Microsoft PIX Adds NVIDIA GPU Counters

At GDC 17 Microsoft announced the addition of NVIDIA hardware performance counters to PIX. PIX is Microsoft's DirectX 12 performance tuning and debugging tool for game developers. The counters are implemented using PerfWorks, NVIDIA's C++ API. Nearly 300 counters are exposed giving developers a deeper insight into the performance and rendering of their applications than was previously possible.

Learn more about PerfWorks in this GTC 16 presentation.

The latest version of PIX also adds:

• File IO Traces

  This latest version of PIX also adds support for File IO tracing, letting developers improve disk IO patterns.

• Shader Edit & Continue

  HLSL shader code can be edited directly inside PIX. This can be useful for prototyping and optimizing shaders, as it can greatly reduce the turnaround time when trying out different ideas.

• Pixel Cost Visualizer

  The new Pixel Cost visualizer colors the scene according to the approximate rendering cost of each pixel. The brightest areas of the resulting image indicate which parts were the most expensive to render.

Learn more about PIX here: PIX for DirectX 12