Performance estimation at system-level involves quantitative analysis to allow designers to evaluate alternative architectures before implementation. However, designers must spend a tremendous amount of time in system remodeling for performance estimation for each alternative solution in a huge design space. The effort required for system remodeling prolongs the exploration step. Furthermore, the accuracy and speed of performance analysis affects the effectiveness of architectural exploration. This work presents an architectural performance analysis using a dynamic trace-based method (APDT) to reduce the effort required for system remodeling and the time required to estimate performance during architecture exploration, thereby improving the effectiveness of that exploration. Experimental results demonstrate that the APDT approach is faster than the bus functional-level simulation on CoWare with a minor average deviation.