I'm trying to understand the key differences between the profiling tools built into Visual Studio Team System and those provided by third parties like Red-Gate and Jet Brains.
Can anyone provide some links? I'm having a difficult time finding some good comparisons.
VS (and the old version of ANTS) are checkpoint based. You have to basically hit a button before and after whatever action is you are trying to profile. If you miss your window, or just want to see something else, you have to start the profile all over again from the beginning.
The new version of ANTS presents a continuous graph. You can, at any time, select all or part of the graph. This make it a lot easier to focus on your areas of interest as well as just explore the program.
I also find ANTS (both versions) just more pleasant to use. The screens are easy to read, you can limit the view to specific threads, you can see wall time vs CPU time (wall time is important for I/O performance issues), the reports are nice looking, it produces diagrams that management can understand. All in all, I just really like the tool.