Hi, I'm looking for a profiler in order to find the bottleneck of my c++ code. I'd like to find a free, non intrusive, good profiling tool. I'm a game developer and I use PIX for Xbox360, I found it very good (but not free) I know the Intel v-Tune, but it's not free.
There exists any free profiling tool?
AMD Code Analyst is free, but not as advanced as VTune. There's also Sleepy, which is very simple, but does the job in many cases.
While it may not be free, ANTS Code Profiler by Red Gate software is very comprehensive.
www.red-gate.com and the ANTS Profiler page
I've used "TrueTime - part of Compuware's DevPartner suite for years. There's a free version available.
I use AQTime, it is one of the best profiling tools I've ever used. It isn't free but you can get a 30 day trial, so if you plan on a optimizing and profiling only one project and 30 days are enough for you then I would recommend using this application. (http://www.automatedqa.com/downloads/aqtime/index.asp)
On linux, valgrind (specifically valgrind --tool=cachegrind ), combined with KCacheGrind might be suitable.
Microsoft has there Windows Performance Analysis tools. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/default.aspx
It does require Vista, 2008, or Win7
I use VSPerfMon which is the StandAlone Visual Studio Profiler. I wrote a GUI tool to help me run it and look at the results.
Proffy is quite cool: http://pauldoo.com/proffy/
Disclaimer: I wrote this.