1080 GTX support

Is there a timeline for Nsight VS support for Pascal, specifically 1080 GTX? I have some urgent GPU profiling to do on this specific card and am looking for options, I don’t suppose there is a beta available with support?

Hi,

The new Nsight 5.2 RC1 should support Pascal now.

Thanks
An

I seem to have found an issue with Pascal support in the 5.2 RC released yesterday, related to newer drivers in Windows 10.

The hardware counters used for GPU stats in the Debug overlay, and for profiling frames/ranges, do not appear to be functional when using drivers beyond the 368.xx series.

The release notes mention using 368.81 (or newer), but so far as I can tell only 368.81 and 368.95 (the DPC latency hotfix driver) work correctly with 5.2 RC1 on Windows 10 build 14393 (the Anniversary Update).

Later drivers such as 369.09, which came with Win10 AU, and today’s 372.54 do not seem to be compatible with 5.2 RC1.

One common factor is that the 368 series use the WDDM 2.0 driver model, whilst 369.09 and 372.54 use the recently added WDDM 2.1.

I don’t see any mention of this in the release notes, is it a known issue? Are later drivers likely to be supported in RC2 or 5.2 final? Thanks.

TLDR: On Win10 AU (build 14393) drivers newer than 368.95 don’t appear to work correctly.

Hi Mseq,

Can you describe more about “driver newer than 368.95 don’t appear to work correctly”:

  • which sample?
  • don’t appear to work means it will crash? could you show us some detail steps?

Thanks
An

Hey An,

I’ve tried a few different samples after having the issue with my own application. Here’s a proper bug report…

Hardware:

Geforce GTX 1060 (GP106-400)

Software:

Nsight 5.2 RC1, Visual Studio 2015, Windows SDK 14393, Windows 10 x64 (Anniversary Update), Forceware 372.54

Issue:

With drivers newer than 368.95 (for example 372.54), when using Nsight 5.2 to debug D3D11 applications in VS2015, Nsight is unable to retrieve any pipeline utilisation information. That is, the debug overlay during “Start Graphics Debugging” shows no hardware usage.

Downgrading the driver to 368.95 restores the missing Nsight functionality.

Steps to repro:

  1. Install listed software, including driver 372.54.

  2. Download the microsoft DirectX11 win32 sample solution here - Browse code samples | Microsoft Docs

  3. Open the solution in Visual Studio 2015, and set the startup project to Tutorial06.

  4. Build the project (Win32 or x64 target).

  5. On the command menu select Nsight - Start Graphics Debugging. No hardware statistics will be shown in the nsight graphics overlay, as seen in the following screenshot - https://abload.de/img/nsight-372.54r9sli.png

  6. To verify the expected behaviour, install the older 368.95 driver and reboot as required, then re-open the tutorials.sln in Visual Studio 2015. Once more select Nsight - Start Graphics Debugging, and the expected hardware utilisation will be shown correctly in the debug overlay. Can be seen in this screenshot - https://abload.de/img/nsight-368.95ugz3p.png

Hope that helps to indicate what is not working correctly and lets you reproduce the problem. Like I said the problem only seems to occur with drivers that use WDDM 2.1 instead of WDDM 2.0 on the release version of Windows 10 Anniversary Update (build 14393).

Edit: Just to clarify, this issue isn’t limited to the debug overlay, as it also affects the Range Profiler on captured frames - The range profiler works correctly with 368.95 but provides no hardware information on 372.54.

Hi Mseq,

Thanks for your detail bug report. These counters and range profiler view need the support from driver, hence Nsight released under certain drivers. Could you please keep use 368.95 with Nsight, and I will try to do something for the new 372.54 driver.

Again, Thanks for your bug report, that’s really helpful.

Thanks
An

Thanks for the quick response, An. I have been using 368.95 since discovering the issue, as the 369.xx and 372.xx driver branches don’t appear to provide any critical improvements (that I’m aware of).

I’m glad the report is useful, and that you’re looking at supporting newer drivers too, as it won’t be practical to stay on the older branch indefinitely (I get user’s performance feedback typically based on the latest “game ready” driver). Nsight can be a really handy profiling tool, especially considering it’s provided for free, so your efforts are appreciated.

You may want to have someone clarify with more specific driver support in the release notes, since the currently stated “368.81 (or newer)” is a little misleading at present.