Intel releases tools to more easily detect processor bottlenecks in games

There are many different software solutions for benchmarking in games. One such program is Intel’s Presentmon, a command-based application without a graphical interface that is used as a base for many other programs, including AMD’s OCATAnd Nvidia Frameview And Capframe X. Intel is now releasing a major update for Presentmon, which makes the program more intuitive with a graphical interface, direct in-game OSD menu, and a very interesting new function.

The new function is a new scale that complements display times (eng. frame times) which, among other things, is used to calculate the frame rate in games (FPS). Where rendering time is the time in milliseconds it takes for both the processor and graphics card to create a frame, Intel now offers a “GPU Busy” metric value, which specifies how long the graphics card is only doing actual rendering when creating a frame.

By plotting the new scaling value together with the classic display times in a graph, it is possible to obtain interesting data whether the processor is acting as a bottleneck. In the above example with Counter-Strike 2 at low settings at 1080p, we clearly see how the graphics card’s rendering time (yellow line) completes relatively quickly, while the actual rendering time of the entire frame (blue line) takes much longer. This indicates that the processor acts as a brake pad in this scenario.

When the graphics settings are raised to the ceiling in the same game, a larger part of the load is transferred to the graphics card. This is clearly seen in the graph because the time it takes for the graphics card now to render a frame is very close to the total time it takes to render the entire frame.

Both the full frame rendering time and the “GPU Busy” scaling value are reported within the OSD menu in Presentmon, which means you can analyze in real time if there are, for example, certain sections of a game that are particularly processor-heavy, or if I was completely limited to the graphics card.

A demo version of Presentmon with the new features is now available for download via Intel website. The software isn’t exclusive to the company’s graphics cards, but it also works on both AMD and Nvidia models.