PIX on Windows

Capturing GPU Work

Damyan PepperSeptember 15, 2020Sep 15, 202009/15/20

One of the most significant changes we’ve made in PIX-2008.26 has been to make the GPU capture process focus on capturing GPU work rather than API calls. This blog post will explain how PIX used to work, describe some of the drawbacks with this approach, how it works now, and the benefits we get from it. Hopefully, you’ll find this ...

Debugging D3D11 apps using D3D11On12

Jeff NoyleSeptember 8, 2020Sep 8, 202009/8/20

PIX is designed for use with Direct3D12 applications. That said, PIX can take advantage of Windows’ ability to convert Direct3D11 API calls into Direct3D12 calls, and thereby allow you to view your Direct3D11 application as if it were Direct3D12. It’s easy to use: just click this check box here before launching your game under GPU capture...

GPU Captures: Support for D3D video

Austin KinrossSeptember 4, 2020Sep 4, 202009/4/20

PIX on Windows version 2008.26 added support for taking GPU Captures of applications that use D3D video APIs. This means that you can now use PIX to capture regions of GPU work that involve videos, such as title screens in games or videos playing in web browsers. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how PIX captures video workloads and what ...

Changes to the capture experience

Matt AmertSeptember 2, 2020Sep 2, 202009/2/20

Summary As some of you have likely noticed by now, PIX.2008-26 comes with some improvements to the overall capture and Start-Analysis experience, made possible by the rewrite of the capture layer within PIX on Windows. This is a list of the major changes – read on for a detailed explanation! API selection change - no ...

GPU Captures: How we support placed and reserved resources

Austin KinrossAugust 31, 2020Aug 31, 202008/31/20

Quick Links   Summary   Recap: placed and reserved resources in D3D12 In D3D12, there are three types of resources: A committed resource has its own dedicated backing memory that isn’t shared with any other resource. This makes them relatively easy for PIX to capture...

PIX 2008.26: Performance Improvements

Austin KinrossAugust 27, 2020Aug 27, 202008/27/20

Earlier today we released PIX on Windows version 2008.26, featuring a 100,000+ line rewrite of our component that takes GPU Captures. Morgan has described this release’s functional improvements in her blog post, but here we’ll take a closer look at the new performance improvements.    Recap: GPU Captures in PIX on Windows...

New documentation page: Finding and Analyzing Context Switches

Steven PratschnerAugust 26, 2020Aug 26, 202008/26/20

Hi PIX users, I've written a new documentation topic on how to use the features in Timing Captures to find and analyze context switches (here). Feedback and questions appreciated as always. Thanks, Steven Pratschner - PIX team...