Intel Software Network articles Feed http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-kb/type/compatibility/ en-us Intel® GPA: Announcing Release 2012 R3 Announcing Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 2012 R3
May 21st, 2012


Introduction

Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) is a powerful, agile developer tool suite for analyzing and optimizing games, media, and other graphics-intensive applications.

We are proud to announce the availability of Intel GPA 2012 R3, which contains new features requested by developers.

The product is available at no charge to developers -- to download the product, visit the Intel GPA Home Page, then look for the "Download" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.


Overview of the Release
  • Intel GPA 2012 R3 includes the following new features and benefits (see the online help for more information):
    • General
      • Possibility to analyze applications that have exception handling enabled in their game engine.
      • Possibility to filter which applications are enabled for the "Auto-detect launched applications" option.
      • Added support of systems based upon 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processors, commonly known as "Ivy Bridge" systems, which include either Intel HD Graphics 2500 or Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU's.
      • Added limited support of the February Consumer Preview build of Microsoft Windows 8* applications running as Desktop/Classic applications. See this article for details on the platforms supported in this release.
    • Intel GPA Frame Analyzer
      • Frames load up to 50% faster when running on processors utilizing Intel® Processor Graphics.
      • All user interface settings, sizes, and slider positions are saved for subsequent runs of the tool.
      • Added the “Shader Constants” tab to view captured frames.
      • Enhanced the “Texture Hex” viewer to better utilize available screen space.
    • Intel GPA Platform Analyzer
      • Fully integrated the Intel GPA Media Performance Analyzer data with other ITT trace API's, enabling analysis of Media performance fully integrated with other platform data.
      • Added support of the Direct Trace API, enabling you to import virtually any data into the Intel GPA Platform Analyzer.
      • Added support of Active Time metrics (that is, the time a processor is actually running for a selected set of tasks).
    • Intel GPA System Analyzer
      • Added support of a new "System View,” which provides metrics across the entire system, not just for a single application.
      • Added a new metric “CPU Frequency”.
  • In order to focus efforts on newer operating systems and technologies, Microsoft* Windows XP* and Microsoft* Vista* are no longer supported in this version of Intel GPA.
  • Please review the Release Notes for information on installing, configuring, and using Intel GPA.

Where To Next...

To start using Intel GPA, check out the Online Help that is available through the Microsoft Windows* Start Menu for the Intel GPA product. For those who have not used Intel GPA before, become familiar with key Intel GPA concepts by reading the Intel GPA Getting Started Guide.

Want more info on Intel GPA? Check out either the Intel GPA Home Page, the Intel GPA FAQ, or the Intel GPA Knowledge Base articles. There's also a Product Brief for the GPA 2012 release.

We want to be the best tool for your graphics optimization work, and welcome your comments and suggestions in the Intel GPA Support Forum.

PS-> By the way, if you were using Version 2012 R1 of Intel GPA, you did not miss version 2012 R2 of Intel GPA -- the R2 version was never released as a product.


* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
05-21-2012
05-21-2012
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Intel® GPA
Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) is a powerful, agile developer tool suite for analyzing and optimizing games, media, and graphics-intensive applications. Available now, Intel GPA 2012 R3 adds new features requested by graphics developers.
]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-announcing-release-2012-r3/ Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700 http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-announcing-release-2012-r3/#comments http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-announcing-release-2012-r3/ ISN General Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Knowledge Base Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) Intel GPA 2012: Graphics Checker not supported Graphics Checker Not Operational with Intel GPA 2012

Support for Intel Graphics Checker has been deprecated in the current 2012 release of Intel GPA. A new Graphics Checker functionality will be provided in the near future. We are sorry for any inconvenience as we transition to this new capability.

If you create a Graphics Checker file with Intel GPA 2012 and attempt to use it with Graphics Checker, you will see the following error: "Intel GPA not detected. To correct, install the current version of Intel GPA." However, this error messsage from Graphics Checker is incorrect, since you already have the latest version of Intel GPA installed (2012).

03-16-2012
03-19-2012
Tech Articles
Intel® GPA
Support for Intel Graphics Checker has been deprecated in the 2012 R1 version of Intel GPA. A new Graphics Checker functionality will be provided in the near future. We are sorry for any inconvenience as we transition to this new capability.
]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-graphics-checker-issues/ Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:00:00 -0800 http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-graphics-checker-issues/#comments http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa-graphics-checker-issues/ Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Knowledge Base Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) Intel® GPA tip: running the tools on Intel-based netbooks Introduction
Netbook PC's have become more than a niche player in the mobile computing marketplace. To take advantage of this trend, companies have been developing games and other graphics products targeted for this market. As one can expect, many game developers have been asking "What tools are available for optimizing my game on netbooks?"

Updates to the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers product (Intel® GPA) and Intel graphics drivers now allow you to use Intel GPA on some of the more common netbook platforms. So download the latest version of Intel GPA from the GPA Home Page and the latest version of the Intel graphics drivers from the Intel Download Site.

This article discusses what developers should expect when using Intel GPA to analyzing their game on Intel-based netbooks.


Overall Best Practices
Netbook PC's tend to have minimal resources compared to typical laptops or desktop systems. In particular, they'll have a 32-bit OS and less than 2GB of memory. This is fine for typical day-to-day use, but Intel GPA requires more resources -- analysis of frame capture files and trace capture files works best when running GPA in a client/server mode where the client has 4GB or more of memory and is running a 64-bit OS.


Intel® GPA Features Supported on GMA 950 and GMA 3150 Systems
For these systems, Intel® GPA System Analyzer will report key system and Microsoft DirectX* metrics, and Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer will report graphics rendering times for all selected draw calls. However, since this graphics chipset does not have built-in hardware metrics, Intel GPA will show larger error bars consistent with timer-based metrics.


Intel® GPA Features Supported on GMA 3650 Systems
For these systems, the graphics architecture utilizes tile-based rendering, so Intel GPA cannot provide accurate metrics for individual draw calls. So GPU-based metrics for Intel® GPA System Analyzer and Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer are restricted to metrics for entire render targets instead of individual draw calls. Also, for the Visualization Panel within Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer you are limited to viewing the data based upon render targets (that is, the "erg graph" option is not available).


Non-Supported Systems
A number of netbooks are configured with Intel® GMA 500 graphics. Typically these systems use the Intel® Atom Z processor. For these systems, Intel GPA is not able to provide metrics data, and will print an error message when you use Intel GPA on these systems.


Conclusion
Game developers using the latest version of Intel® GPA now have an option for analyzing and optimizing their games on many popular netbooks based upon Intel® netbook processors and chipsets. In particular, game developers using either Intel® GMA 950 graphics, Intel® GMA 3150 graphics, or Intel® GMA 3650 graphics can now analyze their games and  optimize the playability of their product on these netbooks.

Developers targeting netbook-based systems should also see this article, which provides tips and tricks for optimizing application performance on Intel® AtomTM processors.

See the Intel GPA Home page for download options and additional information about the product.


* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
08-15-2011
03-01-2012
Tech Articles
Intel® GPA
This article describes the behavior of Intel® GPA on netbooks based on Intel® processors and chipsets. Using version 4 of Intel GPA with the latest graphics drivers now allows you to analyze and optimize your game on these platforms.
]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/gpa-tip-running-on-netbooks/ Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:00:00 -0700 http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/gpa-tip-running-on-netbooks/#comments http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/gpa-tip-running-on-netbooks/ Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Knowledge Base Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) Visual Computing Source