 |
| Copyright
© 1998 Mark Russinovich |
Last
Updated February 2, 1998 V1.0
|
| Introduction |
CPUMon
is an advanced performance measurement tool. Its combination GUI/device
driver make the wide range of processor performance counters present on
the Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II, easily accessible. You select
the two counters you’re interested in, enable them via the GUI, and
at a later point stop the counters in order to see their values. There
are no bells and whistles on CPUMon – its meant to start
the counters and get out of the way so that accurate measurements of
other applications can be made.
CPUMon
has been tested on NT 4.0.
|
| Screenshot
|
Here is a screenshot
of CPUMon's counter selection dialog. |
| Using
CPUMon |
Simply
run the CPUMon GUI (cpumon.exe) from the same directory that the
driver (cpusys.sys) resides in. Note that it must be located on a
non-network drive and that you must have administrative privilege to run
CPUMon.
After
CPUMon has started you select the two performance counters that
you wish to enable. The fact that only two counters can be active at any
given time is a limitation of the processors, not CPUMon. Just
before you are ready to start the activity you are going to measure,
press the Start button. This resets and starts the selected counters.
When the measured activity is complete, press the Stop button (the Start
button toggles to Stop when pressed). A summary of gathered performance
information is presented. This information includes the values of the
two counters that were enabled, the number of seconds and cycles that
have elapsed, and a variety of NT-related counters, such as context
switches and page faults.
Each
time you exit CPUMon it remembers the position of the window and
the counters you have selected.
|
| Processor
Counters |
The names and descriptions of the
Pentium performance counters were obtained from the Pentium Pro
Processor Reference Manual, available for download at the Intel Web
site. Note that the Pentium (P5) has different counters than the Pentium
Pro (P6) and higher Pentiums (e.g. Pentium II). Certain counters are
only available on processors that have MMX support. CPUMon will
detect MMX support and make these counters available for selection when
appropriate. Also, some counters are only available as counter 0 or 1,
while most can be selected as either counter. CPUMon correctly
displays this information.
|
Download
CPUMon (33KB)
 |