Intel Takes Gaming Graphics to Next Level with Developer Tools

[Cristian_25H]

Intel Corporation today introduced Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel GPA) 2012, the latest version of a powerful tool suite to optimize performance of gaming, media and entertainment applications. Expanding upon Intel's mobile momentum, Intel GPA 2012 will support mobile applications for Ultrabook devices and Android-based smartphones and tablets for the first time.

Previously available only on PC platforms, Intel GPA helps developers improve the experience of game and media applications by accessing powerful tools to analyze and optimize performance on Intel Core and Intel Atom processor-based platforms. The tool suite enables developers to enhance application performance on smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and PCs. Developers can also optimize Web content for browsers that support hardware-accelerated rich media, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.





"Gaming is one of the largest consumer segments for smartphones, but nobody wants a game that drains a smartphone battery," said Craig Hurst, Intel's director of Visual Computing Product Management. "There are few choices for developers who want to optimize apps for power, so Intel GPA 2012 introduces power metrics, ensuring that a game not only has great performance, but also runs longer on Ultrabooks, Android tablets and smartphones."

The Intel GPA tool suite includes:

- Intel GPA System Analyzer - Analyzes game performance and identifies potential bottlenecks that slow down performance or affect graphics. This tool allows developers to perform optimization experiments to fine-tune performance without changing application code. New in Intel GPA 2012, Intel GPA System Analyzer now supports a standalone mode that enables real-time analysis of application performance on smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks, including Android devices. Intel GPA System Analyzer can be used to analyze an application's power usage and how it will affect battery life on mobile devices.

- Intel GPA Frame Analyzer - Offers application developers deep frame analysis of individual application elements such as shaders, textures and pixel history. Intel GPA Frame Analyzer shows the visual and performance impact of each individual element in real time without affecting the application source code.

- Intel GPA Platform Analyzer - Developers can visualize performance of application tasks and the effect on devices by viewing CPU metrics and graphics workloads. PC application developers can also see how their software would perform in a multi-core environment. Intel GPA Platform Analyzer has been rebuilt from the ground up for the release of Intel GPA 2012 to provide more system behavior information. Additionally, the tool is capable of handling large volumes of data to emulate application performance on an extended run.

- Intel GPA Media Analyzer - When used in conjunction with Intel Media SDK, Media Analyzer enables developers to see how effectively an application uses hardware-accelerated video encode and decode in real-time.

Intel GPA 2012 is available as a free download at www.intel.com/software/gpa. Support for Android devices is expected to be publicly released this year.

[trickson]

They need to step it up on there GPU's! For the worlds largest CPU maker, That also makes GPU's they suck at it. More over your pictures are way too small I can not see any thing on them.

[zomg]

intel wants developers to optimize games for their crappy gpus with crappy drivers
nice try :lol:

[trickson]

Originally Posted by zomg

intel wants developers to optimize games for their crappy gpus with crappy drivers
nice try :lol:

Yeah lol. Shouldn't Intel make better GPU's first? With all there size and money they just can't seem to get the GPU thing right at all.

[Kreij]

Seems to me that any tool that helps developers delve into potential bottlenechs and under-optimized code (whether engine, shader or whatever) is a good thing to have around.

Kudos to Intel for making it free.

[cheesy999]

Originally Posted by trickson

Yeah lol. Shouldn't Intel make better GPU's first? With all there size and money they just can't seem to get the GPU thing right at all.

As much as Intel GPU's need to be more powerful, the amount of games on the market that are just really poorly optimised is far too high

[faramir]

Originally Posted by Kreij

Seems to me that any tool that helps developers delve into potential bottlenechs and under-optimized code (whether engine, shader or whatever) is a good thing to have around.

Kudos to Intel for making it free.

Meh, underground water tesselation has been pointed out long time ago but has Crysis 2 been fixed ?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/3

Game decelopers are a lazy bunch. they're not interested in performance enhancement tools such as profilers when they can just delay the release of their game for another 6 months and expect the next generation of graphics hardware to take care of their sloppiness. Heck, many are not even interested in putting out a polished product ...

[Kreij]

Just because someone decides to drive in a nail with 2x4 doesn't mean that having a hammer as an available tool is a bad thing ... no?

[hhumas]

useless for me .. I have nvidia

[trickson]

Originally Posted by Kreij

Just because someone decides to drive in a nail with 2x4 doesn't mean that having a hammer as an available tool is a bad thing ... no?

LOL!

[Prima.Vera]

I see S3-3D Virge graphics all over again....

[WarraWarra]

Yes Intel IGP is crappy but with AMD making the horrible 7770 disaster it is much easier for Intel to catch up with the 7770 replacement headless server GPU.

Amazing that AMD will be the reason why Intel gets anywhere with their IGP "gpu's"
7970/50 is done old school "ATI" and 77**/78** is "AMD fx-8150" cpu style trying to do GPU's same as Intel.

Intel bargains on their crappy IGP GPU's so that they can sell more servers and hacked cloud no security cloud online gaming garbage.

[Morgoth]

INTEL com back once Larrabee is done and it can compete with a HD5970 or higher!

[WarraWarra]

Originally Posted by faramir

Meh, underground water tesselation has been pointed out long time ago but has Crysis 2 been fixed ?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/3

Game decelopers are a lazy bunch. they're not interested in performance enhancement tools such as profilers when they can just delay the release of their game for another 6 months and expect the next generation of graphics hardware to take care of their sloppiness. Heck, many are not even interested in putting out a polished product ...

Same for the incompetent game developer company's and the accountants pushing and lazy developers not wanting to work.

5+ years old games have more value for money, quality than many new games that is just released, yes even gaming quality.
F.E.A.R. vs F.E.A.R. 3 no one cares for more smoke and non natural crap AA / AF that you would not find in real life that obstructs visibility or over saturated shadows ....

[trickson]

Originally Posted by WarraWarra

Same for the incompetent game developer company's and the accountants pushing and lazy developers not wanting to work.

5+ years old games have more value for money, quality than many new games that is just released, yes even gaming quality.
F.E.A.R. vs F.E.A.R. 3 no one cares for more smoke and non natural crap AA / AF that you would not find in real life that obstructs visibility or over saturated shadows ....

Here, Here!

[enaher]

Nice, Intel íntegrated gpu aren't as bad as people think when properly working theyre about at the same perform HD6540 so it's not terrible but not great for gaming the biggest gripe with it it's very unoptimized or filled with bugs and artifacts, like source games or even older games if they can fix this artifacts I'd could use my Ultraportable to do some oldschool gaming on the go.

[Mistral]

Did that headline just now had "Intel", "Gaming Graphics" and "Next Level" in the same sentence?..

Originally Posted by Prima.Vera

I see S3-3D Virge graphics all over again....

Hey! When overclocked, my ViRGE was running Shogo almost OKish.

[NC37]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

INTEL com back once Larrabee is done and it can compete with a HD5970 or higher!

Ummm, you do know they canned Larrabee awhile ago, or was that a sarcastic joke?

Yeah this is helpful for developers but in reality no serious dev is gonna design for Intel graphics in the first place. It will still be the low end titles that will have to design and test for Intel IGPs. Probably part of the reason this is free software.

Intel to get serious on graphics means both hardware and drivers. Larrabee was a lot of grandstanding and wasted press events. It showed Intel has the drive to advertise it, but not the drive to build it or make it happen. Now they are scrambling to confront Trinity. Intel needs radical design changes and focus to turn their monstrosity they call a GPU around.

[THE_EGG]

At least it will be able to play console games hehehhe (good and bad thing). Good thing the current consoles are here to stay for at least another year (i think).