WPF rendering steps

Here explains the rendering pipeline of WPF visual objects.
If we take a Visual object in WPF ,the rendering takes place as follows

1. Render all children.
2. Process OpacityMask.
3. Process Opacity
4. BitmapEffect
5. Clip geometry
6. GuidelineSet
7. Transforms

More details here

How to know the current rendering mode of WPF application?

Check the value (System.Windows.Media.RenderCapability.Tier >>16 ) .Results are given as follows

• 0-Software rendering
• 1-Partial rendering
• 2-Hardware rendering

According to this we could load different Resources(which contain styles & templates) in order to maintain same performance in different machines.