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Secrets of Direct3D 12: The Behavior of ClearUnorderedAccessViewUint/Float

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Adam Sawicki

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Secrets of Direct3D 12: The Behavior of ClearUnorderedAccessViewUint/Float is a December 2025 deep dive by Adam Sawicki on how ID3D12GraphicsCommandList clear-UAV helpers fill typed buffers across GPU vendors.

It covers dual shader-visible and non-shader-visible UAV descriptors, UNORDERED_ACCESS state and UAV barriers, element-range limits via descriptor bounds or clear rects, and measured Uint versus Float conversion differences on NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel for UINT, UNORM, SINT, and FLOAT formats. It also contrasts DX12 behavior with older DX11 documentation.

It is for advanced Direct3D 12 programmers who clear UAVs from the CPU command list and need cross-vendor correctness.

The article is a free long-form post on asawicki.info with C++ samples and tabulated experiment results.

It is useful when debugging unexpected clear values or choosing Uint versus Float clears for a given DXGI_FORMAT.