Background The API DirectX 12 allows programmers to have more control over the GPUs memory management. This includes the ability to allocate resources on different types of memory heaps. But there is a lack of research on how these heap types affect the copying performance.

Objectives The aim of this thesis is to benchmark the copying performance of the different heap types in DirectX 12 when increasing the data size. The heaps are tested with the three types of command queue that can be used to execute commands to the GPU.

Method To answer our research question, a DirectX 12 prototype was implemented and used to copy increasing amount of data between different heap types. The copy operations were also combined with three different types of command queues to see if these have any impact on the performance. The tests ran on three different Nvidia graphic cards on the same computer setup, both to validate our results but also to spot any potential differences.

Results The results from this study show that there is a difference in copying speed when copying data between resources that have been allocated on different heap types. The fastest to slowest were as follows: Default to Default, Upload to Default / Default to Readback and Upload to Readback. Using different types of command queues did not have an impact on performance with the exception of when data was copied from Default to Default on an RTX 2080. All of the tests that were carried out showed that the copying time scaled linearly with the data size.

Conclusion This study shows the importance of allocating resources on the most suitable heap as there is a difference in copying time between them. In contrast, was the choice of command queue less important as this had no impact on performance in the majority of the tests. The results also show that the copying time scales linearly with the data size.