DirectX Developer Blog
The latest news on Microsoft's Graphics and Display technology
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Automatic Super Resolution Preview Comes to the ROG Xbox Ally X for Docked Play
We previously introduced Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) on select Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs, to make games look sharper and play smoother. Today, we're excited to give Xbox Insiders the opportunity to help us test and refine this feature on the ROG Xbox Ally X for docked play, where balancing framerate (FPS) and image quality can be especially challenging. Imagine this... You've just had a great gaming session on your ROG Xbox Ally X on the go. Everything looks incredibly sharp and plays smoothly on your 7-inch screen. You dock it, lean back, and look up at your TV to keep playing, but now, stretching acro...
Announcing Shader Model 6.10 Preview and AgilitySDK 720 Preview
Overview Today, we are pleased to announce that Shader Model 6.10 and other features have been officially released with Agility SDK 1.720-preview and complementary DXC 1.10.2605.2. AgilitySDK 1.720-preview exposes the following features. There's more detail further below, including download and driver links. Downloads Hardware Support See Appendix > Feature Support for the full table of each feature's supported hardware. Features HLSL Features (Shader Model 6.10): linalg::Matrix Shader Model 6.10 introduces a set of Matrix APIs covering a br...
D3D12 LinAlg Matrix Preview
Welcome to the D3D12 LinAlg Matrix Preview release! Today, we are excited to announce the preview release for the D3D12 Linear Algebra APIs! This feature set unlocks comprehensive hardware acceleration for Matrix-oriented operations across various use cases. Previously, we announced the WaveMMA and Cooperative Vectors features which supported narrow matrix operation use cases; the LinAlg feature set being announced today subsumes these APIs into a singular set of orthogonal APIs. With today's announcement, we are enabling developers to both efficiently drive neural rendering techniques directly from individual...
Evolving DirectX for the ML Era on Windows
At GDC this year, we shared how machine learning is becoming foundational to real time graphics, and how DirectX is evolving to meet that shift across shader level and model level ML. ML is no longer a niche optimization or a postprocess trick. It’s increasingly embedded throughout the graphics pipeline, influencing how frames are generated, how content is authored, and how game developers realize their artistic vision. DirectX is evolving to support this future— one where ML is a first-class citizen alongside traditional rendering workloads. Introducing DX Linear Algebra Last year, DirectX took a major step in...
DirectX: Bringing Console-Level Developer Tools to Windows
On March 12th, 2026, the DirectX team and our hardware partners hosted DirectX: Bringing Console-Level GPU Developer Tools to Windows at GDC. We shared our dream of bringing console-level GPU developer tools to Windows, and today we are announcing a major step toward that goal with the biggest wave of new tooling features in DirectX's history.  For the first time, all four Windows GPU hardware partners joined us on stage to demonstrate these features running on their hardware. AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm have worked closely with us throughout feature development, each making significant contributions to ...
Advanced Shader Delivery: What’s New at GDC 2026
Today we announced the innovation we’re bringing in solving shader compilation for the ecosystem at our GDC Talk: Advanced Shader Delivery for Windows. Want to find out what this means for solving shader compilation for your title and customers? Read on! State of the Industry Long shader compilation times and in-game shader stutter for D3D12 apps are two of the biggest problems in PC gaming. These problems are caused by compiling shaders at runtime. Unlike console, PC games do not have a fixed driver and GPU environment, and precompiled shaders need a way to be delivered to a large matrix of drivers and GPUs in...
DirectStorage 1.4 release adds support for Zstandard
Today we’re releasing the public preview of DirectStorage 1.4 and the initial public preview of the Game Asset Conditioning Library. Together, they introduce Zstandard (Zstd) compression as an option for game assets on Windows. This new support meets the needs of the gaming ecosystem, bringing an open standard that improves compression ratios, enables faster load times, and provides smoother asset streaming for content-rich games. We shared this availability at GDC in DirectX State of the Union: DirectStorage and Beyond, along with how our GPU hardware and software vendor partnerships will help this work reach...
DirectX Innovation at GDC 2026Â
The excitement is building as we head into the 2026 Game Developer Conference and the DirectX team has a lot to share. We will be showcasing major updates in asset streaming, GPU tooling, ML-powered real-time graphics on Windows, and shader compilation at GDC. If you’re attending GDC, we’d love to see you in person. Below is a quick preview of what we’ll be covering so that you can mark your calendars! DirectX State of the Union 2026: DirectStorage and Beyond Wednesday, March 11, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM (Room 3001, West Hall) Over the past year, we've tackled some of the toughest challenges facing develop...
Announcing Shader Model 6.9 Retail and New D3D12 Improvements
Today, we are pleased to announce that Shader Model 6.9 and other features have been officially released with Agility SDK 1.619 and complementary DXC 1.9.2602.16. Many of these features have been in preview status since 2025. Simultaneously, we are releasing a handful of new preview features in a separate preview runtime: Agility SDK 1.719-preview. Overview AgilitySDK 1.619 exposes the following features. There's more detail further below, including download and driver links. AgilitySDK 1.719-preview exposes the features in 1.619 in addition to th...
Fence Barriers: Fine-Grained GPU Synchronization in Direct3D 12
Introducing Fence Barriers We are excited to share the preview release of Fence Barriers (Tier-1), a new capability now available in AgilitySDK 1.719-preview (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx12agility/). Fence Barriers expand on Enhanced Barriers to provide support for signaling and waiting on fences during command buffer execution. This provides more flexibility to synchronize between more distant dependencies in the command stream and allows for real-time dependencies between the GPU timeline and CPU timeline. This preview exposes Tier-1 Fence Barriers, which supports: Loo...
D3D12 Shader Execution Reordering
Now officially released, Shader Execution Reordering (SER) is an addition to DirectX Raytracing that enables application shader code inform hardware how to find coherency across rays so they can be sorted to execute better in parallel. SER support is a required feature in Shader Model 6.9, meaning all drivers must accept shader code using SER. It's up to individual devices to take advantage if possible. At GDC 2025 DXR 1.2 was announced including SER, and you can see it discussed in this: GDC DirectX State Of The Union YouTube Recording. In the video, Remedy showed raytracing cost reduced by 1/3 using a ...
D3D12 Opacity Micromaps
DirectX Raytracing (DXR) now supports Opacity Micromaps (OMMs), enabling hardware to handle alpha tested geometry more efficiently than relying only on costly AnyHit shader invocations. At GDC 2025 DXR 1.2 was announced including OMMs, and you can see it discussed in this: GDC DirectX State Of The Union YouTube Recording. In the video, Remedy showed raytracing cost reduced by 1/3 using a synergistic combination of OMMs and Shader Execution Reordering in Alan Wake 2. Out of the gate all NVIDIA raytracing capable hardware supports OMMs. Over time additional hardware vendor support for OMMs will appear. ...
Standardizing HLSL
The HLSL team is excited to announce the formation of Ecma Technical Committee 57; a committee to standardize the High Level Shading Language. The formation of this committee marks an important milestone in HLSL's development and strengthens Microsoft's commitment to HLSL as a cross-platform language, built in collaboration with equal partners across the industry. All of the work of the committee will be public on GitHub, and the final standard will be available royalty-free for implementers. I will be talking about all of this and more on February 12, 2026 at the Khronos Shading Languages Symposium (watch on ...
Celebrating 10 Years of DirectX 12
DirectX12 shipped in 2015 with a simple goal: give developers more control so games run faster, look better, and scale across Windows PC and console. Over the last decade, DirectX 12 delivered on that promise. We added features and made it easier for developers to focus on gameplay & graphics by providing more flexibility and achievable performance wins. We built technologies that dramatically reduce load times and deliver consistently high frames for a polished gaming experience in the most demanding of titles. Our platform’s continuous evolution brought advanced visuals previously unimaginable into the main...
DirectX Graphics Samples Updated to Agility SDK + Enhanced Barriers examples
We’re excited to share all DirectX Graphics Samples have been updated to use the latest DirectX 12 Agility SDK. What’s New: Why Enhanced Barriers Matter: Enhanced Barriers introduce a more expressive and predictable barrier model, reducing synchronization overhead and simplifying resource layout management and aliasing. Get Started: Visit https://github.com/microsoft/DirectX-Graphics-Samples to explore the updated samples.
Agility SDK 1.618: Advanced Shader Delivery and 1.716 out of preview
We are pleased to announce the retail release of AgilitySDK 1.618, available on Agility SDK Downloads today! This release promotes our 1.716 features out of preview and also introduces support for the recently announced advanced shader delivery feature. Advanced Shader Delivery Advanced shader delivery is a new feature that distributes precompiled shaders when downloading a game, eliminating in-game shader compilation stutter and long load times. This solves one of the biggest pain points in PC gaming today, making it easier than ever to deliver a console-quality experience on Windows. Advanced shader delive...
The Silicon, Graphics, Media and AI (SiGMA) team is hiring!
Do you want to be a part of the Silicon, Graphics, Media and AI (SiGMA) platform team? We are hiring for multiple positions – if you’re interested in knowing more about opportunities in SiGMA, please see the below for more details!
Shader Model 6.9 and The Future of Cooperative Vector
Direct3D Cooperative Vector is Evolving DirectX continues to evolve to support the growing demands of AI and machine learning workloads. As part of this effort, we plan to introduce an expanded suite of linear algebra capabilities in a future Shader Model release, unlocking even more robust GPU acceleration for bedrock AI/ML computations within the graphics pipeline. This work extends our experimental Cooperative Vector implementation by introducing accelerated matrix-matrix operations, crucial for scaling AI/ML workloads beyond what lightweight vector-matrix alone can handle. This will unlock new performanc...