Intel introduces PresentMon application with graphical interface and GPU overlay

Intel releases a new PresentMon application. This open source software works with video cards from all manufacturers and shows data such as frame rates, frame times and GPU telemetry in a new overlay. PresentMon was already available as an SDK, but did not yet have a separate app.

The beta version of Intel’s PresentMon app is available from Friday. The application includes a customizable overlay, which is displayed in one of the screen corners while playing a game. The overlay shows, among other things, the frame rates and frame times, in addition to CPU and GPU telemetry such as temperature, clock speed and VRAM consumption. The overlay can be adjusted via a graphical interface.

The software also has a windowed mode, which shows the overlay in a separate window, for example on a second monitor. PresentMon works with CPUs and GPUs from Intel, but also supports products from other manufacturers. The app works with games based on APIs such as DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan. The app also gets command line support, for example for benchmark automation, and can record performance data and save it to a CSV file.

In addition, Intel is introducing a new performance metric for measuring GPU performance, called GPU Busy. This is displayed together with the frame times and shows how much time the GPU spends rendering a frame in milliseconds. Frame times show the total time it takes to display a frame, including CPU computation. According to Intel, GPU Busy allows users to see whether a system has a CPU or a GPU bottleneck. GPU Busy can be seen in the new PresentMon overlay.

PresentMon has existed for some time as a software development kit. Several apps that measure GPU performance, such as CapFrameX, are based on the PresentMon SDK. However, the separate application that Intel released on Friday is new.