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I'm trying to understand why I can't get WPF to make my images display snappy, while startups like Facebook and Apple seem to have to trouble with making their software behave ;-)

Well, one obvious differece is that EQATEC is free, and that DotTrace isn't. However, given that usualy the free edition isn't sufficient and one has to move to the $$ ones, and given that DotTrace has a "personal license" for individual developers, this is less a differentiator than one could at first belive. And I also have Resharper...

So, leaving aside the "free" factor, is the EQATEC profiler comparable to the Jet Brains one?

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Avi
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  • If something need you to pay money, then why not check if they have a presale guy you can talk to? http://www.jetbrains.com/company/contacts/index.jsp#Contacts – Lex Li Feb 12 '12 at 11:43
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    'given that **usualy** the free edition isn't sufficient' ... this is a myth, there is a lot of excellent software available for free and even as open source. It is true that the best profilers are commercial, but that's not true in general. – doblak Feb 12 '12 at 12:44
  • @Darjan No doubt open source code is great. However, when a free edition is offered together with $$$s, the free version is usually not really sufficient. – Avi Feb 12 '12 at 13:00
  • @LexLi Obviously, because I trust this community more than I trust a presale guy :) – Avi Feb 12 '12 at 13:01

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EQATEC is not totally free. It just offers a free licence (note: a limited one).

I've used ANTS performance profiler, dotTrace, EQATEC, Slimtune and among memory profilers Scitech and ANTS memory profiler. Memory profilers are a different kind of beast. I found Scitech the best one, although ANTS memory profiler also offers some nice results. Among performance other profilers, ANTS and dotTrace are superior to all other known to me. Slimtune is very basic, but ... it works. EQATEC was a mixed experience.

The problem with EQATEC was that it failed to start (no matter what I tried, a crash occurred) with one of the applications I worked on, but it worked with another one although the limitations of the free version were somehow annoying.

Profilers have a steep learning curve and it takes some time to get used to one, learn to use it the right way and interpret the results correctly. So you need to put value of your time, value of the performance improvement in your application and value of the profiler into the equation and decide then. I went for ANTS.

If you rarely use it, the free/limited alternatives may do just fine. But if it should be your productivity tool, go for one of the best ones, there are trial versions available.

You can find some very good opinions here: What Are Some Good .NET Profilers?

But regarding to your profiling requirements: just pick one of those, trial or free and profile that piece of code, giving money away for such a minor profiling task is rediculous.

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doblak
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  • Thank you for your answer. Re "your profiling requirements" I'm in a mixed opinion. On one hand, I feel my code is fast and I assume WPF is capable, so the problem of sluggish image pefromance is probably an issue of activating WPF the wrong way - not something a profile will discover. So messing with a profiler now is a waste of time and money. On the other hand, I'm now just at the beginning of the project and eventually I will have problems with my own code, so a profiler might come handy, so why not try and use it now, maybe it will uncover something interesting... – Avi Feb 12 '12 at 13:15