Graphics measures

The Windows Display Driver Model requires hardware vendors to submit a paired user-mode display driver and kernel-mode display driver. The user-mode display driver runs in a protected space, therefore any crashes in the driver’s binary will not crash the machine. In contrast, the kernel-mode driver has more access to machine functions and can crash the machine when erring. Together these drivers translate binary information from the OS and applications into human-readable visuals for the user. As the graphics and audio components often interact, these drivers are also assessed with Audio measures.

Furthermore, some graphics measures count the number of user-mode crashes in applications and count the usage time of those applications. The measures then normalize the usage time to years, which Microsoft uses to calculate the number of expected crashes a user would experience if they used the application for a year.