How do you determine if WPF is using Hardware or Software Rendering?

Check RenderCapability.Tier

  • Graphics Rendering Tiers
  • RenderCapability Class

[UPDATE]

  • RenderCapability.IsPixelShaderVersionSupported – Gets a value that indicates whether the specified pixel shader version is supported.
  • RenderCapability.IsShaderEffectSoftwareRenderingSupported – Gets a value that indicates whether the system can render bitmap effects in software.
  • RenderCapability.Tier – Gets a value that indicates the rendering tier for the current thread.
  • RenderCapability.TierChanged – Occurs when the rendering tier has changed for the Dispatcher object of the current thread.

RenderCapability.Tier >> 16

  • Rendering Tier 0 – No graphics hardware acceleration. The DirectX version level is less than version 7.0.
  • Rendering Tier 1 – Partial graphics hardware acceleration. The DirectX version level is greater than or equal to version 7.0, and lesser than version 9.0.
  • Rendering Tier 2 – Most graphics features use graphics hardware acceleration. The DirectX version level is greater than or equal to version 9.0.

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