PIX on Windows

PIX 2103.16: Recently Launched Apps, Environment Variables, Camera Improvements in the Mesh Viewer

Morgan Grobin March 18, 2021 Mar 18, 2021 03/18/21

PIX 2103.10 was released today. This release adds new options to the app launch process, including launch history and the ability to set environment variables. We've added multi-cam support to the mesh viewer, and other bugfixes. Read the blog to learn more!

PIX Timing Captures require full PDBs

Steven Pratschner February 26, 2021 Feb 26, 2021 02/26/21

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

Steven Pratschner February 23, 2021 Feb 23, 2021 02/23/21

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 ...

WinPixEventRuntime 2102.09: Minor fixes and optimizations

Matt Amert February 16, 2021 Feb 16, 2021 02/16/21

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since our last update to WinPixEventRuntime! This update brings a couple of minor fixes and optimizations, which should hopefully lead to a slightly better quality of life when using the runtime 😊 You can download the new runtime here. Release notes: Known Issue...

Filtering CPU Samples by one or more PIX Events

Steven Pratschner February 3, 2021 Feb 3, 2021 02/3/21

The Sampling Profiler included in the 2101.27 release of PIX on Windows includes a novel new feature that allows you to filter the analysis of CPU samples down to just those samples that were collected during the time when one or more PIX events was running.  This capability is particularly useful for seeing which functions ran the most ...

Function Summary and Callgraph captures are now deprecated

Steven Pratschner February 1, 2021 Feb 1, 2021 02/1/21

Function Summary and Callgraph captures are deprecated starting with the 2102.27 release of PIX on Windows. The workflows supported by these legacy capture types have been replaced with enhancements we're recently made to the Sampling Profiler that is part of Timing Captures.  These enhancements include the ability to group the tree of ...

PIX 2101.27: AMD raytracing counters, DXIL improvements, and more

Austin Kinross January 27, 2021 Jan 27, 2021 01/27/21

Today we released PIX version 2101.27, which can be downloaded here. This release adds support for new GPUs and counters to AMD’s PIX plugin, improves the DXIL debugging experience, contains several enhancements to the CPU sampling profiler, and adds many other smaller improvements.    AMD plugin improvements  This ...

New documentation page: Analyzing CPU samples in Timing Captures

Steven Pratschner December 7, 2020 Dec 7, 2020 12/7/20

Hi PIX users, I've added a new page to our PIX for Windows documentation set.  The new page describes how to use Timing Captures to analyze CPU samples.  Collecting CPU samples allows you to analyze how functions within your title are impacting performance.  We've been steadily adding new features to PIX's sampling profiler and will ...

Analyzing CPU samples in Timing Captures

Steven Pratschner December 7, 2020 Dec 7, 2020 12/7/20

PIX includes a CPU sampling profiler that can optionally be run when taking a Timing Capture. Collecting CPU samples allows you to analyze how functions within your title are impacting performance. Viewing CPU samples is useful in several scenarios. For example, CPU samples can help you determine what code is running on a thread or core for...

New documentation page: Analyzing Win32 File IO performance using Timing Captures

Steven Pratschner October 28, 2020 Oct 28, 2020 10/28/20

Hi all, I've added another page to our PIX for Windows documentation set.  The new page describes how to use Timing Captures to analyze file io performance.  The addition of file io data to Timing Captures replaces the separate file io capture type that we removed from PIX a few releases ago. Steven Pratschner - PIX Team...