Intel Arc B-Series Sees Up to 90% Performance Jump With Microsoft’s Shader Execution Reordering

Microsoft has officially released Shader Execution Reordering (SER) as part of its latest DirectX Raytracing update, claiming a significant performance jump in early demos, including up to 90% higher framerates on Intel Arc B-Series GPUs (via VideoCardz).

SER is now a required feature of Shader Model 6.9 and is integrated into the DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2 specification. The technology allows developers to give the GPU hints about how to reorder ray workloads, improving execution coherence and reducing divergence — a common bottleneck in stochastic raytracing scenarios.

According to Microsoft’s sample testing, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 showed around a 40% performance uplift when SER was enabled. However, the most striking numbers came from Intel’s Arc B-Series (Battlemage) GPUs, where internal demo results showed up to a 90% framerate increase compared to running without SER.

The improvements were demonstrated using Microsoft’s updated “D3D12RaytracingHelloShaderExecutionReordering” sample, which modifies the original DXR Hello World project. The demo artificially varies ray workloads, allowing SER to group heavier and lighter threads together for better GPU scheduling efficiency.

SER introduces new HLSL primitives such as MaybeReorderThread() and a new HitObject abstraction, which decouples traversal from shading. This gives developers more flexibility in how ray hits are processed and allows sorting work before invoking ClosestHit or Miss shaders.

The feature was first announced at GDC 2025 as part of DXR 1.2. Microsoft also referenced prior demonstrations where combining SER with Opacity Micromaps reduced raytracing costs by roughly one-third in real-world game workloads.

To use SER, developers must target Shader Model 6.9 and use Agility SDK 1.619 or newer. While driver support is mandatory under SM 6.9, actual hardware-level thread reordering depends on device implementation. Developers can query whether a GPU actively performs SER sorting or treats it as a no-op.

Microsoft confirmed that SER includes day-one PIX support for profiling and debugging. NVIDIA has also updated its RTX Path Tracing sample to include a DXR path using SER, offering developers another reference implementation.