Blended Pixels
Description
The metric Blended Pixel Count represents the number of pixels written into render targets with the blending option enabled.
NOTE
This metric is accurate only to four pixels, and will generally be slightly larger than the actual number of pixels rendered. This is because the GPU renders blended pixels in 2×2 quads. When rendering along angular edges, this inaccuracy will become more pronounced.
Examples
- If you render a 2×2 pixel triangle the metric is 8 (2 triangles each hitting the subspan).
- If you render a 100×1 pixel triangle the metric is 200.
Improving performance
Fill rate often impacts total rendering performance when the CPU and GPU share system memory. Therefore, minimizing the number of pixels written into render targets and/or minimizing the number of alpha blended pixels will improve rendering performance.
Examine the Overdraw option in the Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer to find areas with high depth complexity (that is, fully-rendered pixels are being overwritten by ergs later in the rendering sequence).
NOTE
On Intel® HD Graphics 2500/4000: to access this metric, you must explicitly enable the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers option in your BIOS settings:
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Select Advanced
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Select System Agent (SA) Configuration
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Select Graphics Configuration
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Reboot your machine
If the BIOS on your system does not include the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers option, update your BIOS to the latest version from Intel. After completing your performance monitoring activity, we recommend that you disable the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers BIOS option and reboot your machine.
See Also