How to use AverageTimer32 and AverageBase performance counters with System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.