PresentMon

PresentMon is a tool to capture and analyze ETW events related to swap chain presentation on Windows. It can be used to trace key performance metrics for graphics applications (e.g., CPU and Display frame durations and latencies) and works across different graphics APIs, different hardware configurations, and for both desktop and UWP applications.

This repository contains several components:

The PresentData/ directory contains the PresentMon SDK: a library containing the lightweight collection and analysis functionality. See PresentData/PresentMonTraceConsumer.hpp for more information.
The PresentMon/ directory contains the PresentMon Console Application: a standalone console application that can be used to collect CSV data from target applications. See README-ConsoleAppliation.md for more information.
The IntelPresentMon/ directory contains the PresentMon Service and PresentMon Capture Application: an easy-to-use GUI that can be used to collect and analyze target applications. See README-Service.md and README-CaptureAppliation.md for more information.

There are also several other programs that build on this functionality and/or help visualize the resulting data. For example, see:

Binaries for the main releases of PresentMon are provided on intel.com or github.com (list of all releases).

See CONTRIBUTING.md for information on how to request features, report issues, or contribute code changes.

See BUILDING.md for information on how to build PresentMon components from source.

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Known issues

See GitHub Issues for a current list of reported issues.

User access denied

PresentMon needs to be run by a user who is a member of the "Performance Log Users" user group, or to be run with administrator privilege. If neither of these are true, you will get an error "failed to start trace session (access denied)".

To add a user to the "Performance Log Users" user group:

Run compmgmt.msc as administrator.
In the "Computer Management" window, expand "System Tools", expand "Local Users and Groups", and then click "Groups".
Double-click "Performance Log Users", and then click "Add".
In the "Enter the object names to select" text box, type the name of the user account or group account that you want to add, and then click "OK".
Sign out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

If PresentMon is not run with administrator privilege, it will not have complete process information for processes running on different user accounts. Such processes will be listed in the console and CSV as "<error>", and they cannot be targeted by name (-process_name).

Analyzing OpenGL and Vulkan applications

Applications that do not use D3D9 or DXGI APIs for presenting frames (e.g., as is typical with OpenGL or Vulkan applications) will report the following:

Runtime = Other
SwapChainAddress = 0
msInPresentAPI = 0

In this case, TimeInSeconds will represent the first time the present is observed in the kernel, as opposed to the runtime, and therefore will be sometime after the application presented the frame (typically ~0.5ms). Since msUntilRenderComplete and msUntilDisplayed are deltas from TimeInSeconds, they will be correspondingly smaller then they would have been if measured from application present. msBetweenDisplayChange will still be correct, and msBetweenPresents should be correct on average.

Tracking GPU work with Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling enabled

When using -track_gpu on a system that uses Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HWS), the GPU execution metrics are less accurate than when HWS is disabled resulting in msUntilRenderStart, msUntilRenderComplete, msGPUActive, and msGPUVideoActive measurements that are later/larger than they should be. For example, in a GPU-bound scenario the frame's msGPUActive may be reported ~0.5ms larger than the true GPU work duration, though the specific amount of the inaccuracy will be workload- and GPU-dependent.

An improved solution is WIP.

Shutting down PresentMon on Windows 7

Some users have observed system stability issues when forcibly shutting down PresentMon on Windows 7. If you are having similar issues, they can be avoided by using Ctrl+C in the PresentMon window to shut it down.