Steven Pratschner

Program Manager, PIX on Windows

I'm the Program Manager for the PIX CPU tools in the Gaming Division at Microsoft. PIX helps you identify the performance issues that may be affecting the frame rate of your DX12 AAA title on Windows and on Xbox.

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File IO profiling support for archive files

August 13th, 2021
The August release of PIX on Windows adds file io profiling support for archive files to Timing Captures.  This new feature allows Timing Captures to identify which individual assets are being read out of archive files such as .zip or .pak. If the File Accesses checkbox is selected before starting a Timing Capture, PIX will collect data on...

New File IO-related counters in the Timing Capture Metrics View

July 6th, 2021
The 2107.01 release of PIX on Windows adds drive bandwidth counters to the Metrics view in Timing Captures.  These new counters, along with the existing drive utilization counters and the ability to view data on all file accesses, helps give you a clear picture of how file io is impacting title performance. To collect the counters and the ...

Symbol loading improvements to PIX Timing Captures

July 6th, 2021
Have you ever opened a Timing Capture only to realize you hadn't configured your symbol path correctly?  The good news is that PIX has long had the ability to process symbols after the fact.  The bad news is that you had to close and reopen the capture (after fixing up your symbol path) to trigger PIX to reload the symbols. A small, but ...

CPU Sample collection issue fixed in a recent Windows Update

June 10th, 2021
Several people have reported that CPU samples were not showing up in Timing Captures starting a few months ago.  This ended up being an issue with Windows Defender that has been fixed in a Windows servicing update that was released earlier this week.  A description of the fix and how to verify that you've received it is available on the ...

Timing Capture Sampling Profiler video

May 6th, 2021
I recently posted a new video to the PIX on Windows YouTube channel that describes some of the features in the Sampling Profiler in Timing Captures.  This video shows how to use CPU samples to analyze CPU performance in portions of your title that aren't sufficiently instrumented with PIX events. As always, use the feedback button in the ...

Converting previous versions of Timing Captures

April 29th, 2021
In some releases of PIX, the Timing Capture file format must be changed as new features are added. Such a format change was made in the 2104.20 release of PIX on Windows. If you attempt to open a capture that contains an older file format, a dialog will be displayed with the following text: Please use the Convert menu to migrate this ...

Usability improvements to the Timing Capture Metrics View

April 22nd, 2021
The 2104.20 release of PIX on Windows includes several usability improvements to the Metrics View in Timing Captures.  These usability improvements make it easier to manage the set of metrics that are currently graphed.  Metrics analysis is also improved through the ability to customize the minimum and maximum values for the y-axis for each...

New CPU Sampling Profiler C++ Source Code View

April 22nd, 2021
Starting with the 2104.20 release of PIX on Windows, the Sampling Profiler that is built into Timing Captures includes a C++ source code view. The source view uses coloring to attribute the collected CPU samples with source lines, thereby identifying the hot spots within a function. The source view is available when viewing Sampled ...

PIX Timing Captures require full PDBs

February 26th, 2021
PIX Timing Captures require a title’s PDBs to be generated using the /DEBUG:FULL linker switch. PDBs generated with the /DEBUG:FASTLINK linker switch are not sufficient. Note that, depending on the version of Visual Studio you are using, the linker switch /DEBUG specified without the FULL or FASTLINK option, may default to FASTLINK...

Finding memory leaks using Timing Captures

February 23rd, 2021
PIX Timing Captures include several analysis features aimed at making it easy to find memory leaks in your title.  These features, coupled with the ability to take captures for extended periods of time, are a compelling combination for finding leaks, even those that can take a considerable amount of time to manifest themselves. To enable ...