MSI AB / RTSS development news thread

Part 2:

· Added asynchronous process specific performance counters access interface. The interface is integrated into hooks library, which is running inside protected process context and may report hooked process specific RAM and VRAM usages to client applications
· Added new open source DesktopOverlayHost tool to SDK. DesktopOverlayHost is a simple blank borderless 3D window with adjustable size, position, transparency and chroma keying support. You can use it as a platform for displaying any 3D API hook based overlay right on top of your Windows desktop. Implementation is overlay vendor agnostic, so you can use it with RivaTuner Statistics Server, as well as with other third party overlays like EVGA Precision X1 and so on
· Added ShowForegroundStat profile switch, which is allowing any 3D application to display foreground 3D process framerate and frametime statistics instead of application’s own ones. This switch is used by new DesktopOverlayHost tool profile to let it to display foreground 3D process statistics on desktop
· Added RenderDelay profile compatibility switch, allowing delaying On-Screen Display initialization and rendering for some applications when it is necessary (e.g. Resident Evil 3 in Direct3D11 mode when HDR mode is enabled)
· FCAT overlay update rate is no longer limited to overlay content update rate in offscreen overlay rendering mode
· Added new hypertext tags for displaying process specific 1% low and 0.1% low framerate graphs. Now multiple simultaneously running 3D applications can display their own independent 1% low and 0.1% low framerate graphs instead of foreground 3D application’s 1% low and 0.1% low framerate graphs in the previous version
· Improved 1% low and 0.1% low framerate graphs rendering implementation for graph and diagram rendering modes. The graphs showing the history of 1% low and 0.1% low framerate changes has no statistical sense, so now RivaTuner Statistics Server is showing you more informative dynamic histogram of sorted and the most slowest immediate framerates with highlighted 1% or 0.1% areas on it. For barchart rendering mode 1% low and 0.1% framerate graphs still display the current value like before
· Added new “moving bar” rendering mode for FCAT overlay. New mode is aimed to simplify visual identification of tearline position and it can be used when calibrating Scanline Sync settings
· Added new “Frametime calculation point” option to “General” application properties. This option is aimed to help those who try to directly compare frame rendering start timestamp based frametimes with frame presentation timestamp based frametimes. Please refer to new option context help to get more detailed info
· Added new “Percentile calculation mode” option to “General” application properties. This option is aimed to help those who try to compare different implementations of 1% low and 0.1% low framerate metrics in different applications. Please refer to new option context help to get more detailed info
· Added new “Framerate limiting mode” option to “General” application properties. Two alternate framerate limiting modes selectable with this option (“front edge sync” and “back edge sync”) are intended to be used in conjunction with scanline sync mode. Using those options in tandem allows enabling so called hybrid scanline sync mode. In this case actual target scanline synchronization is performed just once for initial tearline positioning then tearline position can be steered with high precision system clock. This option can also help those who try to compare flatness of frametime graphs measured at different points (frame start vs frame presentation timestamp based)
· Added 3 more decimal digits to fractional framerate limit adjustment control. Extended framerate limit adjustment precision can be necessary for new hybrid scanline sync mode, where the previous 0.001 FPS adjustment precision can be insufficient
· Added fractional frametime limit adjustment support. Extended frametime limit adjustment precision can be necessary for new hybrid scanline sync mode, where the previous 1 microsecond adjustment precision can be insufficient
· Now you may hold <Alt> and click framerate limit adjustment control to set framerate limit to your refresh rate
· Now up/down spin buttons associated with framerate limit adjustment control tune the limit in minimum adjustment step instead of fixed 1 FPS step (e.g. in 0.1 FPS step if single decimal digit after comma is specified)
· Added power user controllable passive wait stage to framerate limiter’s busy waiting loop. It is aimed to help those who is ready to sacrifice timing precision in favor of lower CPU load
· Improved power user oriented scanline sync info panel. New performance counters are aimed to improve the process of scanline sync calibration and help you to diagnose tearline jittering. The following new performance counters have been added to it:
o Sync start – index of scanline where 3D application called 3D API frame presentation function and scanline sync engine started the process of waiting for the target scanline
o Sync end – index of scanline where scanline sync engine ended the process of waiting for target scanline. Ideally it must be as close to expected target scanline as it is possible
o Present – index of scanline where 3D API frame presentation function was actually called after performing scanline synchronization. For normal scanline sync modes it is pretty close to the previous performance counter. For hybrid scanline sync mode it can drift depending on your framerate limit, if it doesn’t match with your display refresh rate
o Present latency – time spent inside 3D API frame presentation call
· Updated hardware encoding plugins:
o All hardware encoding plugins are using new host localization API, so all plugins support multilanguage settings GUI
o Updated Intel QuickSync H.264 encoder plugin. Now you may manually select target display device in the plugin’s settings. Please take a note that manual device selection can be required on Intel DCH drivers to address problems with wrong automatic Intel iGPU device selection, which could prevent the encoder from working properly
· Added alternate and user configurable CPU yielding implementation to busy wait loops used in both framerate limiter and scanline sync implementations. Alternate CPU yielding implementation is used by default now, it can improve previously existing and close to ideal framepacing accuracy even further under heavy CPU load conditions due to minimizing context switching related timing penalties
· Added alternate named pipe interface for streaming frametime statistics to third party applications in real time
· Updated profiles list

 

Cannot confirm that, task scheduler interface has not changed between the builds (and it has not been altered for YEARS, becasue it is pretty basic).

 

Cannot help with that, sorry, not a fan of killing time on searching for a black cat in a dark room.

 

Editor is not a part of MSI AB. It is a part of RTSS. Please do not use this thread for things like that, it is development news hub, not a general troubleshooting place.

 

4.6.2 doesn't support Ampere. Use 4.6.3. And please don't use this thread for general questions.

 

All

I've compiled final build of 4.6.3 and we'll release it shortly. It is exactly the same 4.6.3 beta 5 binaries (build 16053), so there are no functional changes comparing to the latest public beta. Just beta mark removed, 3060 info added to database and RTSS distributive is upgraded to the latest non-beta version.
We could release it in nearest couple hours here, at Guru3D. However MSI normally wants to launch new official Afterburner version synchronically with G3D and we're normally delaying the launch a bit to provide synchronous launch. So it may take some time (a few days?) for MSI webmasters to prepare it on their side. Stay tuned!

 

It can easily transform in a couple weeks. Things are slow on that side.

 

Got status update from MSI. Release is scheduled on tomorrow Wednesday, 3rd March.

 

I have no access to G3D webpages and cannot correct that, Hilbert edits them.

 

Please take a note that download page for final 4.6.3 still contains changes list for one of the previous betas. Full 4.6.3 changes list includes the following (you can also find it in readme included in distributive):


· Added NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture support:
o Added new fan control 3.0 API support
o Added new integrated OC Scanner API support, please read below to get more information about new OC Scanner implementation
· Added AMD Navi 21 GPU architecture support
· Updated bundled MSI Overclocking Scanner application:
o Starting from 455.xx drivers family, NVIDIA OS Scanner is no longer implemented as a separate software component redistributed with each AIC partner's overclocking software. Now NVIDIA OC Scanner is integrated into the driver and third party software can natively access it via NVAPI. Such implementation simplifies the process of OC Scanner maintenance for NVIDIA, it is no longer necessary to ship updated software components to AIC partners and re-release each partners’ software when something needs to be changed inside OC Scanner from NVIDIA side. MSI Overclocking Scanner supports both implementations of NVIDIA OC Scanner API:
§ Old legacy implementation of NVIDIA OC Scanner via separate software components for NVIDIA Pascal and Turing architectures for pre-455.xx drivers family
§ New integrated NVAPI based implementation of NVIDIA OC Scanner for 455.xx and newer NVIDIA display drivers
o New NVAPI based OC scanner implementation features the following changes and improvements:
§ Automated overlocking support for both core and memory clocks
§ OC Scanners's results are now persistent. It means that once the scanning process succeeds, NVIDIA driver internally saves optimized voltage/frequency curve and overclocked memory clock and apply them as new system defaults after reboot, even if you close or uninstall overclocking application. Now there is new "Revert" button inside MSI Overclocking Scanner, which allows you to revert overclocked curve and memory clocks to their real defaults
§ Manually adjusted clock/frequency curve stability testing functionality is deprecated and no longer available
· Added voltage control for reference design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30x0 series graphic cards
· Added voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON RX 6800 / 6900 XT series graphics cards
· Added new MSI Ampere, MSI Big Navi, MSI Indigo and MSI Cyborg v2 skins by Drerex design
· Added experimental support for Intel 10th generation CPUs
· Added experimental support for AMD Zen3 CPUs
· Altered synchronization mutex name for AMD SNM registers access in AMD Ryzen temperature monitoring implementation
· Fixed abnormally high PCIE bus usage value monitored on NVIDIA GPUs after display driver crash and recovery or on Optimus platforms when discrete GPU is sleeping
· Fixed issue with monitoring window displayed in minimized state on the first detach with some skins
· Improved automatic software fan control implementation:
o Added new hybrid automatic software fan control mode. This mode allows you to combine default hardware fan curve and user defined software fan curve and dynamically switch between those two modes on temperature threshold. Such implementation can be useful on the cards with limited software fan control range (on both AMD and NVIDIA hardware) if you wish to use deault hardware fan curve (with active native fan stop technology) in lower temperatre range and use customized software fan curve in higher temperature zone. This is achieved by new "Override zero fan speed with hardware curve" option. When this option is enabled, you're telling MSI Afterburner to engage default fan control mode in zero fan speed zone of your custom fan curve
o Added new "Use firmware control mode" option to software automatic fan control module. This option allows customizing fan curve at GPU firmware level instead of doing it entirely in software, so it doesn't require keeping MSI Afterburner loaded in memory in order to get custom fan curve working. Also this option can be used to bypass various third party issues related to broken fixed fan speed programming API in some display drivers (e.g. Overdrive8 API related screen flickering on some AMD GPUs). New option is only supported on limited set of modern GPUs (Vega and newer AMD GPU families, Ampere and newer NVIDIA GPU families) and it has multipe GPU firmware based limitations such as limited maximum supported number of nodes for the curve (quad slope curve and up to 5 curve nodes on AMD, dual slope curve and up to 3 curve nodes on NVIDIA), lack of step/linear mode switching support, lack of hysteresis adjustment support etc. Please refer to new option context help to get more details
· Improved hardware monitoring module:
o Added native NVAPI based implementation of absolute GPU power monitoring for NVIDIA GPUs
o Improved GPU.dll plugin. Open source code of updated plugin demonstrates implementation of new data sources: "GPU dedicated memory \ process" and "GPU shared memory \ process". Performance counters represented by new data sources are displaying local and non-local VRAM commits for foreground process, so you may use them to see how much VRAM is allocated by the game you're currently playing and compare it with total system-wide VRAM usage reflected by “Memory usage” data source. Implementation of new data sources is based on low-level D3DKMT API, which is allowing a process to peek into other process specific D3D performance counters. Due to such implementation model new "GPU dedicated memory \ process" and "GPU shared memory \ process" are not supported for EAC/BattleEye protected titles
o Added internal "Memory usage \ process" and "RAM usage \ process" graphs based on asynchronous process performance counter access interface introduced by RivaTuner Statistics Server v7.3.0. Implementation is similar to new data sources introduced by updated GPU.dll plugin, but unlike the plugin, internal sources are being asynchronously polled by digitally signed RivaTuner Statistics Server’s hook modules in context of the game process, so they support in-process VRAM and RAM reporting for EAC/BattlEye protected and UWP titles. It is strongly recommended to use those internal data sources instead of their clones located in GPU.dll. GPU.dll implementation is mainly intended to be open source tutorial for third party monitoring applications developers
· Added workaround for AMD driver bug causing short display flicker during applying new fan settings on some multi-monitor or single monitor high refresh rate display configurations
· "Erase autosaved startup settings" option is now disabled by default in AMD compatibility properties
· Now MSI Afterburner is forcibly disabling Zero RPM when applying new fixed fan speed in order to bypass AMD driver bug preventing fan control from working when Zero RPM mode is enabled on some systems. If Zero RPM is working properly on your system and you still want to keep it enabled when adjusting fan speed, you may disable forcible Zero RPM override with power oriented switch in application configuration file
· Now MSI Afterburner is displaying the minimum allowed fan speed in software fan curve editor window on Overdrive 8 capable AMD GPUs. The latest AMD drivers will not allow you to set fan speed below this limit, that’s by design of driver
· AMD ADL components are loaded by absolute path now to prevent possible DLL hijacking
· Unlocked old alternate clock monitoring functionality from original RivaTuner era. Power users may switch to PLL clock monitoring mode instead of default target clock monitoring mode on NVIDIA GPUs
· Tightened IO driver access policy, the driver can no longer be accessed by users with no administrative rights
· RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.0. This version introduces plugins architecture and brand new visual overlay editor plugin, we strongly recommend you to try it if you’re advanced user and want to customize your OSD beyond the possibilities of MSI Afterburner’s internal OSD layout editor