NSight 5.2 RC1 debugging severely broken

Attempting to set breakpoints in shaders when graphics debugging displays “This breakpoint will not be hit” (with no other explanation). Additionally, when scrolling through the frame debugger, the UI will break: http://puu.sh/qEYx9.png. Are these known issues, and are there any workarounds? Another thing is that the shader usage graphs on the left of the UI do not render at all.

P.S. I am using driver version 368.81.

Edit: I’ve gone and purchased a Geforce 750 Ti to see if that helps, as I noticed that the 650 Ti was dropped from the supported GPU list. I’ve also tried updating to the latest drivers. Neither of these thing has helped.

Cheers, Brett

As far as I know Maxwell GPU are not supported yet for shader debugging.

So NVIDIA has managed to restrict shader debugging down to only the Kepler architecture? I had Fermi (650 Ti), so I upgraded to the next worst graphics card that I thought would do the job (750 Ti), and now I still can’t debug shaders? That seems very… strange.

P.S. Aside from the shader debugging. The graphics debugger being broken doesn’t help the situation.

Cheers, Brett

Hi brett19,

I am sorry, but right now, Nsight Shader Debug feature only been supported on Kepler GPU, and Nsight doesn’t support Fermi GPU right now.

I am not sure about your 750Ti, but I think most 750Ti in the market is Maxwell GPU. On the other hand, 650 Ti should be a Kepler GPU in my memory, why does your say it’s dropped from the supported GPU list?

Can you describe more about you ‘The graphics debugger being broken doesn’t help the situation’? you mean the UI broken? That’s weird to me, could you share me some simple samples that we can do some investigation locally?

Thanks
An

Hey AYan,

I believe my 650 Ti was a GF series (I believe this means Fermi), I checked when I had it installed and determined I had a Fermi version of it, but no longer have it installed to check again and find the whole serial, note that the 650 Ti is not in the compatibility list any longer as of 5.2 being released: https://developer.nvidia.com/nsight-visual-studio-edition-supported-gpus-full-list. My 750 Ti is a Maxwell (GM107).

In terms of the UI being completely broken. It appears to occur about 60% of the time that I try to scroll the frame debugger. The specific application I’m working on when it happens is a massive codebase and not easily broken down to its individual components to identify the flaw. I can however confirm that it also occurs on a Geforce 980 and Geforce 1070. I’m happy to help out in whatever ways I can, but I don’t think finding a simple sample that shows this is going to be reasonable.

P.S. I find it insane that your support of shader debugging has become limited to a single GPU architecture (Kepler), which is pretty difficult to get a hold of right now. How long are we going to need to wait before this becomes available?

Cheers, Brett

Hi brett19,

That’s possible, your 650Ti might be some old one.

Could you try these:

  • Disable Nsight Shader Debug by changing: Nsight Menu->Options->Graphics->Shader debugging preference, change it to ‘Disabled’, and take another shot.
  • If you can launch and pause&capture your app, could you do a serialization [on your target app’s HUD, ctrl-z and space to enter pause&capture mode, press ‘s’ to get the serialization project], build it and confirm this can repro your issue, could you send this to us?

I am sorry that I can’t tell you more about the shader debugging plan, the feature is under consideration for a future release.

Thanks
An

Hey AYan,

I have tried manually setting my shader debugging to disabled, but unfortunately it continues to occur. I also did a serialization project as you requested, and it does exhibit the same error that I encounter on the project itself (P.S. Project serialization is pretty awesome).

The project is available here: http://puu.sh/qLasC.rar . Note that for some reason, the Nsight project did not work right away due to the included GLEW not providing the correct function definitions for glClearNamedFramebufferfi and glClearNamedFramebufferfv. Search the project for HAX for the minor changes that were needed to build and run the project.

Cheers, Brett

Hi brett19,

I think I can repro your issue, after pause&capture, the image looks good, but if you drag the drawcall index, it will show you weird triangles, right?

I will keep you update.

Thanks
An

Hey AYan,

Thanks for getting back to me. I’m glad you are able to repro, and look forward to a fix. While you’re at it, why not add Maxwell shader debugger ;) :)

Cheers, Brett

Hi brett19,

I tried some latest internal build of Nsight, and found that’s OK for your issue. I think it’s good to let you know that.

Thanks
An