What Is the Correct Performance Counter to Get CPU and Memory Usage of a Process

What is the correct Performance Counter to get CPU and Memory Usage of a Process?

From this post:

To get the entire PC CPU and Memory usage:

using System.Diagnostics;

Then declare globally:

private PerformanceCounter theCPUCounter = 
   new PerformanceCounter("Processor", "% Processor Time", "_Total"); 

Then to get the CPU time, simply call the NextValue() method:

this.theCPUCounter.NextValue();

This will get you the CPU usage

As for memory usage, same thing applies I believe:

private PerformanceCounter theMemCounter = 
   new PerformanceCounter("Memory", "Available MBytes");

Then to get the memory usage, simply call the NextValue() method:

this.theMemCounter.NextValue();

For a specific process CPU and Memory usage:

private PerformanceCounter theCPUCounter = 
   new PerformanceCounter("Process", "% Processor Time",              
   Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName);

where Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName is the process name you wish to get the information about.

private PerformanceCounter theMemCounter = 
   new PerformanceCounter("Process", "Working Set",
   Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName);

where Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName is the process name you wish to get the information about.

Note that Working Set may not be sufficient in its own right to determine the process' memory footprint -- see What is private bytes, virtual bytes, working set?

To retrieve all Categories, see Walkthrough: Retrieving Categories and Counters

The difference between Processor\% Processor Time and Process\% Processor Time is Processor is from the PC itself and Process is per individual process. So the processor time of the processor would be usage on the PC. Processor time of a process would be the specified processes usage. For full description of category names: Performance Monitor Counters

An alternative to using the Performance Counter

Use System.Diagnostics.Process.TotalProcessorTime and System.Diagnostics.ProcessThread.TotalProcessorTime properties to calculate your processor usage as this article describes.

Using PerformanceCounter to track memory and CPU usage per process?

For per process data:

Process p = /*get the desired process here*/;
PerformanceCounter ramCounter = new PerformanceCounter("Process", "Working Set", p.ProcessName);
PerformanceCounter cpuCounter = new PerformanceCounter("Process", "% Processor Time", p.ProcessName);
while (true)
{
    Thread.Sleep(500);
    double ram = ramCounter.NextValue();
    double cpu = cpuCounter.NextValue();
    Console.WriteLine("RAM: "+(ram/1024/1024)+" MB; CPU: "+(cpu)+" %");
}

Performance counter also has other counters than Working set and Processor time.

Tracking CPU and Memory usage per process

Press Win+R, type perfmon and press Enter. When the Performance window is open, click on the + sign to add new counters to the graph. The counters are different aspects of how your PC works and are grouped by similarity into groups called "Performance Object".

For your questions, you can choose the "Process", "Memory" and "Processor" performance objects. You then can see these counters in real time

You can also specify the utility to save the performance data for your inspection later. To do this, select "Performance Logs and Alerts" in the left-hand panel. (It's right under the System Monitor console which provides us with the above mentioned counters. If it is not there, click "File" > "Add/remove snap-in", click Add and select "Performance Logs and Alerts" in the list".) From the "Performance Logs and Alerts", create a new monitoring configuration under "Counter Logs". Then you can add the counters, specify the sampling rate, the log format (binary or plain text) and log location.

Performance counter CPU usage for current process is more than 100

This (somewhat related) question suggests using the System.Diagnostics.Process.TotalProcessorTime and System.Diagnostics.ProcessThread.TotalProcessorTime properties instead, for low overhead and easy implementation.

(Edit: Here's an article explaining how to use the properties, as well.)

Also, it looks like you're not waiting long enough between calls to "_processTimeCounter.NextValue()." As per the documentation, you're supposed to wait at least 1 second. Not sure if that would cause your strange numbers or not.

How to use Performance Counter or Process class correctly in C# to get memory usage of current process?

You have to tell your process instance it should refresh its cached data. Data is not gathered each time you access to a property for performance purposes. You have to manually demand the data update.

private static void GetMeasure()
{
    process.Refresh();  // Updates process information

    Console.WriteLine("{0,38} {1,20}", "Private bytes", "working set");
    Console.WriteLine("process data{0,23} {1,20}", process.PrivateMemorySize64 / 1024, process.WorkingSet64 / 1024);
    Console.WriteLine("PerformanceCounter data{0,12} {1,20}", privateBytesCounter.NextValue() / 1024, workingSetCounter.NextValue() / 1024);
}

That's for your process.
For performance counters, NextValue() is supposed to retrieve a new fresh data each time, so I can't explain why it doesn't on your machine. On mine it works fine.

EDIT:

With the process.Refresh() added, here's what I get:

                         Private bytes          working set
process data                  25596                22932
PerformanceCounter data       26172                23600

Press enter to allocate great amount of memory
                         Private bytes          working set
process data                  65704                61848
PerformanceCounter data       65828                61880

---

Related Topics