Thanks to Microsoft's WDDM 3.2, Windows 11 24H2 may get fewer graphics driver crashes

Microsoft's next big feature update, Windows 11 version 24H2, is currently already out for Copilot+ PCs and is expected to be available soon for the rest of the systems too. We published our detailed feature review about it in our dedicated piece.

Microsoft started final testing and certification of eligible systems back in May. This is done to ensure that Windows 11 24H2-ready PCs can support all upcoming features that Windows 11 24H2 will bring.

This Windows feature update debuts with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 3.2 and as is usually the case, the new WDDM brings new features and improvements. Among other features like hardware AV1 encoding, WDDM 3.2 is getting improved driver TDR (timeout detection and recovery) debugging, which can potentially lead to fewer display/graphics driver crashes.

In addition to DxgkddiCollectDbgInfo, Microsoft has added a new DxgkddiCollectDbgInfo2 callback function that is meant to provide additional information about a TDR driver timeout, which should help driver developers debug the root cause of the issue.

Microsoft explains:

To aid TDR (timeout detection and recovery) analysis, the OS historically called the kernel-mode driver's DxgkddiCollectDbgInfo callback to allow the driver to write its own payload into the TDR report that the system uploads from the customer machine.

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DxgkddiCollectDbgInfo2 is added as a TDR debug extension. This callback allows the OS to pass more detailed information to KMD about the root cause of the TDR. The kernel-mode driver (KMD), in turn, can save state that is relevant to the part of the GPU responsible for the TDR.

In case you are wondering, a TDR occurs when Windows detects that a GPU is unresponsive for more than two seconds and thus resets the graphics card in order to recover to a functional desktop state. Although they are annoying, TDRs actually help as without them the system cannot recover without a hard reset.

Aside from Microsoft, AMD too has recently made some decent progress in terms of TDR analysis and investigation. The company released the Radeon GPU Detective tool in August 2023 which aims to serve a similar purpose. This could be why the recent Black Myth: Wukong TDR crash bug was fixed in a relatively short span of time.