Steven Pratschner

PIX CPU Tools: Introduction to New Timing Captures Videos

August 21st, 2019

We've recently posted a series of 4 new videos to the PIX for Windows YouTube channel.  These videos provide an overview of the features in New Timing Captures. Check 'em out.  If you have feedback, please use the Feedback button in PIX to contact us. Steven Pratschner PIX CPU Tools Program Manager...

Windows 10 Servicing Release KB4505903 required for instrumented CPU captures

August 5th, 2019

If you're running the 1903 build of Windows 10 (the Spring 2019) update, you must have KB4505903 installed to take Function Summary, Callgraph, and Tracked Functions captures.  Without this update, your title will hang when taking one of these captures. To check whether you have this update, open Settings and go to Update and Recovery->...

PIX CPU Tools: Finding and Analyzing Context Switches

June 3rd, 2019

A context switch occurs when a CPU core switches from executing code on one thread, to executing code on a different thread, or going to idle.  When the OS switches the thread that is running on a CPU, it must save and restore state both for the thread that is being switched out, and for the thread that is being switched in.  This state, or ...

PIX CPU Tools: Populating the Range Details view

May 21st, 2019

The most common way to populate the Range Details view in the new implementation of PIX Timing Captures is to drag select a range of time in the Timeline using the mouse.  When you complete your selection, Range Details is populated with the data from all Thread and Core lanes for the range of time you selected.  After Range Details is ...

PIX CPU Tools: Graphing PIXReportCounter values in the Metrics View

May 7th, 2019

The Metrics view in New Timing Captures allows you to graph the duration of PIX CPU events and any counter values that are reported using the PIXReportCounter API.  Graphing event durations is fairly discoverable in the UI, but I think it's less well-known that counter values can be graphed as well. Annotating your title with calls to ...

PIX CPU Tools Reboot!

May 7th, 2019

A few weeks ago we released a version of PIX that includes a Preview release of a new implementation of Timing Captures.  This release represents a significant reboot of our CPU performance tools in PIX. We've gotten a lot of feedback over the last few years about how our CPU tools in PIX compare with other AAA game-focused profiling tools...