How does one calculate CPU utilization programmatically ?

Question

Hi,

I have a benchmarking program that calculates the time (in milliseconds and ticks), for a persistance to Entity Framework 4.0. Is there a way to calculate CPU load ? I am guessing that I would need to query Windows to find out my CPU frequency, how many cores, etc. Does this sound right ? If so, what part of the .NET framework relates to querying the system ? I am guessing System.Diagnostics ?

Thanks,

Scott

Answer 1

You can use a PerformanceCounter (for the System load).

Or, better:

var p = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess();
var span = p.TotalProcessorTime;

You will have to relate that to wall-time to get a percentage. Also see UserProcessorTime.

---

Edit:

On second thought, if you want to benchmark wouldn't you rather measure just elapsed time from executing a piece of code, eg the System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class?

Answer 2

You can get at the Performance Counters data, but it's surely got to be better to use a profiling tool. CPU utilisation isn't in itself a useful measurement. You want to know which are the slowest bits of your code compared to other bits, and which are fast but called too many times, etc.

Answer 3

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3t90y2y1(v=VS.90).aspx

Seems to be what you're looking for

This code I found may help:

using System.Diagnostics;
PerformanceCounter oPerf1 = new PerformanceCounter();
oPerf1.CategoryName = "Processor";
oPerf1.CounterName = "% Processor Time";
oPerf1.InstanceName = "0";
int I;
for (I = 0; (I <= 100); I++) {
    SomeListBox.Items.Add(oPerf1.NextValue);
    Threading.Thread.Sleep(20);
}