Every advance in gaming, whether on consoles, PCs, or the cloud, is only as good as the games delivered on it. That is why you’ll find AMD’s strong commitment to game developers reflected in every move we make in the gaming world. It’s also why our Radeon™ Software team gets so excited for the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). It's a one-of-a-kind opportunity to share our latest and greatest tools, tech, and support resources directly with the passionate developer community.
"The Game Developer Conference is first and foremost about supporting the development community with everything it needs to make the next wave of incredible gaming experiences possible. At this GDC, AMD is doubling down on its commitment to open standards-driven games development by providing developers with the tools they need to bring their AAA visions to life. Gaming is moving in exciting new directions, both on consoles and PCs, as well as in gaming driven from the cloud. AMD is out in front of these developments, and ready with the support developers need to make the most of these opportunities."
– Andrej Zdravkovic, Corporate Vice President for Software
AMD has long distinguished itself by maintaining a strong commitment to open standards. We continue to believe that the freedom and flexibility made possible by open standards fosters gaming innovation in ways that proprietary solutions cannot. We are very proud to support developers who share that vision with GPUOpen, our website for developers stocked with valuable software and tools based on open standards that they can use to help maximize the performance of their games. For example, dedicated tools like the Radeon™ GPU Profiler help accelerate development cycles and optimize games for next-gen APIs such as DirectX® 12 and Vulkan®.
There’s a lot more to share this GDC, with the following updates to our Radeon Software for Developers tools being released on GPUOpen and presented during the AMD-sponsored sessions at the conference tomorrow, Wednesday, March 20.
Radeon™ GPU Profiler 1.5
GDC 2019 Session: “AMD GPU Performance Revealed”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
The Radeon™ GPU Profiler (RGP) is our low-level optimization tool for DirectX 12, Vulkan, and OpenCL™ that runs on Windows® and Linux® and provides detailed graphics and compute timing and occupancy information on AMD Radeon™ GPUs.
With RGP, developers can easily visualize precisely how their game or application is utilizing the GPU so they can fully optimize it for Radeon™ graphics cards, helping deliver a better experience to end-users using AMD.
At GDC we’ll be showing three new features that we are adding in the RGP 1.5 update. Instruction timing, available for all shader stages, lets you see instruction durations to find out what part of your program is “hot.” Shader ISA lets you see shader code in the pipeline state and user market display helps you better understand what the GPU is working on.
The Radeon GPU Profiler 1.5 update is coming soon with planned availability in April 2019.
Radeon™ GPU Analyzer 2.1
GDC 2019 Session: “AMD GPU Performance Revealed”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
The Radeon™ GPU Analyzer (RGA) is our offline compiler and shader performance analysis tool for DirectX®, Vulkan, OpenGL®, and OpenCL that runs on Windows and Linux which also integrates into popular third-party developer tools like RenderDoc, Shader Playground, CodeXL, and Pyramid.
RGA improves developer efficiency by providing an integrated shader code editing, compilation, and analysis environment outside of a game engine that helps quickly validate different optimization strategies. As with the Radeon GPU Profiler, the optimizations RGA helps achieve can deliver better end-user experiences on Radeon graphics.
The updated 2.1 version of RGA being presented at GDC has a new GUI interface for Vulkan and OpenCL analysis and the ability to use the shader compiler directly from the installed Radeon Software driver – rather than the one included with the tool.
Radeon GPU Analyzer 2.1 will be available on March 20, 2019.
Microsoft® PIX AMD-specific GPU Data Support
GDC 2019 Session: “AMD GPU Performance Revealed”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
Microsoft® PIX is the premier tool for debugging and analyzing DirectX 12 game performance on Windows® 10, and it has been updated for GDC 2019 to enable developers who primarily use PIX to debug and analyze their DX12 performance to better optimize their games for Radeon graphics.
The updated version of Microsoft PIX, 1903.12, in addition to providing AMD GPU-specific per command performance data and DirectX 12 stage wave occupancy data, now includes AMD GPU-specific high frequency counter data.
The high frequency counter data is based on AMD streaming performance metrics (SPM) which are heavily relied upon by console developers to understand the precise performance impact of overlapping command execution on the GPU.
Microsoft PIX 1903.12 is available now.
OCAT (Open Capture and Analytics Tool) 1.4
GDC 2019 Session: “AMD GPU Performance Revealed”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
OCAT is our lightweight open source capture and performance analytics tool with support for DirectX® 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan. It runs in parallel with your game, sampling available DXGI presentation metrics to provide an accurate view of frame timing, pacing, and delivery.
OCAT can be used by developers to help discover and fix issues in frame pacing, and by end-users for detailed benchmarking of their system’s performance in DX12 and Vulkan games.
For the OCAT 1.4 update, we’ve added an audible indicator that capturing is taking place when you don’t want to use the in-game overlay or there are compatibility issues with certain titles prevent its use. We’ve also updated the in-game overlay to include a rolling frame time graph and to display what graphics API is currently being used. Lastly, there is a bar can be added to the overlay that changes color with each frame to aid with post-process video analysis of the capture.
OCAT 1.4 will be available on March 20, 2019.
AMD Radeon FreeSync™ 2 HDR samples
GDC 2019 Session: “A Blend of GCN Optimisation and Color Processing”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
AMD Radeon FreeSync™ 2 HDR 1,2 technology raises the bar to the next level for gaming displays, enabling an exceptional user experience when playing HDR games, movies, and other content.
To help game developers properly set up their games to work with Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR, starting at GDC 2019 AMD is going to post a series of in-depth technical blogs along with sample code that show how to set up, activate and render with Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR enabled on AMD Radeon GPUs with the required Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR display attached.
The first blog planned is an introduction to the series and covers color spaces, with follow up blogs in the series covering tone mapping, gamut mapping, and ending with how to use the provided sample code to enable Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR in your application.
The Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR Color Spaces blog will be posted on March 20, 2019.
AMD TrueAudio Next (TAN)
GDC 2019 Session: “Powering Spatial Audio on GPUs Through Hardware, Software and Tools”, Room 3001, West Hall, Moscone Center
AMD TrueAudio Next (TAN) is our SDK for GPU-accelerated high-performance audio signal processing for realistic spatial audio, now supported in Steam® Audio. At GDC 2019, we are presenting with Valve to show how the latest Steam Audio Beta 17 released in February now supports dual real-time dedicated compute queues (RTQs) using TAN for accelerated audio convolution, and AMD Radeon™ Rays for accelerated real-time audio ray tracing.
This update to Steam Audio using GPU-accelerated TAN and Radeon Rays enables higher-order ambisonics spatialized audio for immersive and realistic audio environments with a low impact on the application’s Radeon graphics performance 3. This means developers can incorporate amazing GPU-accelerated spatial audio into their experiences without having worry about compromising its visual fidelity.
Steam Audio Beta 17 with dual RTQ TrueAudio Next and Radeon Rays support is available now.
Alexander Blake-Davies is a Software Product Marketing Specialist for Radeon™ Software for Developers at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
Footnotes
- FreeSync 2 HDR does not require HDR capable monitors; driver can set monitor in native mode when FreeSync 2 HDR supported HDR content is detected. Otherwise, HDR content requires that the system be configured with a fully HDR-ready content chain, including graphics card, graphics driver and application. Video content must be graded in HDR and viewed with an HDR-ready player. Windowed mode content requires operating system support. GD-105
- Requires a monitor and AMD Radeon™ graphics, both with FreeSync support. See www.amd.com/freesync for complete details. Confirm capability with your system manufacturer before purchase. GD-127
- For more information about AMD TrueAudio Next’s impact on Radeon graphics performance please see https://steamcommunity.com/games/596420/announcements/detail/1743360777226556930
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