Graphics cards have become incredibly complex creatures that report a huge amount of data about their operation. Factors such as the processor, the engine used by each title, driver version, temperature, power consumption, and a long list of others also come into play. Intel believes it can present this information in a more direct and precise way, and capture telemetry that was previously unavailable to users. Its solution? A new tool called Intel PresentMon.
Any user who wants to monitor details such as power consumption, voltages, amount of memory in use, core percentage, and main frequencies of their graphics card has excellent tools at their disposal, among which MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO stand out. In fact, MSI Afterburner goes a step further by enabling voltage, frequency, and fan speed controls, ideal for overclocking or undervolting sessions.
However, every number has its limits. The best way to obtain data about our card's operation is to combine real-time graphs with the ability to capture telemetry, and that brings us to Intel's territory, which has just launched a new tool called Intel PresentMon. It is still in beta, but it is completely open source, and should work with any type of hardware.
Visualize your GPU performance with Intel PresentMon
The interface is divided into four general sections:
- Process - detects the process with the most GPU activity to reproduce the overlay. If it doesn't appear, PresentMon allows disabling Auto-target and selecting the process manually.
- Preset - offers three preconfigured models for the overlay, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Custom and Edit options allow personalizing its content, adding and removing widgets, defining the chart type, modifying the color, and specifying the percentage (for example, an average, 99th percentile, maximum and minimum points, etc.).
- Capture Duration and Capture Storage - help configure the maximum duration of telemetry capture (10 seconds by default) and easily access all stored data.
Intel PresentMon continues in its advanced configuration menu, with special values for the overlay (window mode, position, auto-hide, width, time scale, graph scale, framerate, and color), data processing (sampling and telemetry periods, window size, and manual selection of the graphics card), and capture configuration (statistics summary and filter for non-gaming processes).
All the main functions of Intel PresentMon have an assigned keyboard combination, and they are very easy to edit (in case conflicts with other programs appear). To finish, I want to mention a new measurement called GPU Busy, which essentially serves to visualize the balance (or lack thereof) between CPU and GPU, and detect bottlenecks. As if that weren't enough, Intel also shared the PresentMon SDK, and it wouldn't be crazy to think that other applications will incorporate GPU Busy in the future. Link below!
Official site and download: Click here
