NVTune Kenneth Hurley

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Overview What issues are we trying to solve? Games and applications need to have high frame rates Answer questions for developers How well is my code interfacing with the driver? Is it possible to speed up the process? Why is the hardware not doing what I expect? Are there logic errors in my use of Direct X? How can we solve these issues? Have the driver tell us where it is spending its time Have the driver output any problems it may see. Example: Using a texture stage in the wrong way Example: Locking a front buffer causing the triangle pipeline to stall.

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Overview (continued) How NVTune help you Captures CPU cycles spent in NVIDIA’S driver code. Simple and easy to use Enhances other development tools such as VTUNE, in that it gives more of a breakdown of what is happening in the driver. Low overhead. Display refresh is specified by the user. Logging display is at lowest priority for a thread. Newest code and driver will allow more of an inside view of what is going on inside the GeFORCE ®. Directly tied into NVIDIA’S Direct X Driver

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Overview (continued) Architecture Time stamp counter used (RDTSC) VXD/SYS Interface for application and driver Logging output is directly from the driver Hardware D3D Driver Statistics VXD Log Global Memory Statistics Application Data

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Overview (continued) What it captures (examples) Draw Primitives (indexed, non-indexed, wireframe, etc.) Blits Flips Render State changes Resource Lock/Unlock Textures Vertex buffers Surfaces All function calls that reach the driver

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Toolbar Toolbar New - Opens three new windows, if no windows are open. Save - Saves active window in comma delimited format Cut - No action currently Copy - No action currently Paste - No action currently Print - No action currently, will print current window View D3D function window View frames per second window View log window Start statistics capture Stop statistics capture Erase values in current window Connect to remote statistics machine Set configuration

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Function Split Window

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Function Split Window Continued Function split window Allows you to choose which functions are displayed during statistical capture Functions are not persistent if “Active Only” is checked in the configuration Data can be saved to comma delimited text file Updates at specific time intervals Displays function, class, number of hits, CPU clocks, % of total functions and % of CPU usage. Sorting by column is enabled. Sorting automatically updates every refresh.

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Frames Per Second Graph

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Frames Per Second Graph Continued Frames per second graph Cursor allows you to look at a particular frame and what the average frame rate is. Visual cues, on spikes/lows for 3d functions

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Logging Window

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Logging Window Continued Logging Window Visual output for logging data. Can be saved to comma delimited text file. This allows you to import into excel and make your own graphs.

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Configuration Easy Configuration Click on toolbar or menu

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune – General Options

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune – General Options Continued Logging Level Decimal/Hexadecimal display for programmers Display only active functions Allow automatic updating of only functions that are active Hotkey – Sets the hotkey that turns the capture on/off. Allows full screen applications to capture data inside of game Any key combination can be used When setting press one key at a time then dialog will skip to next edit box Remote Access Small stub on target machine Across TCP/IP through use of IP address or machine name Still in Development!

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Capture Options

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Capture Options Continued Frame End Signaling Sets how frames are ended Flip, blit to front buffer or Begin/End Scene Pairing Range Capture Enable Enable start and stop between successive frames Enable checkmark, then set start and ending frame to capture between Refresh interval in milliseconds How often visual updates are made in function window

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Logging Options

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune - Logging Options Configuration (continued) Logging Options None Minimal logging Only logs function calls Medium logging Logs function calls and < 1 DWORD parameters Maximum logging Logs function calls, all parameters and vertices Performance Warnings Shows red highlighted performance problems reported by driver Logging Memory Sets how much memory for logging file Doesn’t utilize Virtual Memory for performance reasons

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Additional Features Context Sensitive Help Online FAQ built into statistics application Highlight function and press F1. Some function haven’t been documented yet. If you find one let us know and we will document it Search function for log files Use Ctrl-F to find Use F3 to find again

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Future Enhancements GeFORCE ® Specific features Ability to track additional features such as pixels per clock, pipeline stalls and almost anything that can happen inside of the hardware. This will be made available through performance monitor registers. Transform and Lighting CPU usage inside of drivers DX7/DX8 additional RenderStates Windows 2000/Windows 9x Support

NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL NVTune Where to get it Available to Registered Developers Report Bugs/Feature Requests: