Version: Unity 6.1 Alpha (6000.1)
Language : English
Rendering Profiler module
Graphics performance and profiling in URP

GPU Usage Profiler module

The GPU Usage ProfilerA window that helps you to optimize your game. It shows how much time is spent in the various areas of your game. For example, it can report the percentage of time spent rendering, animating, or in your game logic. More info
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module displays where your application spends time in the GPU. You can only use the GPU Profiler in Play mode, or for builds of your application. You can’t use it to profile the Unity Editor.

By default, the GPU Usage Profiler module isn’t enabled. To enable it, refer to Activating Profiler modules.

Note: If you have Graphics Jobs enabled in the Player Settings, GPU profiling isn’t supported. For more information, refer to the documentation on Player SettingsSettings that let you set various player-specific options for the final game built by Unity. More info
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. Additionally, on macOS, you can profile the GPU only on Mavericks 10.9 and later.

Chart categories

The GPU Usage Profiler module’s chart has several different categories that you can use to investigate GPU timings:

Chart Description
Opaque Built-in rendering pipeline’s time to render opaque objects.
Transparent Built-in rendering pipeline’s time to render transparent objects.
Shadows/Depth Built-in rendering pipeline’s time to render shadow maps.
Deferred Geometry Built-in deferred rendering pipeline’s time to render geometry.
Deferred Lighting Built-in deferred rendering pipeline’s time to render lighting.
PostProcess Built-in rendering pipeline’s time to process post processing effects.
Other Rendering time to process other things such as Scriptable Rendering Pipelines

Module details pane

When you select the GPU Usage module, the details pane displays a breakdown of where the application spent time in the selected frame.

Views dropdown

You can display the timing data as a hierarchical table. To change the table views, use the top-left dropdown in the details pane (set to Hierarchy by default). The views available are:

Value Description
Hierarchy Groups the timing data by its internal hierarchical structure. This option displays the elements that your application called in a descending list format, ordered by the time spent by default. You can also order the information by the total amount of GPU time, or the number of calls. To change the column that orders the table, click the table column’s header.
Raw Hierarchy Displays the timing data in a hierarchical structure that is similar to the call stacks where the timing occurred. Unity lists each call stack separately in this mode instead of merging them, as it does in Hierarchy view.

Table statistics

The table views have the following columns:

Value Description
Total The total amount of time Unity spent on a particular function, as a percentage.
DrawCalls The number of calls made to this function in this frame.
GPU ms The total amount of time Unity spent on a particular function, in milliseconds.

GPU profiling support

The following table lists the platforms that the GPU Usage Profiler module supports:

Platform Graphics API Status
Windows DirectX 11, DirectX 12, OpenGL Supported
Vulkan Not supported
macOS OpenGL Supported.
Note: Apple has deprecated support of OpenGL.
Metal Not supported. Use XCode’s GPU Frame Debugger UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info
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instead.
Linux OpenGL core Supported
Vulkan Not supported
Web All WebGLA JavaScript API that renders 2D and 3D graphics in a web browser. The Unity Web build option allows Unity to publish content as JavaScript programs which use HTML5 technologies and the WebGL rendering API to run Unity content in a web browser. More info
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Not supported
Android OpenGL Supported on devices running NVIDIA or Intel GPUs.
Vulkan Not supported
iOS, tvOS Metal Not supported. Use XCode’s GPU Frame Debugger UI instead.
Tizen OpenGL Not supported.

On Windows, Unity supports Play mode profiling in the Editor with Direct3D 11 and Direct3D 12 APIs only. This is convenient for quick profiling, because it means you don’t need to build the Player. However, the overhead of running the Unity Editor affects the Profiler, which might make the profiling results less accurate.

Additional resources

Rendering Profiler module
Graphics performance and profiling in URP