PIX on Windows

PIX survey – we want to hear from you!

Jacques van Rhyn August 9, 2021 Aug 9, 2021 08/9/21

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

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

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

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

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 ...

PIX 2107.01: GPU Event List Navigation Aids and Column Statistics

Jeff Noyle June 30, 2021 Jun 30, 2021 06/30/21

WinPIX version 2017.01 features several ease-of-use features that improve navigation on the GPU event list. Filter masks let you exclude subsets so you can focus on what you want. The new event path explorer navigates through the event hierarchy. There's a new search bar. Finally, column statistics summarize counters for you.

CPU Sample collection issue fixed in a recent Windows Update

Steven Pratschner June 10, 2021 Jun 10, 2021 06/10/21

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

Steven Pratschner May 6, 2021 May 6, 2021 05/6/21

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

Steven Pratschner April 29, 2021 Apr 29, 2021 04/29/21

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

Steven Pratschner April 22, 2021 Apr 22, 2021 04/22/21

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

Steven Pratschner April 22, 2021 Apr 22, 2021 04/22/21

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 ...

Tips & Tricks: How the Pros Use PIX to Make Their Games Better on Xbox and Windows

Morgan Grobin April 20, 2021 Apr 20, 2021 04/20/21

Today, you may have caught the PIX session titled "Tips & Tricks: How the Pros Use PIX to Make Their Games Better on Xbox and Windows" at Microsoft's Game Stack Live. If you haven't seen it yet, it's available on demand through the Game Stack Live website, and will air twice more before the end of the GSL event. This blog post contains ...