Added new view modes for output resources. An original view shows the render target without applied experiments, the current view shows the resource with applied experiments, and the diff view shows the difference between the current and original states.
- Added the ability to open frames and streams from outside of the default folder DocumentsGPA.
- Added Multiframe View improvements:
- The ability to enable frame screenshots to navigate with ease within a stream (this feature is only fully supported for Vulkan applications, the feature is in beta for DirectX applications)
- GPU Time has replaced the CPU Frame Time metric.
- Intel® GPU hardware system-wide time-based metrics are available to be collected during stream capture and viewed as separate tracks within Multiframe View.
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Labels for queue packages are shown by default
- Open Trace Capture Window improvements:
- Graphics Monitor can be launched directly from the window to capture traces.
- Favorite traces can be pinned at the top of the window, making them quick within reach.
- Selected trace can be shown in file explorer.
- Traces can be opened from non-default folders.
Graphics Monitor
- Added Capture File Location setting to customize frame, stream, or trace storage location.
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX 11* Applications
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Added a new event track called Parallel Event Execution that shows the accurate execution of GPU-intensive calls, such as draws and dispatch call. This feature is only support on Intel® Core™ Processors that are 6th generation or newer and is not supported on any Skull Canyon hardware.
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX 12* Applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- DXIL shader code
- Added ExecuteCommandLists as a frame delimiter to support off-screen applications.
New Features for Intel® GPA Framework
(Previously known as Intel® GPA SDK)
- Added the ability to replay a range of callables for Direct3D12 streams.
- Added Vulkan* Pipeline Statistics Timestamp Query Manager support. Query Manager will default to the Vulkan* Pipeline Statistics Timestamp Query Manager if Intel metrics aren't found and can be specified programmatically.
- Added a new event/message dispatch system for communication between decoupled systems, this enables inter-layer communication.
- Added support for Vulkan SDK 1.1.114.
- Added ability to gather screenshots on a time interval via the screenshot layer.
- Added support for reflection of unions. A new Union class type is available to examine Arguments and Fields of this type.
- Added support for asynchronous GPU-CPU image copy. This setting can be toggled with the layer parameter "async=true/false"
- Added #PROC and #PID wildcards to log file path layer parameter. This will replace the wildcards with the process name or process ID respectively.
- Changed format of screenshot layer args to accept more flexible range specification.
- Removed reference to TlsRef parameter from all dispatch-table function types. LAYER_PREAMBLE macro is no longer required to be executed by the layers.
OVERVIEW
What's New
Intel GPA 2019 R2 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
Intel GPA 2019 R2 offers the following new features:
New Features for Analyzing All Graphics APIs
All Tools
- Support for 10th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Additional information for GPU/CPU queue packages
- Application-defined thread names
New Features for Analyzing Vulkan* Applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Support for Ubuntu*, read the enabling instructions to view metrics on Ubuntu platforms
- Off-screen stream playback
- Queue calls in the Graphics Frame Analyzer Multiframe View
- Ability to open contiguous ranges of queue calls in the Graphics Frame Analyzer Multiframe View
- Remote stream analysis
- View and modify SPIR-V and HLSL code
- View Additional Resource Types:
- Multisample textures
- Stencil buffers
- Sampler state
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX* 12 Applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Stream capture with Key Framing
- Variable Rate Shading Tier1
- Primitive Replication Tier1
- Render Passes
OVERVIEW
What's New
Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) 2019 R1 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
Intel® GPA 2019 R1 offers the following new features:
New Features for Analyzing All Graphics APIs
All Tools
- Feedback form
- Search fields history
Graphics Monitor
- Real-time metrics collection in the console interface
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Python-based Graphics Frame Analyzer Plugins interface to search for frames, API calls, and resources
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Collection and display of system wide fine-grained metrics on the Timeline ruler
- Support of ETW events from Unity
- Single click selection for events
- Bookmarks on the Timeline ruler
- Configurable track height
- Automatic scaling for metric charts
New Features for Analyzing Microsoft DirectX* Applications
Graphics Monitor
- Stream capture of DirectX 11 applications
Heads-up Display
- Display of a graphics adapter name which is used by an active DXGI swap chain
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Stream capture of DirectX 11 applications from the Create Frame Capture window
- Multiframe View for DirectX 11 Streams [Technical Preview]
- Visual Wireframe experiment for selected draw calls
- DirectX 12 Variable Rate Shading
New Features for Analyzing Vulkan* Applications on Windows
Graphics Monitor
- Stream capture of Vulkan applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Stream capture of Vulkan applications from the Create Frame Capture window
- Multiframe View for Vulkan Streams [Technical Preview]
- Basic set of single-frame profiling features
Graphics Trace Analyzer
- Support for Vulkan applications trace capture
New Features for Analyzing macOS Metal* Applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- Multiframe View for Metal Streams [Technical Preview]
New Features for Analyzing OpenGL* Applications
Graphics Frame Analyzer
- New resource tracing model