PIX on Windows

PIX-2203.07: Support for DirectStorage

March 14, 2022 Mar 14, 2022 03/14/22

Jacques van Rhyn

Today we released PIX-2203.07, which adds support for today’s DirectStorage announcement. For more on how to get started with DirectStorage, check out our DirectStorage Landing Page.  PIX and DirectStorage New features need new tooling support! It’s been a consistent goal for the PIX team to ensure that developers get tooling support...

PIX 2201.24: New Timing Capture Features

January 25, 2022 Jan 25, 2022 01/25/22

Jeff Noyle

Today we released PIX version 2201.24, which can be downloaded here.   New Features Graphing of consolidated PIX events in the Timing Capture metrics view It is common practice to name the PIX events that represent a frame of CPU work (or any other repeated set of work) with a sequential number pattern such as "Frame 123", Frame 124...

Graphing Consolidated Events in the Timing Capture Metrics View

January 4, 2022 Jan 4, 2022 01/4/22

Steven Pratschner

The 2201.24 release of PIX on Windows includes a feature that treats a set of events that follow a common naming pattern as the same event in the Timing Capture Metrics view.  You'll find this feature useful if you follow the common practice of naming the PIX events that represent a frame of CPU work (or any other repeated set of work) with a...

Critical path analysis in Timing Captures

December 14, 2021 Dec 14, 2021 12/14/21

Steven Pratschner

The 2201.24 version of PIX on Windows includes a new feature that uses the CPU context switch data collected during a Timing Capture to compute the critical path for a selected PIX event. The critical path is the series of events and thread dependencies that, if shortened, would reduce the overall duration of the selected event. As an ...

Improving PIX, thanks to your feedback!

December 6, 2021 Dec 6, 2021 12/6/21

Jacques van Rhyn

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer the PIX on Windows survey we sent out! It’s been awesome for us to see the sheer number of responses that came in from people all over the industry who care about our product – it’s because of you that we’re constantly striving to create a premium debugging and profiling experience on ...

PIX 2108.18: New programmatic capture APIs and much more

August 19, 2021 Aug 19, 2021 08/19/21

Austin Kinross

Today we released PIX on Windows version 2108.18, which can be downloaded here. We have also released a new version of WinPixEventRuntime, available here. This release has a lot of new features, including: This release also includes a new Visual C++ Redistributable that may request a reboot during ...

File IO profiling support for archive files

August 13, 2021 Aug 13, 2021 08/13/21

Steven Pratschner

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...

PIX survey – we want to hear from you!

August 9, 2021 Aug 9, 2021 08/9/21

Jacques van Rhyn

Are you building games with DirectX 12 on Windows? We want to hear from you! Check out aka.ms/pixsurvey This survey will influence where the PIX team will make our future feature investments and help us better understand which pain points we need to address first. We also hope to better understand whether our past investments had the ...

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

July 6, 2021 Jul 6, 2021 07/6/21

Steven Pratschner

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 6, 2021 Jul 6, 2021 07/6/21

Steven Pratschner

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 ...