Which is better way of profiling using VTUNE: standalone or integrated with MSVC

Question

I am getting certain errors while running VTUNE stand alone, but every thing works fine if I run it from MSVC IDE.
Will there be any reporting inaccuracy if I run VTUNE from inside the MSVC?

Answer 1

Which VTune version do you use? In general MSVS-integrated version of VTune provides exactly the same functionality as "Standalone". And of course there is no difference in accuracy at all.

MSVS vs. "Standalone" choice is a matter of your application and working style. In case you use MSVS for development purposes (and thus you have solution and sources integrated), using MSVS integrated version should be more convinient in terms of "more automation" for source viewpoints. At the same time some people prefer to use profiler in standalone manner, because their solutions are already overloading IDE process, however it's a rare case even for big legacy industry codes.

Side note: across other Parallel Studio tools (VTune, Inspector and Advisor XE, as well as Composer=Compiler+Libraries) - you may really find features enabled in different ways in MSVS and Linux/Standalone. Examples: 1. Inspector debugger integration with cl vs. gcc/gdb 2. Advisor Annotation Wizard vs. Assistance window. However VTune doesn't have even those small variations between hosts.