Measure CPU / RAM usage of a program

Question

Hi, could anyone suggest a way (other than using Task Manager) to track and log a program's usage of CPU and RAM in order to profile its performance?

I'm working under Windows.

Something generic would be useful. A more specific request solution would involve Visual Studio. I've tried Performance Wizard, but it doesn't seem to give me the information I need. Thanks

Answer 1

Well, there are published APIs for that sort of thing. You might want to take a look at WMI and the Win32_Process class.

If you're looking for a command-line program that gets those things for you there is tasklist and wmic. You can parse their output if you're so inclined.

Answer 2

Process Explorer can be useful.

Answer 3

How about Intel VTune?

Answer 4

You can use perfmon utility to gather various counters

Answer 5

The Microsoft Platform SDK includes the Windows Performance Toolkit, which tracks CPU, disk, and memory usage over time (along with a ton of other features). It's very handy for tracking down spikes of CPU/memory usage, as well as tracking down issues like why your laptop won't sleep.

Answer 6

I view the measuring of performance, and the finding of performance problems so as to make the program faster, as two distinctly different goals.

For measuring, one can use profilers, or simply timers, to get the job done.

For finding performance problems, I take an entirely different approach.