Microsoft introduces tool that analyzes the performance of DX12 games, may improve DX12 optimization


As you may already know, we are kind of disappointed with the current state of DX12. This new low-level API has not managed – at least yet – to offer better performance than its DX11 counterpart, something that really puzzled us. However, things may change as Microsoft has introduced a new performance and debugging tool for developers that analyzes the performance of DX12 games.

This tool is called PIX and is available right now to all game developers. According to its description, PIX is a performance tuning and debugging tool for game developers, and its latest beta version lets developers analyze the performance of DirectX 12 games.

Thanks to its main modes, PIX can debug and analyze the performance of Direct3D 12 graphics rendering, offer captures to the developers for undestanding the performance and threading of all CPU and GPU work carried out by their game, and provide insight into the memory allocations made by their game.

The good news is that PIX supports both UWP and Win32 applications (however it is limited to 64-bit apps only).

Ultimately, this could lead to better DX12 games as developers will – hopefully – be able to properly optimize their games thanks to PIX.

Game developers can download PIX from here.