DirectX Developer Blog

New in D3D12 – DRED helps developers diagnose GPU faults

Bill Kristiansen January 24, 2019 Jan 24, 2019 01/24/19

DRED stands for Device Removed Extended Data. DRED is an evolving set of diagnostic features designed to help identify the cause of unexpected device removal errors, delivering automatic breadcrumbs and GPU-page fault reporting on hardware that supports the necessary features (more about that later). DRED version 1.1 is available today in ...

Direct3D team office has a Wall of GPU History

Shawn Hargreaves January 7, 2019 Jan 7, 2019 01/7/19

When you are the team behind something like Direct3D, you need many different graphics cards to test on.  And when you’ve been doing this for as long as we have, you’ll inevitably accumulate a LOT of cards left over from years gone by.  What to do with them all?  One option would be to store boxes in someone’s office: But...

DirectX Raytracing and the Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Jacques van Rhyn October 2, 2018 Oct 2, 2018 10/2/18

DirectX Raytracing and the Windows 10 October 2018 Update The wait is finally over: we’re taking DirectX Raytracing (DXR) out of experimental mode! Today, once you update to the next release of Windows 10, DirectX Raytracing will work out-of-box on supported hardware. And speaking of hardware, the first generation of graphics cards with ...

For best performance, use DXGI flip model

Shawn Hargreaves April 9, 2018 Apr 9, 2018 04/9/18

This document picks up where the MSDN “DXGI flip model” article and YouTube DirectX 12: Presentation Modes In Windows 10 and Presentation Enhancements in Windows 10: An Early Look videos left off.  It provides developer guidance on how to maximize performance and efficiency in the presentation stack on modern versions of Windows.   ...

Gaming with Windows ML

Cassie Hoef March 19, 2018 Mar 19, 2018 03/19/18

Neural Networks Will Revolutionize Gaming Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Machine Learning. We mentioned the wide-ranging applications of WinML on areas as diverse as security, productivity, and the internet of things. We even showed how WinML can be used to help cameras detect faulty chips during hardware ...

Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing!

D3D Team March 19, 2018 Mar 19, 2018 03/19/18

If you just want to see what DirectX Raytracing can do for gaming, check out the videos from Epic, Futuremark and EA, SEED.  To learn about the magic behind the curtain, keep reading. 3D Graphics is a Lie For the last thirty years, almost all games have used the same general technique—rasterization—to render images on screen.  While the ...

Announcing new DirectX 12 features

Jacques van Rhyn November 7, 2017 Nov 7, 2017 11/7/17

Announcing new DirectX 12 features We’ve come a long way since we launched DirectX 12 with Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. Since then, we’ve heard every bit of feedback and improved the API to enhance stability and offer more versatility. Today, developers using DirectX 12 can build games that have better graphics, run faster and that are ...

GPUs in the task manager

Bryan Langley July 21, 2017 Jul 21, 2017 07/21/17

The below posting is from Steve Pronovost, our lead engineer responsible for the GPU scheduler and memory manager. GPUs in the Task Manager We're excited to introduce support for GPU performance data in the Task Manager. This is one of the features you have often requested, and we listened. The GPU is finally making its debut in this venerable...

GPU plugins, improved SDK layers, and hang debugging: Bringing DirectX 12 tools to the next level

D3D Team March 1, 2017 Mar 1, 2017 03/1/17

If you are a Windows game developer using DirectX 12, you know that great tools are essential for getting the most out of the graphics hardware. In the past few months, we’ve been making rapid progress on delivering the tools you’ve requested. At the Game Developers Conference today, we demoed new features for both PIX, our premier tool ...

New DirectX Shader Compiler based on Clang/LLVM now available as Open Source

Chas Boyd January 23, 2017 Jan 23, 2017 01/23/17

The DirectX HLSL (High Level Shading Language) compiler is now available as an open source project built on the Clang/LLVM framework. Microsoft drives the leading GPU shader language Since 2002, HLSL has been a key focus of industry collaboration on GPU programming. As the shader language for the popular DirectX12 API, HLSL is at the ...