Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) Release Notes and New Features

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

Graphics Monitor

• Enhanced UX/UI: 
  • Introduced Collect data and Analyze data panels titles with quick-access links to the user guide to improve product onboarding. 
  • Added separate tabs for captured Frames and Streams and Traces.
  • Now consistently displaying filenames for captured items next to the preview image, which include the full application name, capture date and time, for easier identification.
  • The Auto-Detect Launch Applications setting is now available as an Auto-Detect checkbox located near the application startup mode selection.

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Enhanced shader analysis:
  • Added Compiler Flags used for shaders in profiled DirectX* 11 and DirectX 12 applications.
  • Added the display of ISA assembly headers, including  information about SIMD width, number of used GRF registers and Spill Size, for DirectX 12 applications.
  • ISA code now automatically updates to reflect changes in shader HLSL code when applying shader code modification experiments.
• Improved handling of pipeline states:
  • Added highlighting and corresponding error messages for cases where modifications cannot be applied to Pipeline States for DirectX 12 applications.
  • UX improvement: Instead of showing Pipeline State per draw call, Pipeline State is now indicated per pipeline capture handle. When multiple draw calls are selected, Pipeline State changes are applied to all of them.
• Added Accessibility Settings in the Settings panel (Frame View), including three options for the Color Blindness Scheme and the Use Patterns mode.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Enhanced single-threaded and multi-threaded playback with up to a 50% Direct3D* 12 performance improvement, accelerating analysis for users. 
• Added preliminary support for dynamic rendering extension for Vulkan* applications.
• Upgraded the Intel® GPA Framework to utilize Windows SDK version 10.0.26100, enabling support for the majority of interfaces defined in the latest Agility SDK.
• Implemented many bug fixes and improvements, significantly increasing the Intel® GPA Framework’s stability.  
• Support for Vulkan SDK version 1.3.280.0.

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

All Tools

• Added support for Intel® Core™ Ultra processor.
• Following the previously issued Deprecation Notice the below functionality have been removed:
  • Discontinued support for Ubuntu*: The Intel® GPA installer for Ubuntu is no longer available, and we've removed support for this platform.
  • Discontinued support for DirectX* 9 and 10 versions: Capturing frames, streams, and traces from DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 applications, as well as opening previously captured data, is no longer possible.
  • Shader Profiling limitation: Shader Profiler is not available for Intel® Graphics older than Intel® Iris® Xe graphics.

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Expanded Support for Non-PSO States. Added the ability to dynamically modify states, now including:
  • Blend Factor
  • Viewport
  • Scissor Rect
• Added a progress indication for exporting metrics to a CSV file.
• Redesigned the popup menu for Metrics list Presets: user profiles are now clearly separated from system profiles.
• Resolved an issue that was preventing grouping by Shader Sets in Bar Chart.

Intel® GPA Framework

• Added shader ISA source extraction for DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 applications, enabling users to analyse ISA source code for a deeper understanding of the GPU's behaviour during shader execution.
• Added the capability to retrieve the compilation flags used for shaders in profiled applications.
• Support for Vulkan* SDK version 1.3.275.0.

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• All new Metrics Tab:
  • Optimized for Intel ® Arc, including aggregation for Xe Core-based metrics
  • Metrics pinning replaced with individual metric or group of metrics selection
  • Easily find any available metric with fuzzy searching
  • Share metrics presets across PCs
• Enabled Shader Profiler for Mesh and Amplification shaders.
• Added non-PSO States list
  • Modify Variable Rate Shading (VRS) parameters and see corresponding results

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Get a detailed analysis of the platform where the stream was captured using the upgraded gpa-stream-info command.
• Take screenshots on demand without scheduling them on the command line using the Screenshot Layer.
• Support for Vulkan* SDK version 1.3.268.0.

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

All Tools

• Added support for applications using Agility SDK libraries. However, the required GPU driver that fixes problems with extensions has not been released publicly yet. Problems when opening Unreal Engine 5.x applications streams and frames may still arise.

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Added Texture 2x2 and Variable rate shading (VRS) experiments for Stream and Frame [DX12] modes.

• Fixed Shader Profiler bug when using DXR. As a result Shader Profiler and Shader Table are enabled for DX12 application streams and frames utilizing raytracing.

• Fixed a bug that was preventing texture saving on hard drive.

• Improved rendering state table for Stream and Frame [DX12] modes.

• Static samplers are now displayed on the resources pane for Stream and Frame [DX12] modes.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added support for Vulkan ray tracing workloads that allow users to perform continuous capture and playback (technical preview).
• Added an experiment for variable rate shading (VRS) in Microsoft Direct3D 12*, enabling changing of shading rates via VRS parameters.
• Enhanced auto hooking behavior (see the gpa-injector help documentation for more information).
• Support for Vulkan* SDK version 1.3.250.0.

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

All Tools

• Upgraded GUI to Qt6 framework. It includes the latest security updates which improve system stability.

Graphics Monitor

• Added new frame capture mode (Frame [DX12]), based on the latest capture/playback framework, which supports DirectX* 12 Ultimate features, including Mesh Shaders and DXR.
• Added compression option for Stream and Frame[DX12] capture modes. This option can reduce the required storage space for captured streams and frames by up to 30%.

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Improved error messages, allowing for easier troubleshooting of stream and frame opening issues.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added an auto hooking feature that can attach to workloads at their launch. It has broad functionality to control the “attach” conditions, such as any wildcard match of the process name, as well as the ability to attach to a process on its Nth invocation.
• Added new functionality to track acceleration structures in Microsoft* DirectX Raytracing (DXR) workloads accurately, thus enabling cross-GPU capture and playback of streams (suboptimal, but correct)
• Added a dump state layer to inspect the draw and dispatch calls by dumping state information into several text files.
• Added capture/playback support for VK_KHR_buffer_device_address. That enables capturing/playing back workloads that use acceleration structure/buffer/memory device addresses (essentially, raytracing workloads).
• Added support for Vulkan* SDK version 1.3.243.0.

Release Notes

What's New in This Release?

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Added pipeline statistics and performance metrics for shaders:
  • Mesh Shaders (MS)
  • Amplification/Task Shaders (AS/TS)
• Updated Dependency Viewer documentation. (Formerly - Render Target Dependency Viewer)

System Analyzer

• Added support for CPU metrics for Intel® 12th and 13th gen Core Processors, previously codenamed Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. Compare workloads across Performance (P) cores and Efficient (E) cores.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added a capture layer compression option. This can reduce the captured stream size by up to 30%, reducing storage needs over time if streams are stored for tasks such as regression testing. 
• Improved the Intel® GPA Framework subcapture recorder tool regarding stability and support of the a broader range of DXR workloads.
• Added dump-render-targets layer that can allow users to write out render targets to a file
• Added support for Vulkan* SDK 1.3.239.0

NOTE: Qt source code is available here: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ SWHID is swh:1:rev:12782df8963d39f7ebaee6979567c7c1b8bb8c11

Release Notes

Across All Tools

Intel® Arc™ GPU cards are now available. This new GPU family supports the latest DirectX 12 Ultimate API features, including DXR, Mesh Shading and variable-rate shading (VRS) (Tier 1 and 2).

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• The Intel® Arc™ GPU features can be profiled in Graphics Frame Analyzer, including Intel® Arc™-specific hardware metrics.
• Render Target Dependency Viewer: The Dependency Viewer was first available in our June 2021 release. We have made several improvements to the UI, making user workflow more efficient..
• We have made updates to take into account memory peak bandwidth of target platforms for proper identification of memory bottlenecks.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• 20-40% framerate increase on GPA playback of captured streams from DXR-enabled games: Modified the way shader parameters for dispatch rays calls are processed. This applies to Direct3D12 DXR workloads. 
• Reduced playback overhead by using Compute Shaders to populate shader parameters for dispatch rays that are in the same CommandList in DXR workloads.
• Improved playback performance by using Resource Barrier batching for state restoration.
• Improved the Intel® GPA Framework subcapture recorder tool so that it can now capture the first frame and the last frame. You can compress the entire stream and/or filter out unnecessary resources and API calls. You can also create subcaptures (without the compression and/or filtering) with those frames.
• Lower the barrier of entry to working with Vulkan by using developer-friendly abstractions in Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Utilities for Vulkan*

Keyframing is deprecated: replaced by Deferred Capture and Sub-capture, for more control and flexibilty. More info.

Release Notes

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Enhanced gpa-metrics-collector command:
  • Collect metrics at a faster rate, by as much as 22x for complex workloads .
  • In addition to collecting metrics per-frame, metrics can be collected per event, per pass or per multi-frame set.
• Implemented sub-stream capture compression: achieve up to a 30% file size reduction with the new compression option to gpa-subcapture-recorder: --enable-compression.
• Enabled multithreaded playback to improve CPU performance of the GPA player.
• Enhanced support for games with complex render passes: now supporting Execute Indirect with DirectX Raytracing (DXR).

Release Notes

Intel® GPA GUI Tools:

For Graphics Frame Analyzer, Graphics Trace Analyzer, System Analyzer and Graphics Monitor  we will have updates in future releases.

Meanwhile, we have added system-wide, time-based GPU metrics collection capability for Ubuntu. We also added Ubuntu support for query-based metrics for OpenGL* in Graphics Frame Analyzer. Enable these metrics with these instructions.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Enhanced API call logging to include not just API calls, but also parameter values.
• Enabled highly configurable frame-level metrics collection that allows you to select particular metrics sets or particular metrics from those sets.
• Added support for the latest stable build of the Microsoft* DirectX* Agility SDK.
• Added these new experiments for Direct3D 11 streams:
  • Custom NxN and x,y scissor rect Experiment;
  • Highlight Experiment;

  • Wireframe Highlight Experiment.

Release Notes

All Tools

• Support for Intel® Xe-HPG (previously known as DG2)
• Support for Intel® Iris® Xe graphics

Graphics Frame Analyzer

•  Added Shader Table for DirectX* Raytracing applications. The table visualizes all shaders that can be potentially be executed as a result of a DispatchRays call. The Shader Table contains the following performance metrics for each shader:
  • Duration,
  • Hardware thread count,
  • SIMD occupancy,
  • SIMD active channel. 
• Added support for Intel® Xe Super Sampling (XeSS). You can now view  metrics and resources for XeSS-generated Dispatch events. 

• Added the Resource Creation Parameters view. You can now view the descriptor with available parameters for DirectX resources. 

• Grouping by Pipeline State now takes Raytracing Pipeline States into account 

• Grouping by Debug Regions option is now persistent even if a frame doesn’t have debug regions.

Graphics Monitor

• Added Stream and Trace mode support for the Injection skip list. It is now possible to define the list of processes which will not be injected. This feature is useful when either injection into helper processes might cause conflicts with Intel® GPA or there is no need to generate continuous streams for all forked processes.

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Added support for Intel® Media SDK and Intel® Video Processing Library (oneVPL).
• Reduced overhead of Event Tracing for Windows* (ETW) and Instrumentation and Tracing Technology (ITT) data collection.
• Added full names for CPUs. You can now view detailed information about your CPU in the Trace Content and Trace Info panes.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added support for XeSS capture and playback, both continuous and deferred modes.
• Added a new flag to the gpa-injector that enables you to skip injection of processes that you add to the user-defined skip list.
• Added the capability to the gpa_player to report its process name as the name of the original captured process to allow profiling of the process with driver level game specific optimizations.
• Added support for Windows 11 SDK (10.0.22000.0).

Release Notes

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Improved bottleneck analysis and Advanced Profiling mode: :
  • More detailed reasons for bottlenecks and more accurate improvement suggestions are available.  
  • Graphics and cCompute pipeline results bottlenecks are shown in the same tab. 
• Improved metrics collection: :
  • Added metrics subscription. When metrics table view is selected in Metrics Viewer, Graphics Frame Analyzer doesn’t automatically request all the available metrics anymore. Instead, users can configure a list of metrics of interest, group and save them into metric subscription presets. These presets as well as a list of metrics depend on selected GPU adapter. 
  • Added metrics subscription. You can now group metrics of interest into subscription presets. In Metrics (Selection) and Metrics (Frame) tabs, Graphics Frame Analyzer request values only for subscribed metrics, which helps to avoid long metrics calculation.
  • Metric updates now depend on a the selected tab. No updates on new event selection in “Metrics (full-frame)” mode, only subscribed metrics are requested in “Metrics (Sselection)” mode, and the minimal required set of metrics is requested in “Bottlenecks” mode.
  • Metric updates now depend on the selected tab. In the Bottlenecks tab, the minimal required set of metrics is requested. In the Metrics (Selection) tab, subscribed metrics are requested each time you select new events. In the Metrics (Frame) tab, only subscribed metrics for the full frame are presented. 
• Added support for DirectX 12 Ultimate features including DirectX Raytracing
  • It is now possible to capture a stream file from applications that use DirectX 12 Ultimate features, and look for content of a stream with view hardware counters data.
  • DXIL Libraries are shown as a separate resource in the Resource List.
  • Shading Rate textures for Variable Rate Shading Tier 2 applications are shown in the Resource List.

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Added support for DirectX12 Ultimate features including DirectX Raytracing. It is now possible to capture a trace file from applications that use DirectX 12 Ultimate features and analyze them in Graphics Trace Analyzer. 
• Added Shader Breakdown tracks visualizing workload distribution among shaders for floating-point unit and extended math pipes.
• Added Shader Breakdown tracks visualizing workload distribution among shaders for floating-point unit and extended math pipes 

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added DirectX Raytracing capture/playback/range-repeat support. End users can capture, replay, and analyzer streams from workloads that use the DirectX Raytracing feature of DirectX 12 Ultimate.

Release Notes

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Added support for streams from multi-queue DirectX12 applications. You can now open a frame for detailed analysis from the Multi-frame View window.  
• Updated the central panel for better user experience. The full set of bound resources is now presented as a vertical list with searching and filtering capabilities. 
• Added combined state view with both pipeline state object (PSO) and non-PSO states for stream files. Now the table visualizes the state structure in a new table-like view similar way to as it is defined in DirectX12 header. 

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Added tracing for multi-CPU systems. 
• Added Media SDK support. Added media ITT events into thread tracks and visualized relations between these events and UMD queues with arrows. 
• Implemented OpenGL screenshot capturing for the trace files. In OpenGL trace file preview, you can now see an actual screenshot captured from the application instead of a generic icon. 
• Added the ability to copy data from Summary Table to clipboard. 
• Improved the timeline initialization. Now trace loading time can be reduced up to 25%. 
• Added OpenCL kernel execution tracks with relations between submitting commands in CPU threads and executing packets on GPU tracks (Beta feature) 

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Added Sampler Feedback capture/playback/range-repeat support. End users can capture, replay, and analyzer streams from workloads that use the Sampler Feedback feature of DirectX 12 Ultimate 
• Added Mesh Shaders capture/playback/range repeat support. End users can capture, replay, and analyzer streams from workloads that use the Mesh Shaders feature of DirectX 12 Ultimate 
• Improved support for Direct3D 12 multi-frame streams deferred capture/playback. 
• Added support for webGPU (DirectX 12) applications capture/payback/range-repeat running inside the Chrome Canary browser. 

Release Notes

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Added Render Target Dependency Viewer tool for Direct3D* 11 applications. You can now build a scene graph and explore dependencies between resources within a frame in detail.
• Enabled Direct3D* 12 Pipeline statistics metrics in Multi-Frame View. You can now see pipeline metrics right in the Stream Content pane, giving you more information when selecting a frame for detailed analysis.
• Added support for applications with Direct3D 12 Render Passes  in Stream mode.
• Added warning for opening Stream files captured on another GPU and/or with a different driver.
• Improved quality of Direct3D 12 multi-frame Stream support.

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Added visualization for Render and Present queue packet relationship with CPU thread calls. You can now trace the origins of these packets by clicking on a Render or Present packet.
• Enhanced track utilization indicators: they now show duration and percent of track activity for current zoom area.
• Added Direct3D 12 Pipeline statistics metrics. You can now see pipeline metrics right on the Trace Content pane and correlate these metrics to frames in a trace.
• Added support for OpenGL tracing on Windows (Tech Preview).

Graphics Monitor

• For security reasons, real-time overrides, such as Wireframe, have been removed.
• Vulkan support on Ubuntu was discontinued due to low demand.

Intel® GPA Framework 

• Multi-frame analysis has been improved for Direct3D 11 (Beta Version).
• Added Direct3D 12 Pipeline Statistics and Time Stamp QueryManager support for copy queues.
• Added support for Direct3D11on12. The underlying Direct3D 12 calls are now collected for Direct3D11on12 commands and stored in a stream.
• Improved support for Direct3D 12 workloads.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Improved the quality of DirectX* 12 multi-frame stream capture and playback.
• Enabled multi-frame profiling by default for DirectX* 12.
• Added Technical Preview of multi-frame profiling for DirectX* 11.
• Added queue call markers making the time when each GPU call in a command queue starts execution.

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Completed full support for synchronization by adding support for WinAPI, allowing visualization of CPU Signal calls signalling WaitForSingleObject or WaitForMultipleObjects.
• Enhanced thread zone visualization. The green line over each CPU thread track coordinating with bright blue coloring of the call time indicates that the thread is active. Elsewhere, the thread is inactive.
• Adjusted metrics tracks to display the full percentage range, 0% to 100% for a better relative assessment. This can be toggled back to the actual available range for each track.

GPA Framework

• Full support implemented for multi-frame analysis of DirectX* 12 workloads by improving the quality of stream capture and playback.
• Technical Preview implemented for multi-frame analysis of DirectX* 11 workloads.
• Enabled collection of the Intel Metrics Detection library-based metrics so that developers who have platforms with multiple Intel GPUs can collect query-based metrics for both GPUs.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

All Tools

• Support for Intel® Iris® Xe MAX Graphics

Graphics Monitor

• Added support for the "Auto-detect Launched Applications" option to work in Trace capture mode
• Added support for deferring capture of a Vulkan Stream to any point in time while the application is running (Deferred Capture)
• Added support for capturing multiple Deferred Captures of Vulkan and Direct3D* 12 during a single run

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Improved the quality of Direct3D 12 stream capture and playback
• Changed the blank icon to a screenshot of the first frame of a Deferred Capture in the Open-File dialog in order to more easily identify your captures
• Full integer values are now shown in the buffers, instead of the abbreviated scientific notation values

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• Full support for Direct3D* 12 visualizations of synchronization primitives
  • Bezier curves tracing both the lifetime of a packet through its event calls, and dependencies between packets (wait/signal command queue calls) are shown
  • User-space ID3D12CommandQueue::Signal and ID3D12CommandQueue::Wait calls are now selected along with other dependent driver synchronization events
  • GPU to CPU synchronizations via D3D12Fence::SetEventOnCompletion are visualized on the timeline 
• Support for multi-GPU (discrete and integrated) profiling - view metrics from both GPUs in a single capture, concurrently
• Significantly reduced the time required to open a trace file

System Analyzer

• Support for multi-GPU (discrete and integrated) profiling - view metrics from both GPUs simultaneously.

GPA Framework

• Multi-frame analysis has been introduced for DirectX* 11 (Pre-Alpha Version)
• Reduce capture overhead - Deferred Capture
  • Triggering a capture at any point of game play is now supported for Vulkan and Direct3D* 12
  • Trigger multiple captures in a single session of gameplay
  • Specify the number of frames you want to capture
• Added support for extracting Direct3D 11 object names from metadata
• Direct3D 11 Metadata Extractor now includes RenderTarget binding information
• Added support for Direct3D 11 RenderTarget resource extraction
• Added support for Direct3D 11 Intel GPU Hardware query-based metrics collection
• Vulkan resource extractor supports extraction based on call stage flags (pre/post call execution)
• Support for Vulkan SDK 1.2.148. Please update Vulkan SDK to build against GPA Framework.
• Support for Windows SDK 19041. Maintains backward compatibility with the previous SDK.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

All Tools

• Future support already enabled for the recently announced 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors with Intel® Iris® Xe graphics

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Variable Rate Shading (VRS) Tier2 support in Multi-frame Profiling View mode. Including screen-space visualization of the VRS image
• Microsoft DirectX* Raytracing Alpha support in Multi-frame Profiling View mode
• Initial support for Multi-GPU applications in Multi-frame Profiling View mode
• Added Microsoft Direct3D* 12 Command List debug regions and markers to API Log and Bar Chart
• Different types of Direct3D 12 Command Queues now explicitly shown in Multi-frame Profiling View
• Increased precision of floating point data buffers
   

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• DirectX Raytracing calls are now displayed in the thread tracks
• Added auto-highlighting of events to make CPU and GPU synchronization more transparent. When you select a synchronization event, all events that are related to it are highlighted as well
  • CPU synchronization with SetEvent and WaitForSingle(Multiple)Object(s)
  • GPU synchronization with DirectX 12 command queue Signal/Wait calls
• See our first two Graphics Trace Analyzer Deep Dive videos - more to come!

System Analyzer

• Increased the quality of CPU metrics on Windows* by significantly increasing the granularity of CPU counters for Intel hardware

GPA Framework

• Support for DirectX* 12 Variable Rate Shading Tier2
• Support for DirectX* Raytracing (Alpha)
• Deferred capture support for Vulkan was extended to cover more Unity* and Unreal* based workloads

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

Graphics Monitor

• Configure the sampling interval for Intel graphics metrics for both trace captures and stream captures
• Support for an extended set of Intel graphics metrics. Switch between different metrics sets and configure the exact set of metrics to be collected in Graphics Monitor

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Initial support for Compute and Copy queues in Multi-Frame View
• Improved performance and UX of the Shader Binding pane
• Stable run-to-run metric measurements on 3rd party GPUs

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• All registered XML-based Events-Tracing-for-Windows providers are supported
• Consolidated track for multi-layered Flip queues

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

Graphics Monitor

• Unlimited customizable trigger enhancements
• User interface improvements with the ability to connect System Analyzer to a running application directly in the tool

Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Multi-step metric collection allowing for visualization on already collected metric values while other metrics are being collected
• Tool startup time is reduced

Graphics Trace Analyzer

• CPU Frames tracks for multi-context/multi-queue DirectX11, DirectX12, and Vulkan applications
• Metrics are saved into a trace file on Ubuntu

System Analyzer

• New System Analyzer user interface enabled by default containing Pause mode, the addition of Frame and Trace capture buttons, Intel Grapics GPU query based metrics and more!

Release Notes

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.

Release Notes

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.

Release Notes

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

Release Notes

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

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Trace Analyzer user interface improves your profiling workflow with the addition of a customizable workspace, less capture overhead, and more detailed traces.
• Graphics Monitor now intelligently determines which API is currently being profiled and speeds up the process needed to launch a title for analysis.
• Open Frame Capture window in Frame Analyzer allows you to quickly share a frame and store it in a more accessible location using the new Show Frame in Folder button.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Filter resources to only view necessary information during analysis using the Resource Table View in Frame Analyzer.
• Quickly view a summary of the predominant bottlenecks affecting a frame by changing the color coding of the bar chart.
• Validate the performance and visual impact of using different texture formats within a scene by changing the selected format in the Resource Viewer.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• View all available Intel® GPU metrics metrics in System View on Windows* Platforms, with an ability to switch between these counter sets using the Ctrl+M hotkey.
• Search for and pin interesting metrics to the top of the metrics table.
• Copy resource names in the Resource Viewer using CTRL+C.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• API Log pane now contains a new Frame Statistic tab, and separate tabs for Resource History and Pixel History. The Resource History tab enables you to select a target resource, and in the Pixel History tab you can select pixel coordinates.
• Input/Output Geometry viewer now provides additional information about the topology, primitive count, and bounding box.
• New User Interface for DirectX* 11 frames.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Profile Windows Mixed Reality applications on the Windows Fall Creators update.
• New User Interface for DirectX 11 frames with additional features.
• Hotspot Analysis mode available for DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 (new UI) frames. Users can now easily find the most problematic events in a frame by bottleneck.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Trace Analyzer now is the only timeline tool in Graphics Performance Analyzers suite. Platform Analyzer tool has been removed. API Log and Metrics can be exported now.
• The accuracy of time-based GPU metrics in System Analyzer has been significantly improved.
• Support for Windows Mixed Reality titles in simulation mode added.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Runtime overhead was improved for Windows* applications.
• Graphics Monitor has been implemented for macOS* and Ubuntu* platforms. It has the same functionality as the Windows* version excluding support for Tracing and Triggers.
• System Analyzer HUD for OpenGL* applications implemented.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Improved workflow for opening trace files. Added a new trace file open dialog which includes trace file previews and system information.
• The Metrics Viewer now shows primary or potential bottlenecks with detailed descriptions for a current selection.
• The GPGPU pipeline was added into the Metrics Viewer to support bottleneck analysis for Dispatch calls.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Bar Chart now supports grouping draw calls by regions (debug regions, shader usage, etc.) for Microsoft DirectX* 12 and OpenGL* APIs.
• Trace Analyzer is a new timeline analysis tool supplemental to Platform Analyzer. At this moment, Trace Analyzer provides the same functionality as Platform Analyzer and adds support of platform analysis of desktop OpenGL* applications on Ubuntu* systems.
• Added support for VR games (tested on HTC Vive* and Oculus Rift*).

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Enabled API log export into a text file.
• Added Pixel Overdraw view for render targets.
• Updated Metrics Viewer in accordance with the latest performance optimization guide.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Enhanced DirectX 12 profiling capabilities by adding new product features and improving product performance.
• Enabled capturing and profiling DirectX 12 workloads on a remote system.
• Added Active API drop-down menu for switching between API types in the Preferences dialog box, to replace the Force DirectX 12 Injection checkbox.

Release Notes

OVERVIEW

• Intel GPA now stores all captured frames, traces and other important files in a single GPA folder under Documents on Windows, or Home on Ubuntu/OS X, irrespective of the product version. Now you do not need to repeatedly copy files and change settings each time Intel GPA is updated.
• Graphics Frame Analyzer tools got renamed. If you would like to profile Microsoft DirectX* 9, 10, 11 frames, you should use “Graphics Frame Analyzer (DirectX 9,10,11)” tool. In case you need to profile OpenGL*, OpenGL ES or DirectX 12 applications, use “Graphics Frame Analyzer”.
• Detailed GPU hardware metrics for Intel® graphics. For third-party GPUs, GPU Duration and graphics pipeline statistics metrics are available.