Detecting performance bottlenecks with Unity Frame Timing Manager
The Frame Timing Manager is a feature that provides frame-level time measurements like total frame CPU and GPU times. Compared to the general-purpose Unity Profiler and Profiler API, the Frame Timing Manager is designed for a very specific task, and therefore comes with a much lower performance overhead. The amount of information collected is carefully limited as it highlights only the most important frame stats.
One main reason for leveraging the Frame Timing Manager is to investigate performance bottlenecks in deeper detail. This allows you to determine what curbs your application performance: Is it bound by the main thread or render thread on CPU, or is it GPU-bound? Based on your analysis, you can take further action to improve performance.
The dynamic resolution feature supports fixing detected bottlenecks on the GPU side. You can then increase or reduce rendering resolution to dynamically control the amount of work on the GPU.
During development, you can even visualize timing in an application HUD, which allows you to have a real-time, high-level mini Profiler built right in your application. This way, it’s always readily available to use.
Lastly, you can use the Frame Timing Manager for release mode performance reporting. Based on collected information, you can send statistics to your servers regarding your application’s performance on different platforms for better overall decision-making.