Gathering Data in the PIX Basic View
Microsoft DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (October 2004)

Gathering Data in the PIX Basic View


This tutorial demonstrates how to configure and experiment file to gather PIX data. The tutorial is divided into the following tasks:

Setup

The PIX tool is located at:

(SDK root)\Utilities\PIX\PIXWin.exe

The Microsoft DirectX 9.0 software development kit (SDK) contains many sample applications that can be tested with PIX. Executable sample applications are located at:

(SDK root)\Samples\C++\Direct3D\Bin

Duration

This tutorial will typically take 10-15 minutes.

Step 1: Start PIX

Launch PIX from either the DirectX 9.0 Utilities folder at the path given above, or from the Microsoft Windows Start menu. From Start, select All Programs, then Microsoft DirectX 9.0 SDK Update, then Utilities, and then PIX for Windows.

From the PIX File menu select New Experiment, or Open to open an existing experiment file.

After you select a new experiment, a Basic View window will open in which you can specify the options PIX will use to profile an application. The Basic View is designed to make it easy for you to run PIX for the first time.

Step 2: Specify the Program Path

Enter into the program path the location of the application you want to profile. As an example, this tutorial uses the BasicHLSL Sample. The default project selected on startup is whatever the previous program path was.

Step 3: Specify the Information You Want to Gather

One of three choices for experiment settings can be made in the Basic View:

In the figure above, the selection has been made to log all Direct3D and D3DX calls in frame 1000.

Step 4: Gather Data

Start your PIX experiment by clicking Start Experiment in the Basic View. If logging of frame 1000 has been selected, PIX will run the application up to frame 999, log the calls made during frame 1000, save the log to a file, and end the experiment.

When you exit the application or click Terminate in the PIX (Helper DLL) window, the .PIXRun log file will automatically be displayed.



© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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