Intel revolutionises game benchmarking with new gaming performance tool

Intel has changed how games are benchmarked with their new “GPU busy” metric and their Intel PresentMon Beta

As part of their ARC Q3 2023 update, Intel has released their “Intel PresentMon Beta” a new performance overlay and capture tool for PC gamers that combines a powerful overlay tool and GPU telemetry options to allow gamers to know what their hardware is doing while running games. Like competing solutions, it can be used to benchmark games for comparative testing, but it also has a few tricks up its sleeve to give Intel PresentMon an advantage over competing tools.

     We do have another treat for enthusiasts as well. Some of you may have heard about a tool called “PresentMon” that was developed at Intel years ago, that powers many pieces of software used for graphics performance analysis. Today we are releasing the first beta of Intel PresentMon, a total revamp of the tool that makes it enthusiast-friendly. This update adds new features, and we hope it will push the next wave of gaming performance analysis.

“GPU Busy” – Intel’s game-changing new metric

As part of their new Intel PresentMon tool, Intel has added a new metric called “GPU busy” that allows gamers to see how hard their GPU is working. If your GPU is fully loaded and your game is fully GPU-limited, you will see that your “GPU busy” time is similar or identical to your game’s frametimes. If your gaming experience is bottlenecked in any way, this metric will showcase a gap between “GPU busy” time and frametimes, revealing that your game is likely CPU-limited in some way. 

    Another cool feature this beta brings is a totally new metric called “GPU Busy.” It can get pretty geeky pretty quick, but the TLDR is that you can see how much time your GPU is spending doing actual rendering versus sitting idle, or if your gaming PC is really CPU and GPU balanced, which makes the “GPU Busy” metric look interesting. Our video discussion with TAP at the top of the page goes into a lot more detail on this; I highly encourage you all to watch it if you want to nerd out, and maybe learn a bit about the game render pipeline along the way. Keep an eye out for our tech reviewer friends that will be using this metric for some interesting stories soon!

The chart below showcased GPU busy time charted against frametimes. As you can see below, there are times where frametimes are notably higher than GPU-busy times, signalling that Counter-Strike 2 is CPU or memory limited in these situation. This performance metric can be used to see if your system’s gaming performance is limited by your graphics card or some other piece of hardware. 

Moving forward, Intel wants to expand on their “GPU Busy” and uncover ways that the company can judge how system performance is limited, allowing gamers to make a more informed upgrading decision. That said, doing this would be a tricky task, as games can have their performance limited in many ways. Even so, a tool that can judge whether or not a game is CPU-limited, memory-limited, or limited by some other kind of hardware would be incredibly useful for game testers and game developers. 

 Intel’s new “Intel PresentMon” tool appears to be an incredibly useful utility, and we look forward to seeing how the company’s new “GPU busy” metric impacts our own game testing efforts. Metrics like “GPU busy” could be invaluable for future CPU reviews, and useful for other forms of game testing.

PC gamers can download Intel PresentMon here.

You can join the discussion on Intel’s new enthusiast benchmarking tool on the OC3D Forums.