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May 15, 2025
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New memory profiling features in Timing Captures

The 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows adds several new features to help you optimize your game's use of memory.  These features include: Memory-related Metrics The memory metrics for your game's process are available in both the Metrics layout and the System Monitor.  These counters enable you to track your commit charge, or page ...

May 12, 2025
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Power status, CPU frequency and CPU C-State counters

Starting with the 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows, new metrics have been added to help you optimize your title on battery powered devices such as tablets and Windows handheld gaming devices.  With these counters, you can see whether performance issues in your game can be correlated with power-related events, such as a change in CPU C-state, or a ...

May 6, 2025
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Introducing Budget Profiles in Timing Captures

The 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows introduces the concept of Budget Profiles in Timing captures.  A Budget Profile is a grouping of budgets defined for their respective metrics.  A common use of Budget Profiles is to define the performance targets, or profiles, for different hardware specifications.  For example, your studio likely has different...

May 6, 2025
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Changes to PIX Events with a D3D context parameter

Prior to the 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows, calls to PIXBeginEvent and PIXEndEvent that include a Direct3D context were required to be called from the same CPU thread.  Starting with the 2505.09 release,  PIXBeginEvent and PIXEndEvent calls that include a context (referred to as PIX GPU events) may now be made on different CPU threads. This ...

Apr 28, 2025
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Capturing video frames in Timing Captures

Starting with the 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows, an option has been added to Timing Captures to record video frames along with the timing data.  If the option to collect video frames is selected before a capture is taken, PIX will add a lane named Video Frames to the Timeline view. This lane will contain images that show the video frames over t...

Nov 21, 2024
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Timing Capture Range Details “v2”

Release 2412.12 of PIX on Windows includes a Preview of a new implementation of the Range Details view in Timing Captures. The initial implementation of the Range Details view allowed you to list individual data items for a given range of time.  While this capability provided several basic scenarios, it was not flexible enough to support many of...

Nov 13, 2024
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The Timing Capture comparison layout

Starting with version 2408.05 of PIX on Windows, the Timing Capture comparison features have been moved from the Metrics view to a new dedicated Comparison Layout. This layout improves several comparison workflows, including the ability to compare data from multiple captures. The Comparison Layout produces a statistical comparison of the average...

Aug 20, 2024
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Multi-process profiling support in Timing Captures

Starting with the 2408.05 release of PIX on Windows, performance data from multiple processes can be analyzed with a single Timing Capture.  The ability to analyze multiple processes simultaneously is useful in scenarios where multiple copies of a game server are running on the same machine, for example. PIX will capture data from all running pr...

Aug 7, 2024
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Timing Capture bookmarks

Starting with the 2408.05 release of PIX on Windows, developers can add bookmarks, or annotations, to lanes in the Timeline layout of Timing Captures. Bookmarks are text notes that can be added at either a specific point in time, or to a range of time, on any lane in the Timeline. These notes are used to annotate aspects of a capture that are in...

Aug 6, 2024
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Querying the PIX Timing Capture file format

The Timing Capture file format is a Sqlite database.  Queries written in standard SQL syntax can be used to extract data from Timing Capture files to perform a variety of analysis tasks without requiring the PIX user interface. PIX on Windows includes a Sqlite extension that simplifies the queries for common tasks such as determining the...