How to use AverageTimer32 and AverageBase performance counters with System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch?
.net, c#, performancecounter
Solution
The System.Diagnostics API contains a pretty subtle source of great confusion: System.Diagnostics 'ticks' are not the same as DateTime or TimeSpan 'ticks'!
If you use StopWatch.ElapsedTicks instead of StopWatch.Elapsed.Ticks, it should work.
The documentation contains more information about this.
Problem
When I execute the following program and look at the performance counter the results don't make sense to me. The average value is zero and the min/max values are ~0.4 when I would expect ~0.1 or ~100. What is my problem? Code ``` class Program { const string CategoryName = "____Test Category"; const string CounterName = "Average Operation Time"; const string BaseCounterName = "Average Operation Time Base"; static void Main(string[] args) { if (PerformanceCounterCategory.Exists(CategoryName)) PerformanceCounterCategory.Delete(CategoryName); var counterDataCollection = new CounterCreationDataCollection(); var avgOpTimeCounter = new CounterCreationData() { CounterName = CounterName, CounterHelp = "Average Operation Time Help", CounterType = PerformanceCounterType.AverageTimer32 }; counterDataCollection.Add(avgOpTimeCounter); var avgOpTimeBaseCounter = new CounterCreationData() { CounterName = BaseCounterName, CounterHelp = "Average Operation Time Base Help", CounterType = PerformanceCounterType.AverageBase }; counterDataCollection.Add(avgOpTimeBaseCounter); PerformanceCounterCategory.Create(CategoryName, "Test Perf Counters", PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance, counterDataCollection); var counter = new PerformanceCounter(CategoryName, CounterName, false); var baseCounter = new PerformanceCounter(CategoryName, BaseCounterName, false); for (int i = 0; i < 500; i++) { var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Thread.Sleep(100); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(string.Format("t({0}) ms({1})", sw.Elapsed.Ticks, sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds)); counter.IncrementBy(sw.Elapsed.Ticks); baseCounter.Increment(); } Console.Read(); } } ``` Performance Counter Screenshot Performance Counter Screenshot http://friendfeed-media.com/50028bb6a0016931a3af5122774b56f93741bb5c