I have to run a wpf-app in an environment that has all the same dell-pc's with an intel gma 3000 graphics chip (onbard, Q963/Q965). The app renders only with software rendering (Stated so by the RenderCapability.Tier-property (it says the rendering tier is 0!) and I also see this with Perforator).

On all of this machines, DirectX 9c is installed and DXDiag states on many but not on all of this machines, that Direct-3d and Direct-Draw-acceleration is activated. I checked also the registry if the setup of these machines disabled wpf-hw rendering but that's also not the case. On one machine I also updated the video-driver and dx with no success.

I found a lot of ressources that say, that directX must be installed and active, so that wpf does not use its own software renderer but uses the DirectX HW-Rendering. But on the above machines, DX9c is installed but there is no hw rendering. May it be that wpf uses dx-graphicscards but does the communication with the graphics card direct and not over dx? How can I find out if a specific graphics-chip has to support hardware rendering for wpf or not. The statement that the graphics card must support dx 9c seems not to be the only condition. The second question is, if wpf renders through dx, is this done through direct-3d or is direct-draw used. Is there any good documentation on this topic?