Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) Release Notes - 2023.4

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.

For detailed information and assistance in using the product, refer to the following online resources:

• Home Page: view detailed information about the tool, including links to training and support resources, as well as videos on the product to help you get started quickly.
• Get Started Guide: get the main features overview and learn how to start using the tools on different host systems.
• Training: learn at your level with Getting Started guides, videos and tutorials.
• User Guide: get details on how to analyze Windows applications.
• Support Forum: report issues and get help with using Intel® GPA.

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

For frames captured with the new Frame [DX12] mode some features are not yet supported in Graphics Frame Analyzer: Pixel History, Shader Compilation parameters, and others. We are planning to support these in future releases.

For capture-time compression, framerate may drop when compression is enabled, hence a much smaller stream may be the result of both compression and fewer frames being captured.

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.

Notes

Deprecation Notice:

We have deprecated the following functionality in Intel® GPA:

• DirectX* 9/10
• Linux

This functionality will be removed from the Intel® GPA releases as of the 2024.1 release.

Also support for following graphics devices will be removed:

• Gen9/Gen11 Graphics: Intel integrated and discrete graphics released prior to 2020.

Although the tools may appear to work with these graphics devices, because they are unsupported some features and metrics may not be available.

Additional Notes

Qt source code is available here: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ SWHID is swh:1:rev:244fc454356bc9fb31a30692b8645cbfd91dc52c

Keyframing is deprecated: replaced by Deferred Capture and Subcapture for more control and flexibilty. More info.

Vulkan - GitHub: Lower the barrier of entry to working with Vulkan by using developer friendly abstractions in Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Utilities for Vulkan*

Trace-cmd source code is available in https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ hash commit is f8ea7186250942cbb2741b82f167eca5fbba9ac0

(Support for Ubuntu is Deprecated and will be removed as per the above Deprecation Notice) We 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.

graphviz source code is available in https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ hash commit is 12782df8963d39f7ebaee6979567c7c1b8bb8c11

System Requirements and Supported Platforms

Minimum System Requirements

• Host processor: Intel® Core™ processor family (i9/i7/i5/i3)
• System memory: 8 GB of RAM
• Video memory: 512 MB of RAM
• Minimum display resolution for the client: 1280 x 1024
• Disk space: 5 GB for stream capture and 300 MB for frame capture

Operating Systems and Graphics APIs supported by this release

• Target platform: Where your game runs
• Host platform: Where you run the analysis
• Target application: Supported applications that run on the target system

OpenGL: Although the tools may appear to work with the latest OpenGL API on the Windows platform in Frame mode (Graphics Frame Analyzer), this API is not officially supported for Graphics Frame Analyzer. Some features and metrics may not be available.

Windows Server: Intel® GPA does not support Windows Server editions.

Supported Targets for Windows and Ubuntu Devices

Intel® GPA supports Intel® Graphics devices found in these Intel® processor generations as targets for analyzing Windows workloads. All these targets have enhanced metrics support.

Although the tools may appear to work with other graphics devices, because they are unsupported some features and metrics may not be available.

Graphics Driver Requirements

When running Intel® GPA, the tools generally require the latest graphics drivers for proper operation. We have tested with gfx_win_101.4676.exe 31.0.101.4676, other drivers are not guaranteed. You may download and install the latest graphics drivers from the Intel Download Center.

Intel® GPA inspects your current driver version and notifies you if your driver is out-of-date.

Installation Notes

Installing Intel® GPA

Download the Intel® GPA installer from the Intel® GPA Free Downloads.

If you use the product in a host/target configuration, install Intel® GPA on both systems. For more information on the host/target configuration, refer to Best Practices.

Installing Intel® GPA on Windows

To install the tools on Windows, download the *.msi package from the Intel® GPA Free Downloads and run the installer file.

To profile Vulkan applications, make sure to download and install the latest Vulkan SDK and runtimes.

For DirectX applications, download and install the DirectX End-User Runtime.

Installing Intel® GPA on Ubuntu*

To install Intel® GPA:

From the product download page, click the Ubuntu* Download button to download the .sh file and run the installer script with superuser privileges. The default installation path for Intel® GPA is /opt/intel/gpa.

To enable GPU metrics collection by Intel® GPA:

Refer to Enable Time-based and Query-based Metrics Collection.

To launch Intel® GPA:

• From the GUI - Graphics Frame Analyzer - click the Show Applications button and choose Graphics Monitor.
• From the CLI - enter gpa-monitor.

Technical Support and Troubleshooting

For technical support, including answers to questions not addressed in the installed product, visit the Support Forum.

Known Issues and Limitations

For All Intel® GPA Components

• Windows
  • To collect stable metrics on third party graphics solutions, enable Developer Mode in Microsoft Windows OS settings.
  • Minor UI corruptions can occur. This issue will be resolved in next release.
    • Graphics Frame Analyzer when opening a Frame or Stream.
    • System Analyzer in the Metrics List window.

For Graphics Monitor

• In Graphics Monitor when capturing in Stream mode, if the application is closed with Alt+F4 or via the "stop" button, the stream file produced may have corrupted metadata. Information reflected in Graphics Frame Analyzer may be incorrect for the following: API name, Resolution reported, Device name and/or GPU name. However, the stream can be opened for profiling in most cases.

For Graphics Frame Analyzer

• Frames and streams captured from different DX12 applications utilizing the Agility SDK can't be opened in Frame Analyzer simultaneously. This bug will be fixed in a future release
• In rare cases the Resource Target Dependency Viewer may fail to load on some machines if it was used before. If the Resource Dependency Viewer shows “Loading...” on loading and it never loads, clear your browser’s cache and local storage for “localhost”. Restart Graphics Frame Analyzer, then open the Render Target Dependency Viewer.
• The message about a GPU driver version mismatch might appear in an open file dialog even when the stream was captured with the same driver.

For DirectX* Applications 

• The DXR Shader execution table may show zeros with Intel GPU drivers newer than 31.0.101.4676
• Shader Profiler is temporarily disabled for the DirectX11 API in this release.
• Graphics Frame Analyzer shows increased metrics values for Direct3D 12 ExecuteIndirect events whose CommandSignature contains resource binding commands which may change vertex buffer, index buffer, constant buffer, shader resource and unordered access views. 
• Graphics Frame Analyzer's Shader Editor doesn't display HLSL source code if shaders are compiled offline without debug information. 
• DirectX 11 Parallel Execution View in Graphics Trace Analyzer is not supported on Skull Canyon platforms. 
• A few DirectX 11 applications that create a temporary Direct3D* 11 device may crash if started from Graphics Monitor. To resolve this issue, please enable the System-wide Time-based GPU sampling interval option in the Metrics tab of the Graphics Monitor options. 
• Graphics Frame Analyzer does not display the Direct3D 12 Pipeline Statistics metrics for frames that contain ClearState or SetProtectedResourceSession calls. 
• Graphics Frame Analyzer may work slowly during DirectX 9 frame profiling with the latest drivers.
• Stream capture for 32-bit applications is not supported.
• Metrics in DXR Shader execution table don’t take into account continuation DXR shaders when Intel Graphics Compiler splits shader into multiple parts 

For Vulkan* Applications

• To profile Vulkan titles, make sure to download the Vulkan runtimes and SDK, version 1.3.250.0 or later. 
• When profiling Vulkan applications the recommended Graphics driver version is 31.0.101.4146. Graphics Frame Analyzer may fail to open frames with driver version 31.0.101.4369 or later.
• In the case where Vulkan applications run on multi-GPU machines choose to render on a non-default adapter, one outside of the list of explicitly enumerated adapters, stream files may be produced that cannot be analyzed in the Profiling View of Graphics Frame Analyzer. 
• Metrics will not show in Graphics Frame Analyzer for applications created in Unity that use the Vulkan renderer. 

For System Analyzer

• When running GPA System Analyzer or Trace Analyzer on an Intel CPU with a hybrid architecture and SKUs without E-cores or with E-cores disabled, the hardware HW CPU load and frequency metrics will not be available.
• Hardware CPU metrics were disabled in System Analyzer due to bug in CPU metrics collection library. This bug will be fixed in a future release.

For Graphics Trace Analyzer

• When running GPA System Analyzer or Trace Analyzer on an Intel CPU with a hybrid architecture and SKUs without E-cores or with E-cores disabled, the hardware HW CPU load and frequency metrics will not be available.
• The process name in Unicode is not properly shown in CPU context switch tracks when the name doesn’t match the “Language for non-Unicode programs” setting in Windows.
• Tasks in OpenCL Execution tracks may be incorrectly aligned with other tracks. Task durations and relative positions inside the track are correct.
• DirectX 11 Parallel Execution View in Graphics Trace Analyzer is not working properly on Intel® X^e-HPG platforms.

For Intel® GPA Framework

• Intel® GPA Framework has been released for Vulkan and Direct3D 12. Direct3D 11 support is released as Beta, and is subject to change.

• When using the screenshot layer, if a large number of screenshots are requested in close frame-intervals (every or every other frame) it is suggested to use the async=false layer flag to prevent unusually high memory consumption and out of memory errors. This may result in a slight decrease in performance since screenshot cut and writing will be not run in async processes.

• Frame 0 or the setup frame cannot currently be specified as a repeat frame in gpa-player’s range repeat functionality.

• Subcapture functionality only supports Direct3D 12 at this time.

• GPA CPP Generator does not support source-level generation of calls beyond the last frame delimiter in a stream.

• User input for keyframes and deferred stream capture may not be registered in certain applications. Please use time-interval keyframes and capture layer parameters for deferred stream capture.

• When using the AMD* RX Vega card to capture a stream on a Hades Canyon machine the argument “–page-tracker-mode 2” must be added to any ./gpa-injector command in order to properly capture the stream.

  • Note that this does not apply to the iGFX card.

• At present, the Intel® GPA Framework contains only Release builds (no debug builds of libraries).

• The capture layer supports only 64-bit applications. However, the injection mechanism will work with 32-bit processes for the purpose of allowing the capture of applications that require 32-bit launchers.

• A modification of shaders in HLSL representation can cause the gpa-player to crash if the original shader representation was different from HLSL (Vulkan).

• Support is not provided yet for collecting query-based metrics from Vulkan transfer queues. When used, they are ignored by the MetricsExtractor when the graphics API pipeline statistics based query managers are used, but are accepted by the Intel Hardware Metrics Discovery library query manager which may return metrics results. No validation of such results has occurred.

• Crashes have been observed in some DXR/DXIL shader profiling scenarios, and the data obtained has had a zero duration.

• When capturing/playing back Unreal 5.1 workloads using Nanite geometry, only "continuous" capture mode is currently supported ("deferred" and "subcapture" capture mode support is anticipated in a future release).

• Link errors occur with use of the gpa-cpp-generator generated gpa-cpp/CMakeList.txt. To work around this limitation, replace ‘${GPA_FRAMEWORK_LIBS}’ in that file with ‘${GPA_FRAMEWORK_LIBS} $ENV{INTEL_GPA_FRAMEWORK}/lib/*’.

• Capture and Playback of Unreal 5.3 titles is unsupported at this time, this will be supported in a future release.

• On an Intel(r) Arc(tm) A310, A380 or A370M GPU, when collecting D3D12 pipeline statistics based metrics (which are identified by the metric group symbol "D3d12PipelineStatisticsAndTimestamp"), based on the workload used, a crash may occur due to a memory page fault in the graphics driver. A fix is anticipated in a future graphics driver release.

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