NVIDIA released its NVPerfHUD 4 performance analysis tool, a profiling and visual debugging heads-up display (HUD) program for Direct3D applications supporting Microsoft DirectX 9.0c and Windows XP on select NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs).
Part of the NVPerfKit 2 suite of tools for software and game development, NVPerfHUD 4 was designed to help developers to quickly debug and profile applications by using data from the application, driver, API, and GPU. In a survey, software developers using the program reported a 35% upshot in performance, uncovering an average of 11 rendering bugs during development.
“NVPerfHUD 4 has instantly become one of our primary tools for performance analysis, optimization, and art testing,” said Richard Sim, graphics programmer at Relic Entertainment. “Just when I thought NVPerfHUD couldn’t get any better, NVIDIA came up with even more useful features – notably the Frame Profiler Mode – which add a whole new level to graphics performance analysis on the PC.”
The performance tool comes with these upgrades:
- Frame Profiler Mode-Provides automated performance analysis using GPU performance counters; automatically running a series of tests to sort and list the most expensive render states and draw calls. Graphs such as draw-call duration, unit bottlenecks, double-speed z/stencil, pixel counts, and others are also provided.
Unit Utilization Graphs-Shows the vertex assembly, vertex shader, pixel shader, and raster operations workloads within the Performance Dashboard.
Playback Speed Adjustment-Simplifies finding frames to debug and profile by pausing or changing the playback speed of an application-from 1/8th speed to 6x speed-within the Performance Dashboard.
Enhanced User Interface-Includes updated GUI elements, configurable graphs, and automatic graph scaling.
NVPerfHUD 4 supports Microsoft DirectX 9.0c and Windows XP on NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series GPUs, NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series GPUs and NVIDIA Quadro FX or more recent GPUs; older GPUs are supported with reduced functionality.
“With NVPerfHUD 4, game developers have unparalleled insight into the GPU’s inner workings,” said John Vifian, director of developer relations at NVIDIA. “Developers can access the software’s powerful analysis features, which are similar to those used by NVIDIA engineers, to uncover rendering errors and performance problems within their applications.”
The NVPerfHUD 4 performance analysis tool is available for download here.
The NVPerfKit 2 suite of performance tools is available for download here.
