DirectX Dump Files Preview Now Available! - DirectX Developer Blog

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Jacques van Rhyn

Program Manager

At this year’s GDC, we shared our vision for bringing console‑level GPU developer tools to Windows. As part of that announcement, we introduced DirectX Dump Files as a major step forward in GPU crash debugging on Windows.

Today, we’re excited to make our DirectX Dump Files public preview available to developers!

If you missed our GDC announcement, it’s now available in the GDC Vault: Bringing Console-Level GPU Tooling to Windows

You can also read our announcement blog: DirectX: Bringing Console‑Level Developer Tools to Windows

For instructions on how to get started today, see our Getting Started section

Help shape the future of DirectX Dump Files

We’re intentionally releasing DirectX Dump Files as a preview so we can hear developer feedback early and act on it. If you try it out, please tell us what’s working, what isn’t, and what you’d like to see next.

You can reach us via the DirectX Discord(#dxdmp), the Help->Send Feedback button in PIX, or by email at dxdmpsupport@microsoft.com.

A Unified Approach to GPU Crash Debugging

We have heard consistently from developers and partners that it’s been difficult to find and diagnose GPU crashes on PC. On top of being challenging to reproduce, the problem surface of different hardware, drivers, and Windows OS versions is vast, and there is no investigation process that works across all hardware vendors.

Today we’re taking a first step towards a robust cross-IHV solution with our DirectX Dump Files public preview.

DirectX Dump Files are the result of a yearslong effort. Delivering this new solution for GPU crashes required coordinated work across the DirectX runtime, drivers, the Windows graphics kernel and PIX. We are especially grateful to our hardware partners for their close collaboration!

Today, we’re taking the first step to give developers a scalable way to diagnose GPU crashes with actionable data captured directly at the point of failure. DirectX Dump Files record a snapshot of GPU execution at the moment of a crash, including hardware state, driver data, Direct3D runtime context and application data. This all gets packaged into a .dxdmp file that can be retrieved and analyzed by PIX and developers.

All four Windows IHVs (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm) demoed DirectX Dump Files running on their hardware at GDC. We’ve been working closely with them to light up dedicated drivers for DirectX Dump Files. Today we already have driver support ready on selected devices and expect drivers that support an even wider range of hardware in the near future.

Even without dedicated drivers, partial DirectX Dump Files (which do not contain hardware state and driver data) will be generated on all hardware if a device has the requisite OS and Agility SDK support.

What does this preview mean?

This release marks the beginning of the DirectX Dump Files public preview. Our goal is to validate the end-to-end developer experience while continuing to expand hardware support and improve driver quality across the ecosystem. As this is the first preview release of DirectX Dump Files, there will be some rough edges, but please give us feedback if you hit any issues!

DirectX Dump Files are not yet intended for retail game deployment, and the corresponding Agility SDK requires Developer Mode to be enabled.

Hardware and driver coverage will improve over time as our hardware partners light up support. We’ll be sure to keep this blog post updated with the latest list of supported drivers and corresponding hardware.

We currently expect to ship retail support in Fall 2026 and encourage developers to use this preview to validate their workflows and help shape the final product.

Please send us feedback! You can reach us at the DirectX Discord(#pix), the Help->Send Feedback button in PIX, or by email at dxdmpsupport@microsoft.com

Contents

From Crash to Analysis

Getting Started

Step-by-Step Guide

OS Support

Agility SDK Support

Hardware and Driver Support

Overhead Tiers

PIX Support

PIX API

Extended PIX Markers

Using DebugBreak() to create a .dxdmp file

Release Notes

From Crash to Analysis

When a GPU crash...