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DirectX 12 Support in Visual Studio

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Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

DirectX 12 Support

Visual Studio Graphics Diagnostics doesn't support DirectX 12 games. For graphical debugging with full DirectX 12 support, Visual Studio recommends PIX on Windows.

PIX on Windows is a performance tuning and debugging tool with remote capabilities. PIX on Windows offers seven main features that fit your graphical debugging needs. Debug and analyze the performance of Direct3D 12 graphics rendering with GPU captures. Understand the performance and threading of all CPU and GPU work carried out by your game with timing captures. Identify inefficiencies in your title's disk IO patterns and package layout with file IO captures.

Press on your graphical debugging journey with PIX on Windows.

Download PIX on Windows or view Documentation.

PIX on Windows

PIX on Windows features seven main modes of operation:

  1. GPU captures for debugging and analyzing the performance of Direct3D 12 graphics rendering.
  2. Timing captures for understanding the performance and threading of all CPU and GPU work carried out by your game, and for tracking GPU memory usage.
  3. Function Summary captures accumulate information about how long each function runs for and how often each is called.
  4. Callgraph captures trace the execution of a single function.
  5. Memory Allocation captures provide insight into the memory allocations made by your game.
  6. File IO captures help you identify inefficiencies in your title’s disk IO patterns and package layout.
  7. System Monitor displays real-time counter data while a game is running.

A detailed video introduction to PIX on Windows is available here