ATI plugin for Microsoft’s PIX performance analysis tool

The ATI PIX Plugin is a plugin for Microsoft's PIX (Performance Investigator for DirectX®) tool. This is a performance analysis tool that Microsoft has introduced with the DirectX 9 SDK.

Installation Instructions

1. Copy ATIPIXPlugin.PIXPlugin into the folder where the PIXWin.exe is located. This should be [MSSDK root]\Utilities\PIX.
2. Run PIX.
3. Select or create an experiment (refer to the SDK documentation for instructions on using PIX).
4. Click on “More Options” and create an Action and set its type to “Set Per-Frame Counters”
5. Click on the “Customize” button
6. Expand the “Plugin Counters” item in the “All available counters” list box in the PIX Counters dialog box.
7. “ATI PIX Plugin” should appear in the list. Click on it to expand it.
8. Highlight each counter you would like to use and click on the “Add>>” button to add it to the list of chosen counters.
9. Run a profiling session following PIX instructions

Counter Descriptions

Counter Name	Description	Performance Increase*
Hardware Busy	Percent time VPU is busy	-
Vertex Path Stalled	Percent time vertex path is stalled by pixel path	-
Pre-Clip Vertex Count	Vertex count before clipping
Pre-Clip Primitive Count	Primitive count before clipping
Pre-Cull Vertex Count	Vertex count before culling
Pre-Cull Primitive Count	Primitive count before culling
Post-Cull Triangle Count	Triangle count after culling
Total Texel Count	Total texels
Texel Fetch Stalled	Percent time texel fetch is stalled
Pixels Passed Z Test	Count of pixels that passed Z test
Pixels Failed Z Test	Count of pixels that failed Z test
Total Pixels Processed	Total pixels processed through main pixel pipeline
Total Pixels Drawn	Total pixels drawn
Total Pixels Blended	Total pixels blended
Frame Rate	Frames per second	-
Textures Created	Textures created
Local Texture Memory used	Local Texture Memory used	-
AGP texture memory used	AGP texture memory used
Textures uploaded	Texture data uploaded
VB/IB uploaded	Vertex and index buffer data uploaded
Prims per RS change	Primitives rendered per render state change
Prims per TS change	Primitives rendered per texture state change
Prims per VS change	Primitives rendered per vertex shader change
Prims per PS change	Primitives rendered per pixel shader change
Prims per VSC change	Primitives rendered per vertex shader constant change
Prims per PSC change	Primitives rendered per pixel shader constant change
Stalls on Flip	Stalls on frame buffer flip
Stalls on VB	Stalls on vertex buffer

* A green up arrow () indicates that larger values for this counter will usually increase graphics performance. A red down arrow () indicates that larger values for this counter will usually decrease graphics performance.

Performance Analysis and Optimization Discussion

The “Hardware Busy” counter represents the CPU vs. GPU balance and gives you an overall snapshot of how heavily your application is using the graphics hardware.

The “Vertex Path Stalled” counter represents the percentage of time the GPU vertex engine is waiting because of pixel processing.

The primitive “Count” counters (i.e. Post-TnL Triangle Count) give a rough idea of how much geometry is being processed by the GPU; therefore lower is better. Comparing the Pre-TnL counters with the Post-TnL counters can show you how efficient your culling algorithm is; in other words: how much geometry are you sending to the card that is being clipped out?

The “Pixels Passed Z Test” counter represents the exact number of pixels which pass the Z test. This counter can give you an idea of how effective your sorting algorithm is in different situations.

The “Prims per RS/TS/VS/PS/VSC/PSC change” counters indicate how well you are batching your primitives. Larger batch sizes should contribute to higher performance.

If the “Stalls on Flip” counter is non-zero it could mean that you are locking the frame buffer which is extremely bad.

If the “Stalls on VB” counter is non-zero, you might be locking dynamic vertex buffers without the DISCARD/NOOVERWRITE flags; this will negatively affect performance.

System Requirements:

To use the ATI PIX plugin, you should have the latest drivers from ATI and the June 2006 DirectX SDK (or later) installed. Most of the recent ATI cards are supported including: RADEON® 9500 to X1900, and FireGL™ X1/X2/T2/X3/Vxxx. We recommend Windows® XP SP2 but other cards and versions of Windows may work as well.

Support:

To report a bug or request a feature for the ATI PIX plugin, you may contact the ATI Developer Relations group by emailing devrel@ati.com. Also, please visit http://www.ati.com/developer for more information and tools.

Download:

ATIPIXPlugin.zip