Texture Tab

This tab displays all the textures associated with the currently selected set of ergs.

This tab contains the following components:

Selection List

The Selection list enumerates the textures and displays them as small thumbnail images. Click on a texture to display it in the Image Window. Each texture appears only once in the list, even if it is used by more than one erg. The text to the right of the texture image indicates the texture type, size, format, and how many times the texture is used.

Sub-image List

The Sub-image list displays thumbnail images of the cube-map faces or volume texture slices. This component appears only for applications that include cubemap or volume textures.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa texture tab Texture Tab

To select all the ergs that draw to this render target, right-click the texture in the Sub-image list and select Select all Ergs that render to this RT.

To select all the ergs that use this render target as a texture, right-click the texture in the Sub-image list and select Select all Ergs that use this RT as a texture.
The ergs are shown in the Scene Overview panel and in the Erg Visualization panel.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa texture all ergs Texture Tab

To select all ergs that use a certain texture, right-click this texture and select Select all Ergs that use this texture.

Hover the mouse over a texture in the Sub-image list to get a tooltip showing the following information:

  • The shader pipeline stages that use this texture: this varies by the DirectX* API version:
  • DirectX*9: Vertex Shader (VS), Pixel Shader (PS)
  • DirectX*10: Vertex Shader (VS), Geometry Shader (GS), Pixel Shader (PS)
  • DirectX*11: Vertex Shader (VS), Hull Shader (HS), Domain Shader (DS), Geometry Shader (GS), Pixel Shader (PS), Compute Shader (CS)
    For example, the screenshot below shows the textures for a DX11 application.
  • The ergs that use this texture; for example: Ergs 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
  • The texture slot for each erg; for example: VS0 DS0 PS0 for Erg 2.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa texture tooltip Texture Tab

Some texture types are unknown. For example, a texture that is bound to a DirectX*11 compute shader might be a raw data buffer, instead of a known texture type. In this case, the Intel GPA Frame Analyzer shows the Data Only thumbnail:

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa data only Texture Tab

The following information is shown next to the thumbnail:

  • Data Type. Example: Binary
  • Size of the texture, in bytes. Example: 320000 Bytes
  • Default stride multiplied by the number of rows. Example:  32 x 1000
  • How many times the texture is used. Example:  Used once

If the texture type is unknown, then the Data Viewer is shown instead of the Image Window.

Image Window

The image window displays the selected texture.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa 38 Texture Tab

Right-click the image to save it on your machine. The default image file format is DirectDraw Surface (DDS). You can also save the image in these file formats: Portable Network Graphics (PNG), JPEG (JPG), or Bitmap (BMP). For more information, refer to Saving the Texture Image.

Data Viewer

If the texture type is unknown, then the Data Viewer is shown instead of the Image Window.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa data view Texture Tab

You can change the following options:

  • Stride: The byte stride for the data.
  • View As: This drop-down menu enables you to specify how to view the data. The following data types are available:
    • 8-bit unsigned
    • 8-bit signed
    • 16-bit unsigned
    • 16-bit signed
    • 16-bit float
    • 32-bit unsigned
    • 32-bit signed
    • 32-bit float
    • 64-bit float

The Data Viewer has the following columns:

  • Location – address offset within the texture data; each location value is a multiple of the Stride
  • Hex - a hexadecimal view of the texture data
  • Data - the texture data, displayed according to the Stride and View As options

For example, suppose the Stride is 8, and the View As type is 32-bit unsigned. Then the Location address offsets will be in multiples of 8 bytes, the Hex column shows 8 hexadecimal values per row, and there are 2 columns of 32-bit unsigned values.

If the texture type is known, then it can be displayed as an image or as binary data. The Binary View check box toggles between these two views. The following screenshot shows the binary data when the texture type is known:

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa example Texture Tab

Mip Level Field

The Mip Level field that includes two sliders: 

  • View Mip Level slider is used to switch mip levels of a texture

  • Clamp to Mip slider forces that specific mip level to be used in rendering the scene
     

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa 41 Texture Tab

Histogram

This panel contains the histogram of the frame buffer image. To open the histogram, pull the slider from the rightmost side of the image to the left, or double-click on the right slider.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa 8 Texture Tab

The histogram enables you:

  • to visualize the color data within the frame buffer

  • to set the highlight and shadow clamping points for viewing the buffer by using the Shadow and Highlights sliders at the bottom of the histogram

  • to increase the dynamic range of the buffer you are viewing, so you can better see the data inside by linearly scaling the colors between the clamp ranges

  • to distinguish more quickly between small bars and zero-height bars: the histogram bars that have zero height have light gray below them
     

Histogram Color Channel Selection Drop-down List

This drop-down list enables you to configure the channels viewed for the selected frame buffer.

  • RGB mode – ignores the alpha channel if one is present

  • RGBA mode – weights the color values by the alpha channel; if all the alpha values of the image are 0, then no color information will be visible, so the image will appear white

  • Red/Green/Blue Color Channels – shows the image information in red/green/blue color

  • Grayscale – a grayscale conversion of the RGB data that was present in the buffer

  • Alpha Channel – a grayscale conversion of only the alpha data of the buffer

    Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa rgb Texture Tab

NOTE

Selecting ergs and changing highlighting colors lead to the image and histogram changes.

Auto Clamp Button

This button automatically adjusts the Shadow and Highlighted sliders of the current histogram; they will clamp the view of the buffer to the lowest and highest data points in the histogram respectively. Note that a Grayscale version of the image is used for this clamping, so for some data sets the clamping will produce non-obvious results.
Highest/lowest point refers to the rightmost/leftmost histogram data values that contain non-zero data.

Zoom in and Zoom out Buttons

Zoom in and Zoom out buttons enable you to zoom in / out the texture. You can also use the mouse wheel.

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers fa texture zoom Texture Tab

See Also

Determining whether Texture Bandwidth is a Performance Bottleneck

Texture Tab