nVidia-focused developers have gotten a boost today as the graphics card giant announced upgrades to its suite of programming tools, affording an average performance increase of 35%.
The upgrade for NVPerfHUD 4, nVidia's analysis toolset, offers developers the ability to more closely monitor the activities and performance of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), using a reworked version of nVidia's in-house toolset as used by it's own developers. nVidia claims that "In a recent survey, over 100 NVPerfHUD 4 users reported an average performance improvement of 34.8% by using NVPerfHUD 4 to tune their applications. These users also reported that NVPerfHUD 4 helped them find an average of 11 rendering bugs during development."
Other features include:
Performance Dashboard: Identify high-level bottlenecks with graphs and directed experiments.
Debug Console: Review DirectX Debug runtime messages, NVPerfHUD warnings, and custom messages.
Frame Debugger: Freeze the current frame and step through your scene one draw call at a time, dissecting them with advanced State Inspectors.
Frame Profiler: Automatically identify your most expensive rendering states and draw calls and improve performance with detailed GPU instrumentation data.
The good news for those mid-project is that NVPerfHUD 4 uses the same opt-in mechanism as its predecessor, meaning no code alterations will be required to make use of the enhanced functionality.
Those interested can see a video of NVPerfHUD 4 in action here.
The question on our lips is; will the new toolset be made available for PS3's OpenGL API, where developers could enjoy a similar performance boost? As soon as we can nail down someone at nVidia, we'll let you know.
The upgrade for NVPerfHUD 4, nVidia's analysis toolset, offers developers the ability to more closely monitor the activities and performance of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), using a reworked version of nVidia's in-house toolset as used by it's own developers. nVidia claims that "In a recent survey, over 100 NVPerfHUD 4 users reported an average performance improvement of 34.8% by using NVPerfHUD 4 to tune their applications. These users also reported that NVPerfHUD 4 helped them find an average of 11 rendering bugs during development."
Other features include:
Performance Dashboard: Identify high-level bottlenecks with graphs and directed experiments.
Debug Console: Review DirectX Debug runtime messages, NVPerfHUD warnings, and custom messages.
Frame Debugger: Freeze the current frame and step through your scene one draw call at a time, dissecting them with advanced State Inspectors.
Frame Profiler: Automatically identify your most expensive rendering states and draw calls and improve performance with detailed GPU instrumentation data.
The good news for those mid-project is that NVPerfHUD 4 uses the same opt-in mechanism as its predecessor, meaning no code alterations will be required to make use of the enhanced functionality.
Those interested can see a video of NVPerfHUD 4 in action here.
The question on our lips is; will the new toolset be made available for PS3's OpenGL API, where developers could enjoy a similar performance boost? As soon as we can nail down someone at nVidia, we'll let you know.
Companies:
nVidia
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Comments
Antipothis 22 Jun 2006 18:04
1/8
This is suprisingly vague.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
Moschops 22 Jun 2006 20:14
2/8
Antipothis wrote:
This is suprisingly vague.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
given the words "nvidia", "gpu" and "performance", i'm going to take a punt that the boost is in graphics rendering speed
its just a guess....
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crs117 22 Jun 2006 22:02
3/8
Antipothis wrote:
This is suprisingly vague.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
A 34% boost in what? Game graphics? Or more likely just the "analysis toolset" itself?
And a poll sample of only 100 users is kind of suspect itself. Where did nVidia find these 100 users?
This sounds like non-news or even corporate propagand worded in a way to sound more important.
This is for game developers developing games. I dont see what makes this hard to understand. The game developers developed x amount of code before the new analysis tool, nvidia releases the anylsis tool, the developers take advantage of it and their game performance (frame rate) goes up 34% on average.
This does not mean that all of a sudden doom 3 is going to run 34% faster on my machine because of this new anylsis tool. This is for game development. Think of it as a tool that helps programmers debug their code to optimize it for the hardware they are programming for. Who knows how this tool can negtatively affect performance of ATI cards though.
Antipothis 23 Jun 2006 01:31
4/8
That's exactly my point.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
tyrion 23 Jun 2006 11:49
5/8
Antipothis wrote:
That's exactly my point.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
From what I read, it seems that the new software enables developers to see where their code is under performing and hence speed the game up by about 35% overall.
This is a common use for these sort of tools. By analysing where the GPU is being under used, more use can be made of it at that point. Also by identifying sections of code where the GPU is being over-used, devs can identify where their code needs to be optimised.
config 23 Jun 2006 12:10
6/8
Antipothis wrote:
That's exactly my point.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
I was arguing that the article title and text make it sound like the games themselves would be effected.
Then it wasn't your point, was it?
As crs117 points out (again), the game performance (frame rate) goes up if developers use this tool.
Hence, games are positively affected, which is exactly what the headline states.
Antipothis 24 Jun 2006 00:42
7/8
Yes, games would see a preformance boost, but not an actual 35 precent boost, which is what the title article says. That's quite a bit, and it makes it sound like Nvidia games are suddenly going to see an marked improvement in quality, when in reality, all it's going to do is help developers have high framerates at less cost.
Moschops 24 Jun 2006 07:14
8/8
Antipothis wrote:
Yes, games would see a preformance boost, but not an actual 35 precent boost, which is what the title article says.
eh? headline say that it "could see a 35 % boost" not that it "will see a 35% increase"
and the actual story (the bit with the full info in) is very explicitly says its an average 35% boost
That's quite a bit, and it makes it sound like Nvidia games are suddenly going to see an marked improvement in quality, when in reality, all it's going to do is help developers have high framerates at less cost.
yup, it is quite a bit and that's an average, so sometime devs will see a great increase, sometime less so, but generally speaking, it's an increase in frame rates