Use PIX to analyse and debug shader performance. This section covers shader profiling, shader optimization, shader register lifetime, shader instruction trace, custom visualizations, and the edit and continue feature.
PIX Shader Timelines
Describes how to use a range of shader timelines.
PIX Shader Register Lifetime Flow
PIX can display the lifetimes of the scalar and vector shader registers.
PIX Shader Instruction Trace
Describes how to analyze the shader assembler instructions to determine performance bottlenecks. A good understanding of the Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sea Islands instruction set is required.
PIX Shader Debugging
PIX can be used to debug vertex shaders, pixel shaders, and compute shaders.
PIX Custom Visualizations
You can add custom visualizations into the Resources view in PIX.
PIX Edit and Continue
The “Edit and Continue” feature of PIX enables editing and re-running shader source code from within PIX, with the results of the changes made being readily visible. You can see the difference in the render targets, see the modified code, and compare the tables of performance counters.