Does a program or method exist by which I can see close a real-time (or close to) data on bits and bobs of data about the activity of components of the computer which aren’t normally looked at?
As for why I want this; I’m a huge fan of data. Graphs and spreadsheets are pornographic when they mean something to me. I’d love to actually see the numbers on all these things and gain a better understanding of how programs interact with these various components and such things. The other reason I want this is because I’ve seen claims around the internet that games like Dwarf Fortress are limited by something like CPU cache, or that Factorio is limited by RAM speed. At face value, to me, these claims seem absurd and I haven’t seen evidence to substantiate them. I’d love to get some numbers and see for myself how true this actually is.
I also love tinkering and would get a great joy out of just playing around.
What OS are you using? If Windows then you can use Perf Mon to view real time stats. The SysInternals tools are also a great way to really get a close look at what is running and what it is up to.
If you want to examine data gathered over a long period on a Windows Server the PAL tool can be used to create a template for the workload I want to analyse then get a collection set running based on that. You then pull the results back and use PAL to analyse it and it spits out a HTML report full of graphs and red text on anything you should investigate.
Just to add, you can have GPU-Z log to file and analyse the output in Excel and combine with Perfmon output since few GPU drivers add perfmon counters.
I most certainly am using windows. Thanks for the links! Knowing these exist may come in handy. They’re much closer to what I’ve been looking for, but not quite there. I did though do some better googling and I found this tool which works with some Intel Xeons https://01.org/cache-monitoring-technology
It’s exactly what I want for the memory and CPU. I’m quite horrified though of going through the process of acquiring the necessary hardware and finding out that I simply don’t know what I’m doing well enough to even take advantage of the tool. It has also occurred to me that the results I find relating to CPU cache will very likely be as, or even less, useful than comparing the clock speeds of processors with different architectures.
I’m definitely looking at things that are beyond my current understanding of computers. Interesting things certainly though. If anyone has any experience in this area perhaps there’s something you could add.