AGS is a helper library designed to provide a much clearer view of the GPUs in the system and the displays attached to them. It also exposes the ability to query each display for HDR capabilities and put those HDR-capable displays into various HDR modes, as well as access extensions for DirectX 11 and 12 that provide additional functionality and possibility for optimisations.

This release adds the following features:

• Version 6.3 includes RDNA4 detection and more robust driver version and GPU specifications detection.
• Version 6.2 has the addition of shader clock intrinsics to the API.
• Version 6.1.0 adds support for detecting the new RDNA 3 GPUs, adds versions of the static libraries that are built with the VS2022 toolset (v143) to help with integration into games or apps that build using the same tooling, and comes with a new simple sample that shows you how to use AGS extensions from DX12.
• It also includes the new features introduced with version 6.0:
  • A ray tracing hit token that can be used to optimize some ray tracing scenarios on RDNA 2 hardware.
  • Additional shader intrinsics, namely ReadLaneAt and float conversions.
  • Detection for RDNA 2 hardware. It’s worth understanding that this should not be relied upon for detecting feature support like ray tracing or VRS. Its important to use the rendering API eg DirectX 12, to determine feature support as many features are a function of the hardware, OS and driver support.
  • Detection of external GPUs.

Benefits

• Full GPU enumeration with adapter string, device id, revision id, vendor id, and ASIC family.
• GPU core and memory clock speeds.
• GPU local and shared memory.
• App registration extension for DirectX® 11 and 12.
• Wave reduce and wave scan intrinsics.
• User debug markers in DirectX® 11 and 12.
• Pre-built static libraries with popular CRT build settings.
• Per-GPU display enumeration including information on display name, resolution, and HDR and FreeSync™ Premium Pro capabilities.
• Optional user-supplied memory allocator.
• Function to set displays into HDR mode.

For DirectX® 11 only:

• DirectX® 11 shader compiler controls.
• DirectX® 11 multiview extension.
• DirectX® 11 Crossfire API updates.
  • Now supports using the API without needing a driver profile.
  • You can also now specify the transfer engine.

Driver Extensions

AGS exposes shader extensions for both DirectX® 11 and DirectX® 12. It also provides access to additional extensions available in the AMD driver for DirectX® 11:

• Quad List primitive type.
• UAV overlap.
• Depth bounds test.
• Multi-draw indirect.
• Multiview.

Requirements

• AMD Radeon™ GCN-based or RDNA™-based GPU (HD 7000 series or newer)
• 64-bit Windows® 7 (SP1 with thePlatform Update), Windows® 8.1, Windows® 10, and Windows® 11
• Visual Studio 2017 or newer (including Visual Studio 2022)