GPU performance testing & technical tools.

Undervolting a GPU by hand is a lot of trial and error: adjust the curve, run a test, check for crashes, repeat. I wanted to see how much power I could save while keeping similar gaming performance, so I built Silicon Tuner to automate that process.

It records a stock baseline, then steps through clock offsets on the voltage/frequency curve and checks each point for errors, building a stability map as it goes. From that map, it derives three profiles with different goals: Efficiency, Balanced and Maximum Performance. Profiles can then be validated in actual games, not just synthetic tests.

I've tested it on my RTX 5090 and RTX 5070. For the RTX 5070 results shown here, I ran Cyberpunk 2077's built-in benchmark with the same game settings for each profile and compared power draw, frame rate and temperature against stock.

After updating from patch 5.00b, I noticed that HairWorks hair looked worse indoors, with more visible shimmering. I first saw it in 5.00c, and it was still there in 5.01. Comparing the builds helped me narrow the change down to the hair-rendering pipeline. A hybrid configuration using the earlier rendering components with the newer game data brought back the 5.00b look in the scenes I checked.

Showing the difference needed a closely matched pair of screenshots, and lining them up by hand felt almost impossible. I couldn't find a tool that did what I needed, so I developed a mod that lets me run multiple instances of the game, hold Geralt still and save both his position and the camera setup. I can then load that setup in the other instance, matching Geralt's position and the camera angle across builds.

While playing Resident Evil Requiem, I wanted a closer look at character expressions and details the normal camera kept out of view. The game had no way to do that, so I built RE9 FreeCam.

The hardest part was keeping control during cutscenes, when the game kept pulling the camera back to its scripted position. Once that worked, I added field-of-view controls and options to disable depth of field and lens flare, so I could frame and inspect details that are normally out of reach.

It's a small example of how I tend to work: when the tool I need doesn't exist, I adapt or build one to solve that specific problem.

I started GameStutterLab because of the stutters I kept running into in PC games. It lines up frame times with available CPU, GPU, memory and disk activity, so I can see what else was happening around a spike and decide what to test next.

It's still in development, and it doesn't automatically establish a definitive cause. Activity that coincides with a stutter is a lead, not a verdict. In the capture shown here, a quicksave lined up with a 98.79 ms frame and nearby disk activity, but the exact cause is still unconfirmed.

I wanted to see how The Sims 2 would look with path tracing, so I've been adapting RTX Remix to work with the game and comparing its lighting, shadows, reflections and materials with the original rasterized rendering.

Along the way, I've chased down distorted characters, missing textures and incorrectly rendered glass: reproducing each issue, comparing it with the original game and checking that a fix doesn't break something else.