You might want to look into Intel GPA and it's CPU profiling capabilities (which require some code mark-up but that's usually fairly straight forwards), it's free of charge. AMD Codeanalyst is also free, and has some great capabilities these days http://developer.amd...es/default.aspx. Although some of it's abilities only work on AMD systems, I've used the timer profiling on Intel.

If you have Games Programming Gems 3 or Best of Games Programming Gems the Real-Time Hierarchical Profiling article is very decent, though needs some changes to track multiple threads. It can be combined with the markups you need for Intel GPA so you can get offline and real-time viewing of the data.

XPerf is also free and great for a wide range of profiling functions, though somewhat complex. See http://www.altdevblo...sis-reimagined/ and linked articles.

Thankls. I've downloaded the first and am in the middle of downloading the Windows Software Development Kit for XPerfView - I didn't like command-line interfaces way back on the Amiga 500; I don't like them now.

(Although, oddly, the Vice Emulator makes me nostalgic)