How do I know if DirectX is using hardware acceleration or software rendering?

Is there any DirectX diagnostcs tool which will allow me to understand if Graphics acceleration from my GPU is actually working or software rendering is kicking-in instead?

I ask this because If I go properties (right click on desktop) --> settings --> I get an error saying my drivers are not working for my Intel Embedded GPU (Intel Embedded Graphics Driver - IEGD) and the system is defaulting to standard VGA drivers.

I am on WinXP Professional.

1 Answer

One of the easiest test you can run to test what DirectX is capable of doing on your machine is the DirectX Diagnostic tool. You can get to it my selecting "Run" from the Start menu and typing:

dxdiag.exe

Under the "Display" tab, if your hardware does not support acceleration the Disable/Enable button will be disabled for the type of acceleration.

If you would like even more detail as to what your hardware/driver supports, you can download the Microsoft DirectX SDK. In the SDK there is a utility called DXCapsViewer.exe which will provide much more detailed information about your hardware capabilities. On my machine (XP Pro, with SDK June 2006) the utility was located at:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (Version XXX)\Utilities\Bin\x86\DXCapsViewer.exe