NVIDIA PerfHUD

DirectX 9 is now supported in Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition from version 2.2 onward. NVIDIA® Nsight™ Development Platform, Visual Studio Edition is a graphics debugging and profiling environment integrated into Visual Studio. We recommend all DirectX 9 developers to migrate to using Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition 2.2 or newer for graphics API debugging, profiling and system trace. All future development of PerfHUD will be deprecated as a result of DirectX 9 support in Nsight™ Visual Studio Edition.

NVIDIA PerfHUD is a powerful real-time performance analysis tool for Direct3D applications. PerfHUD is widely used by the world's best game developers and was a 2007 Game Developer Magazine Frontline Award Finalist.

Download PerfKit 6.70 for Win7 and Vista

Under Windows Vista, we recommend using the R260 drivers or later from nvidia.com.

Blizzard's World Of Warcraft

Crytek Crysis

Epic UE3

Documentation

  • [PDF] PerfHUD 6 Quick Tutorial
  • [PDF] PerfHUD 6 User Guide
  • [PDF] PerfKit 6 Overview Slides
  • [YouTube] Overview Video (PerfHUD 5)

 

PerfKit 6.70 Feature Highlights:

  • New in 6.70! Support for Fermi GPUs
  • New in 6.70! Support for latest drivers (Post R256)
  • New in 6.70! Simplified handling of 32b and 64b apps...chose the package that matches your application
  • New in 6.70! Minor bug fixes
  • Save/Load DX10 frame captures (Ctrl+S in the Frame Debugger)
  • Works with standard drivers on Windows 7 and Vista
  • SLI Support
  • Texture Visualization and Overrides
  • API Call List
  • Dependency View
  • CPU/GPU Timing graph
  • And much more!

Screencasts

These 2-3 minute videos introduce you specific features of PerfHUD 6.

Notes and Known Issues

  • Don’t forget that your application must opt in to PerfHUD analysis. Instructions are page 5 of the Quick Tutorial.
  • If installing on Windows 7 or Vista, please make sure to install PerfHUD after installing an R256 or later driver.
  • PerfHUD 6 now only pauses your graphics threads when you enter the Frame Debugger or Frame Profiler. If this is a problem, we recommend pressing Enter key to freeze time while in the Performance Dashboard, and then switching to the Frame Debugger or Frame Profiler.

NVIDIA PerfHUD 6.70 Feature List

  • New in 6.70! Support for Fermi GPUs
  • New in 6.70! Support for latest drivers (Post R256)
  • New in 6.70! Simplified handling of 32b and 64b apps...chose the package that matches your application
  • New in 6.70! Minor bug fixes
  • New in 6.62! Support for Windows 7
  • New in 6.62! Fix for the COM initialize bug
  • New in 6.6! Support for GPUs based on GT21x chips
  • New in 6.6! Fixed a bug when applications used RawInput
  • New in 6.5! Save/Load DX10 frame captures (Ctrl+S in the Frame Debugger)
  • New in 6.1! Supports GeForce GTX 200 series GPUs, as well as earlier models.
  • New in 6.1! A more robust input layer for intercepting the mouse and keyboard
  • Supports DirectX10 on Windows Vista or Windows 7
  • Supports DirectX 9 on Windows XP and Windows Vista
  • Supports Managed and XNA applications
  • New! No special driver needed on Windows Vista
  • The Performance Dashboard
    • A completely customizable real-time graph overlay
    • New! Save/load custom layouts
    • Move, resize, and reconfigure your monitors
    • Full set of 50+ PerfSDK Direct3D and GPU counters available
    • Double-clicking color swatch in graph legend toggles display of that channel
  • The Frame Debugger
    • Texture View
      • Visualization of 2D textures, 3D textures, shadow maps, cube maps and render targets
      • New! Full screen texture/render target visualization
      • New! Texture Overrides: Replace your application's textures with mipmap visualizers or other debug textures all on a per-texture basis.
    • New! API Call List
      • A color-coded interactive list of every API call made in the frame.
    • New! Dependency View
      • View dependencies between draw calls.
    • New! Improved D3D Perf Event View
      • Navigate your frame using D3D Perf Events
      • Set a debug break on any Perf Event
      • Disable PerfHUD modifications in Perf Event ranges.
    • Advanced State Inspectors
      • Visually inspect all data in the graphics pipeline on a per-draw call basis.
      • Edit & Continue for HLSL and .fx vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
      • Edit & Continue for Raster Operations state
  • The Frame Profiler
    • Automated Performance Analysis
    • Per-draw call graphs
    • New! CPU and GPU Timings Graph
    • Instruction Count Ratio graphs
  • Improved User Interface
    • New! Numerous new hotkeys
    • New! Keyboard accelerators for context menus
    • New! Instant Feedback (F4) to send the PerfHUD team comments or issues from within the application.
  • Compatibility, stability, and reliability improvements
    • True frame capture
    • Extensive testing on a wide range of applications
    • Allow API specification (DX9/DX10/both) for apps that create devices from both APIs

Older Versions

XP builds of PerfKit 6.62 include an instrumented version of the 195.62 driver.