PIX on Windows

Performance tuning and debugging for DirectX 12 games on Windows

PIX 1906.14 – GPU Timing in New Timing Captures
PIX 1906.14 – GPU Timing in New Timing Captures
AvatarJune 17, 2019Jun 17, 201906/17/19
Today we released PIX 1906.14, available for download here.  This release adds GPU timings to the New Timing Capture preview and further improvements to DXIL shader debugging. Highlights GPU Timing Data This release of PIX adds GPU Timing Data to the preview of New Timing Captures. Like with
PIX CPU Tools: Finding and Analyzing Context Switches
PIX CPU Tools: Finding and Analyzing Context Switches
Steven PratschnerJune 3, 2019Jun 3, 201906/3/19
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
PIX CPU Tools: Populating the Range Details view
Steven PratschnerMay 21, 2019May 21, 201905/21/19
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 popul
PIX CPU Tools: Graphing PIXReportCounter values in the Metrics View
PIX CPU Tools: Graphing PIXReportCounter values in the Metrics View
Steven PratschnerMay 7, 2019May 7, 201905/7/19
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 PIXR
PIX CPU Tools Reboot!
PIX CPU Tools Reboot!
Steven PratschnerMay 7, 2019May 7, 201905/7/19
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
PIX 1903.26 – Occupancy for Turing GPUs and Variable Rate Shading
PIX 1903.26 – Occupancy for Turing GPUs and Variable Rate Shading
Austin KinrossMarch 27, 2019Mar 27, 201903/27/19
Today we released PIX-1903.26, available for download here. This release includes support for Variable Rate Shading in GPU Captures, and it adds support for Occupancy on NVIDIA Turing GPUs such as an RTX 2080.   Variable Rate Shading Variable Rate Shading (VRS) is a powerful new DirectX 12 feature that allows applications to signific
PIX 1903.12 – High Frequency Counters
PIX 1903.12 – High Frequency Counters
Austin KinrossMarch 13, 2019Mar 13, 201903/13/19
Today we released PIX-1903.12, available for download here. This release includes an exciting new feature in GPU Captures: High Frequency Counters. With High Frequency Counters, developers can plot graphs of GPU hardware counter values over time and correlate ranges of the graphs back to specific events within their GPU Capture. These grap
PIX 1901.28 – Timing Data Improvements and support for new GPUs
PIX 1901.28 – Timing Data Improvements and support for new GPUs
AvatarFebruary 1, 2019Feb 1, 201902/1/19
Today we released PIX-1901.28, which can be downloaded here. In this release we’ve made improvements to Timing Data in GPU Captures, added support for new GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD, and fixed miscellaneous other issues described below. Timing Data Improvements for GPU Captures We have significantly reworked how PIX collects Timing Data in GPU