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New Tool Offers Look At Performance of UWP Games On Windows

Posted by timothy on from the poking-and-prodding dept.

Vigile writes: One of the concerns surrounding the recent debate of the Unified Windows Platform and games being released on it, such as the recent Gears of War Ultimate Edition, was the inability for media and consumers, and even entry level developers, to properly profile the performance of those applications. All of the standard testing applications like Fraps, FCAT and other overlays are locked out of UWP games. A Intel graphics engineer released a tool called PresentMon on GitHub yesterday that accesses event timers in Windows to monitor Present commands in any API, including DX11, DX12, Vulkan as well as games built on the Windows Store platform. Using this data, PC Perspective was able to profile the performance of the new Gears of War on PC, comparing frame time variability between the two flagship parts from NVIDIA and AMD. While it's not a perfect utility yet, there is hope now that this open source code will allow for performance metrics on any and all gaming titles.

29 comments

  1. UWP is shyte by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I won't touch "UWP" infected games even with a ten foot pole.

    1. Re:UWP is shyte by sexconker · · Score: 4, Funny

      I won't touch "UWP" infected games even with a ten foot pole.

      What about a Windows 10 foot pole?

    2. Re:UWP is shyte by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't even touch the pole itself in that case!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  2. Oh look... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yet another thing Tim Sweeney was wrong about.

    1. Re:Oh look... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      Except this is less accurate (it measures frame rates much earlier in the pipeline; well before the frame is actually rendered by the driver) and it's impossible to do any kind of overlay, look for dropped frames, measure tearing, etc.

  3. Save us Gaben by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You are our only hope!

  4. UWP is for LUDDITES. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Modern app appers use Appy App Appforms, NOT LUDDITE Universal Windows Platform!

    Apps!

    1. Re:UWP is for LUDDITES. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but uwp IS appy app apper appforms!

  5. The tool responds with... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Not very well - people don't seem to like UWP games. :-\"

  6. LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No one even gives a damn enough to say no one gives a damn :O

    I already paid for Fraps, why would I buy games that disable it? Is there some compelling reason? The same unification theory I have heard since Xbox came out?

  7. Lack of software != lockout by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    . All of the standard testing applications like Fraps, FCAT and other overlays are locked out of UWP games.

    If by "locked out" you mean, use different APIs and can't rely on 20 year old hooks but instead need to use the new modern hooks... then yeah you're "locked out". But that's a bit like saying that developers are "locked out" of Nvidia's next generation GPUs because there is no hardware to test on yet.

    Big UWP AAA games have been out for about a month. Everyone is acting like it's a giant conspiracy that SLI and VSync is a little glitch on a platform that has only ever seen a single game released. Jesus, give them a month or two to work out the bugs. And don't act like the need for new using different hooks on a different platform is some grand scheme to lock out debugging tools. "Breaking news, Visual Studio not able to debug Linux application using windows debug and profiling tools!"

    1. Re:Lack of software != lockout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > "Breaking news, Visual Studio not able to debug Linux application using windows debug and profiling tools!"
      You can use a Visual Studio 2015 plugin called VisualGDB to debug Linux apps: http://visualgdb.com/tutorials/linux/

    2. Re:Lack of software != lockout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I may seem old fashioned for this but I expect companies, especially huge companies with lots of cash, to have everything worked out BEFORE they release a new product.

    3. Re:Lack of software != lockout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are no such mythical APIs due to the sandboxing requirement.

    4. Re:Lack of software != lockout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The whole point of the exercise is to disallow any real hooks, this one was available by accident, not design. It's DRM, anti-cheating, least-common-denominator-xbox-pushing clusterfuck all rolled into one shit sandwich. It will completely castrate modding (only using the intended developer intended ways of modding a game rarely creates the best mods).

      No conspiracy here, it's a blatant FU to PC gaming, as we have come to expect from Microsoft. That it's temporarily dysfunctional is ammo I'll gladly use to trash it, UWP needs to die.

    5. Re:Lack of software != lockout by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 1

      Actually, it is old fashioned. And you can kill a business with that kind of thinking in today's world.

  8. What does that mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it an AAA game as a Metro application? Why?

    Well, don't run the Microsoft Store - dont create a Microsoft account in the first place - and run what you can otherwise run. Problem solved.

  9. Windows 10 is for chumps by Sheik+Yerbouti · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you fall for Windows Store and Microsoft's desire for a total walled garden approach in Windows 10 your a full on chump. Microsoft has taken to renaming and re-enabling there spying telemetry service after users turned it off.

    http://bgr.com/2015/12/01/windows-10-privacy-preferences/

    It's no longer your computer this is a complete outrage where the hell is the DOJ on this? I have been a Linux admin since the 90s and I have used it on the desktop on and off never really being able to stick with it because my games were on Windows. Well, this tears it for me I am out. I will take what I can get on SteamOS there is enough there to keep me entertained.

    1. Re:Windows 10 is for chumps by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      This walled garden will be like a game museum that developers will have to code down to and enjoy having their creativity limited.
      Welcome back to MSDOS games, this generations 320 or 640 resolutions and a sound card...
      Enjoy the bright and colorful world of console safe textures been forced back on a more advanced desktop.
      Every game will run real pretty at a nice smooth 60fps just like it did in 2013. Just dont ask too many questions about resolutions or fun. No counting pixels and asking about the total lack of any advancement year after year.
      Developers trapped in another decade of low quality games for all Windows users just to keep that console hardware working.
      Be what's 2013 and that game will always work.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Windows 10 is for chumps by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      where the hell is the DOJ on this

      None caring over the geek outrage just like most Windows users.

      Actually it is quite funny. When I think back to 2000 era it was the nerds and the geeks which ran beta versions of windows with telemetry baked in while everyone else was running standard older stuff. Now the nerds and the geeks run standard older stuff and everyone else upgraded to the cutting edge with telemetry baked in.

  10. uwp must go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and along with it, windows 10..

    uwp does for pc gaming what a dad with a 12 gauge does to your prom night plans.

  11. UWP is already copyrighted.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using "UWP" is clearly a copyright infringment: www.uwp.edu by Micro$losh. By the terms of the TPP, Steve Ballmer is due for a prison sentence. If not directly, via the All Writs Act.

  12. Re:UWP is cancer by bondsbw · · Score: 1

    Unified Windows Platform

    Vigile, this is the second post in the past week where you used the wrong term for UWP. It is the Universal Windows Platform.

    --
    All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
  13. Re:"A Intel graphics engineer" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Come on, don't be a retard. How's your spanish, danish or latvian? Got all the little grammatical pitfalls covered?

  14. i remember the first time i played gears of war by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    first day i played 45 minutes
    second day 30 minutes
    third day uninstalled

    im sorry but the exclusive shit on the xbox, with the exception of maybe halo, are not good games and should not be reviewed. Theres a reason why pc gamers have been able to live without those games on pc, because they are turds

  15. This was the problem? by sad_ · · Score: 2

    i'm not a windows user, but followed the whole UWP debate here and on some other sites, not once did i read that benchmarking was THE concern eveybody had with UWP.

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  16. Re:UWP is cancer by gweihir · · Score: 1

    I thought it was the Unattractive Windows Platform?

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.