Version 2.0

Driver compatibility

A Vulkan 1.3 capable driver and wine version are required to run this version of DXVK. See the driver support page for details.

Many features in this release, especially the shader compilation changes detailed below, require the use of modern Vulkan features, such as Dynamic Rendering, Extended Dynamic State, and Null Descriptors. Due to the significant changes required to make use of them, it was no longer practical to maintain and test code paths for older drivers which do not support these features.

In practice, any system capable of running D3D11 and D3D12 games using Proton Experimental right now will be able to run DXVK 2.0.

Note: Third-party Vulkan layers that were not updated for Vulkan 1.3 will no longer work.

D3D9 changes

Memory management improvements

In order to reduce the likelihood of running out of address space in 32-bit D3D9 games, DXVK will now use memory-mapped files to store shadow copies of textures. This allows us to unmap memory that is not being used by the game, thus freeing up significant amounts of address space, up to several hundred Megabytes. See PR #2663 for implementation details.

Note: This change does not affect 64-bit games since address space is not a concern there. It also does not affect D3D10 or D3D11 since resource uploads work differently in those APIs and are much more memory efficient.

Render target feedback loops

On drivers which support VK_EXT_attachment_feedback_loop_layout, reading from an active render target in D3D9 games is now properly supported, which previously caused rendering artifacts on newer AMD hardware and required driver-level workarounds. This affects a number of games, including GTA IV.

Alpha test improvements

The D3D9 alpha test implementation was changed to more closely match the behaviour of Nvidia's implementation, which fixes inaccuracies in various games. The d3d9.alphaTestWiggleRoom option was removed, and games that previously required this option should now work correctly by default.

D3D10 changes

DXVK previously shipped incomplete implementations of d3d10.dll and d3d10_1.dll, but has not installed them by default since Version 1.6 since wine's implementation provides more features that are needed for D3D10 games to run, including the D3D10 Effects framework.

Since our implementation is incomplete and has not been used by Proton or Lutris for a very long time, DXVK will no longer ship these DLLs starting with this release. The D3D10 API itself is still supported via d3d10core.dll.

D3D11 changes

Feature support

DXVK now exposes D3D11 Feature Level 12_1 with the following newly added features:

• Tiled Resources up to Tier 3, provided that the corresponding Vulkan sparse binding and sparse residency features are supported
• Conservative Rasterization up to Tier 3, provided that the corresponding Vulkan conservative rasterization features are supported.
• Rasterizer Ordered Views, provided that the corresponding Vulkan fragment shader interlock features are supported.

While no games are known to use these features directly in D3D11, some games and game launchers rely on feature support being consistent between D3D11 and D3D12 in order to allow users to enable D3D12 in the game options. While our implementation of these feature is generally functional, there may be bugs or performance issues in case a game does use them.

Furthermore, DXVK now supports the D3D11_FEATURE_SHADER_CACHE and D3D11_FEATURE_D3D11_OPTIONS5 feature queries.

Note: AMD Vulkan drivers do currently not support fragment shader interlock and are limited to feature level 12_0.

Note: Intel's ANV driver currently does not support the corresponding Vulkan features and is therefore limited to feature level 11_1. This applies to both DXVK and vkd3d-proton.

Device contexts

The implementations of ID3D11DeviceContext were refactored so that immediate contexts and deferred contexts no longer use common entry points. This is closer to Windows behaviour and may improve compatibility to third-party libraries and mods that hook into the D3D11 immediate context specifically, and reduces CPU overhead since some frequently used code paths are now more specialized for each context type.

State clear and restore methods were optimized to further reduce CPU overhead in games that heavily use deferred contexts, e.g. Assassin's Creed: Origins, or explicitly call ClearState frequently, e.g. God of War.

Shader compilation changes

On drivers which support VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library, including the IndependentInterpolationDecoration feature, Vulkan shaders will now be compiled at the time the game loads its D3D shaders, rather than at draw time. This reduces or eliminates shader compile stutter in many games.

In games that load their shaders during loading screens or in the menu, this can lead to prolonged periods of very high CPU utilization, especially on weaker CPUs. For affected games it is recommended to wait for shader compilation to finish before starting the game to avoid stutter and low performance. Shader compiler activity can be monitored with DXVK_HUD=compiler.

Note: The relevant Vulkan features are currently only supported by Nvidia drivers (version 520.56.06 or later). Driver support is expected to improve in the future.

State cache interactions

This feature largely replaces the state cache. If the given Vulkan features are supported, only pipelines that cannot use the pipeline library feature (e.g. pipelines using tessellation shaders) will be written to and read from the state cache, so newly created state cache files will typically only contain a few dozen to a few hundred pipelines, as opposed to thousands or tens of thousands. If the graphics pipeline library feature is not supported, the state cache will be used the same way as it was in older DXVK versions.

Note: State cache files created with DXVK versions prior to 1.4.3 can no longer be used.

Note: Despite our efforts, due to the significant changes under the hood, there may be issues when using an older state cache file under some circumstances. If you experience crashes, please test if the game runs with a clean cache file (DXVK_STATE_CACHE=reset) before reporting a bug.

Caveats

• Games which only load their D3D shaders at draw time (e.g. Witcher 3, most Unreal Engine games) will still exhibit some stutter, although it should still be less severe than without this feature.
• For 32-bit games, the implementation tries to aggressively free Vulkan pipelines in order to save memory. This may cause stutter if the driver's on-disk shader cache is not working properly.
• On Nvidia drivers, the on-disk shader cache will be significantly larger than with previous versions of DXVK. It may be necessary to bypass the size limit by setting the environment variable __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SKIP_CLEANUP=1, or setting a new limit manually via __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE (in bytes).

Linux build support

Work from dxvk-native has been upstreamed in order to facilitate native Linux builds of DXVK, which can be used as a drop-in replacement to port D3D applications without having to change rendering code.

Note: When porting a D3D11 application, please refer to the Feature support and Developer Guidelines pages on the Wiki to avoid hitting unsupported or slow code paths in DXVK.

Repository changes

As part of cleaning up the repository, test applications that were of limited usefulness, as well as our custom d3dcompiler frontends, have been moved to the new dxvk-tests repository.

Vulkan and SPIR-V headers are now pulled in as submodules from the original repositories. This changes how the repository needs to be cloned and updated, or otherwise building DXVK will fail:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk.git

# Run the following command to make git pull
# automatically pull in submodule updates
cd dxvk
git config submodule.recurse true

The project wiki was also updated and expanded to be more useful.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Improved behaviour of DXGI waitable swap chains.
• Improved implementation of DXGI frame statistics.
  Note: The implementation is still not accurate, especially in scenarios with multiple displays or if variable refresh rate is used.
• Removed limitations on how many resources can be bound at the same time.
• Removed several workarounds for specific Vulkan drivers or driver versions. This is primarily relevant for Steam's shader pre-caching, as the generated shader code no longer diverges as much depending on the driver version and supported feature set.
• D3D11 shaders now use the Vulkan memory model in order to more accurately implement UAV coherency rules in compute shaders.
• Fixed various issuses with the D3D11.3 WriteToSubresource and ReadFromSubresource methods.
• Fixed various float emulation issues in D3D9 applications.
• Fixed seamless cube map filtering in D3D9 applications (PR #2889).
• Fixed issues when rendering to DXGI_FORMAT_A8_UNORM (D3D11) or D3DFMT_A8 (D3D9) render targets with blending enabled.
• Fixed a bug with dual-source blending when multiple render targets are bound, which could lead to unpredictable results. This affects Elex 2 and potentially other games.
• Fixed memory allocation logic on Intel integrated graphics.
• Changed behaviour of the DXVK_STATE_CACHE environment vari...

Version 1.10.3

This is a minor maintenance release for an upcoming Proton release. New Vulkan extensions are not yet required.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Added support for shared fences (PR #2608). This is needed for videos in Halo Infinite to work, alongside corresponding wine and vkd3d-proton patches.
• Fixed a regression introduced in 1.10.2 that would cause rendering issues in various D3D11 games, including Prey, Bioshock Infinite (#2757), and some others.
• Need For Speed 3: Fixed Modern Patch not working (#1699).
• Ninja Blade: Fixed alpha test issues (#2745).
• Stray: Enabled d3d11.ignoreGraphicsBarriers option to work around some GPU-bound performance issues.
• Ys Origin: Work around stutter with the game's built-in FPS limiter (#2750, PR #2754).

Version 1.10.2

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Implemented non-seamless cube maps for D3D9 using the VK_EXT_non_seamless_cube_map extension if supported by the driver
• FIxed an issue with current versions of the Nvidia Vulkan developer driver not using its on-disk shader cache with DXVK
• Fixed an issue which would cause the state cache file to not be written properly
• Fixed an issue where incorrect barriers would be emitted for UAV rendering (PR #2696)
• Fixed an issue where the d3d11.samplerAnisotropy option would apply to the wrong kind of samplers
• Fixed potential issues when using state caches that were created on a driver with a different feature set
• Fixed broken stencil resolves in D3D9
• Fixed build issues on GCC 12.1
• Optimized UAV clears in D3D11 to allow drivers to use image compression more frequently
• Optimized performance of in-memory compression for SPIR-V shader code
• Beyond Good and Evil: Work around missing light shafts (#2680)
• Day Z: Enabled d3d11.cachedDynamicResources option to work around performance issues (PR #2709)
• Dead Space: Fixed shadow rendering and added 60 FPS lock to work around game bugs (#2704)
• Dirt Rally: Fixed potential GPU hang due to game bugs in a shader
• Godfather: Fixed crash on systems that don't support 16x MSAA (#2590)
• Limbo: Enable 60 FPS limit to work around game bugs (PR #2566)
• Majesty 2: Work around game bugs causing issues on integrated GPUs and systems with more than 2GB of VRAM (#1542, #PR 2612)
• Myst V: Work around an issue when the word "Radeon" is not part of the device name on AMD GPUs (#2661)
• Onechanbara Z2: Chaos: Fixed particle effects and UI elements not displaying properly (#2701)
• Planetary Annihilation: TITANS: Fixed crash when creating swap chain on a NULL window (PR #2665), as well as a crash due to creating too many internal worker threads (#2670).
• Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2: Work around crash when the game detects an AMD GPU (PR #2700)
• Return of Reckoning: Work around launcher issues (#2568, PR #2579)
• Scrapland Remastered: Work around black screen issues (#2398, PR #2574)
• Small Radios Big Televisions: Work around black screen issue (PR #2646)
• Sonic Adventure 2: Fixed missing particle effects (#2672, PR #2677)
• SpellForce Platinum Edition: Fixed crash (#2710, PR #2711)
• Supreme Commander: Fixed missing particle effects (#2638, PR #2682, PR #2684)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II: Fixed some particle effects not rencering correctly (PR #2584)
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fixed rendering issues (#2676, PR #2681)

Version 1.10.1

Features

Implemented initial support for shared resources (PR #2516). This fixes video playback in a number of Koei Tecmo games (Atelier series, Nioh 2), as well as the D3D11-based UI in the Windows version of Black Mesa. The required wine patches are currently only available in Proton Experimental. This feature will not be supported on Windows systems.

This feature is still experimental and has not been thoroughly tested on all graphics drivers, so issues are to be expected. Currently, only basic 2D texture sharing between D3D9 and D3D11 is supported when using DXVK for both APIs. API features that are currently not supported include:

• IDXGIKeyedMutex. Documentation is very poor and it's not clear how an implementation is supposed to behave.
• Resource sharing with D3D12 applications under vkd3d-proton. This may be added in the future.
• Resource sharing with Vulkan applications.

Note: The Black Mesa UI flickers heavily when the game is not GPU-bound. This also happens on Windows to some degree and is a game bug.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Added an environment variable DXVK_ENABLE_NVAPI to bypass the vendor ID override. Setting it to 1 behaves exactly the same as setting dxvk.nvapiHack = False in the config file, but may allow for better integration into Lutris or the Proton launch script. (#2544)
• Improved shader code generation when local arrays are used. This may improve performance on Nvidia drivers in some D3D11 games.
• Fixed shader code generation when switch-case fallthrough is used in Shader Model 4.0 (#2556). Current FXC versions no longer generate such code.
• Potentially improved performance when rendering to DXGI_FORMAT_R11G11B10_FLOAT images that can also be used with unordered access views.
• Fixed various D3D9 issues related to texture uploads (#2559, #2541, #2535).
• Assassin's Creed 3, Black Flag: Enabled d3d11.cachedDynamicResources = a to work around severe performance issues.
• Frostpunk: Enabled d3d11.cachedDynamicResources = c to work around low CPU-bound performance.
• God of War: Fixed some issues that started with game patch 1.0.9:
  • Extremely inconsistent frame pacing when the game detects an AMD GPU, dxgi.maxFrameLatency = 1 is now set by default to work around this issue.
  • Heavy flickering of some lights. Apparently this was also fixed in the game in patch 1.0.11.
• GTA: San Andreas: Fixed UI rendering issues (#2560)
• Rayman Origins: Fixed rendering issues (#2545)

Version 1.10

Performance improvements

• Reduced unnecessary worker thread synchronization around resource readbacks for both D3D11 and D3D9. This can significantly increase CPU-bound performance in games like Assassin's Creed: Origins and other titles built on the same engine, with smaller improvements seen in Elex II, God of War, GTA IV and others.
• When using D3D11_MAP_WRITE on a staging resource that's currently being read by the GPU, DXVK will now attempt to create a copy of that resource in order to avoid GPU synchronization. This improves performance in Quantum Break and potentially other games. This behaviour can be tweaked using the d3d11.maxImplicitDiscardSize option.
• Optimized UpdateSubresource for small constant buffer updates. This further improves performance in God of War and potentially other games.
• Improved the way resource uploads and staging buffers are handled in D3D11. This may reduce memory usage and CPU overhead in some games.
• Added more information to the HUD that can be useful for troubleshooting performance issues: GPU synchronizations per frame, worker thread synchronizations per frame, and pipeline barrier count.
• GPU synchronization, when necessary, no longer uses busy-waiting, which may reduce power consumption on portable devices in some games.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Added a D3D11On12CreateDevice stub so applications using this don't immediately crash (PR #2485).
  Note that supporting D3D11on12 is currently not viable.
• Version numbers for Intel's Windows driver should now be reported properly.
  Note that using DXVK on this driver is highly discouraged and will likely not work.
• ArmA 2: Fixed texture-related issues (PR #2477).
• Black Mesa: Fixed lighting issues.
• Resident Evil 0, 5, 6, Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Improved performance (PR #2466).
• Total War: Warhammer III: Significantly improved GPU-bound performance on setups with a dedicated GPU.

Per-game workarounds

Replaced the previous d3d11.apitraceMode option with d3d11.cachedDynamicResources, which provides a more granular way to specify resource types to allocate in cached system memory. Refer to the example dxvk.conf for details. This change was not made for the equivalent D3D9 option yet.

Normally, D3D11_USAGE_DYNAMIC resources are expected to be write-only from the CPU and read-only from the GPU, but despite this, some games perform CPU-side reads on the mapped memory, which can cause severe performance degradation since those reads would have to go over PCI-E, or at least uncached write-combined memory. This is especially problematic on systems with Resizeable BAR and can cause issues even on Windows D3D11 drivers.

Games that will use this option by default include Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (#2491), Anno 1800, Final Fantasy XIV, Nier Replicant, The Evil Within (PR #2522), and all games that previously had d3d11.apitraceMode enabled by default.

Version 1.9.4

This is a small maintenance release in preparation for upcoming Proton versions.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue that would cause VRAM to not be utilized on RBAR-enabled Nvidia GPUs if the dxvk.shrinkNvidiaHvvHeap option is enabled (#2438).
• Enabled strict D3D9 float emulation by default on future versions of RADV. This may improve both accuracy and GPU-bound performance (PR #2448).
• Improved memory allocation behaviour. This may reduce memory usage especially in games that create multiple processes or D3D devices.
• Removed obsolete options to disable OpenVR support.
• God of War: Enabled performance optimizations and DLSS support. Note that these changes are already included in Proton Experimental.

Version 1.9.3

Bug fixes and Improvements

• DLSS should now work in supported games in combination with dxvk-nvapi.
• Optimized D3D9 shader constants by relying on VK_EXT_robustness2 and removed the old app options for games using software vertex processing. (#2282)
• Added an option for more accurate emulation of D3D9 floating point behaviour and enabled that by default for a bunch of games. (#2294, #2359). This fixes issues in Red Orchestra 2, Dark Souls 2 (original version), Dog Fight 1942, Bayonetta, Rayman Origins, Guilty Gear Xrd and Richard Burns Rally.
• Fixed a DXGI issue which would sometimes cause games to fail to enter fullscreen mode on some displays that do not support low rates across all resolutions (#2395).
• Black Mesa: Fixed a regression with shadows. (#2317)
• Crysis 3 Remastered: Worked around poor performance. (#2339)
• Euro Truck Simulator: Fixed a shading issue resulting in black geometry (#2312)
• Injustice Gods Among Us: Fixed missing characters on the character selection screen. (#2332)
• Rocksmith 2014: Fixed white screen on startup. (#2383)
• Spliter Cell: Chaos Theory: Fixed brightness with the shader model 3 option. (#2340)
• Sim City 2013: Fixed rendering.
• The Guild 3: Fixed artifacts in overview map (#2380).

Version 1.9.2

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Reduced overall CPU overhead in D3D9.
• Fixed various failures in wine's D3D9 tests.
• Fixed various issues when the d3d9.evictManagedTexturesOnUnlock option is enabled.
• Fixed various issues when the d3d11.relaxedBarriers option is enabled.
• Call of Cthulhu: Fixed reflection rendering (#2248)
• Crysis 3, Homefront The Revolution: Worked around poor performance (#2256) (#2241)
• GODS: Fixed gamma curve (#2250)
• Total War Medieval 2: Fixed black lines on the world map (#2258) and settings text (#2247)
  The game still crashes when loading battles due to running out of address space.
• Fantasy Grounds: Fix incorrect rendering (#2251)
• Need For Speed Heat: Fixed ground textures rendering incorrectly (#1764).
• Paranormal Files: Fix black screen (#2192)
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Rightous: Fixed GPU hang in loading screen. Note that the game itself has further issues loading certain parts of the game, which do not appear to be related to wine or DXVK in any way.
• Payday: Fix flickering reflections (#2259)
• Shin Megami Tensei 3: Fixed hang when entering save room (#2161)
• Sine Mora EX: Added 60 FPS lock (#2261)

Version 1.9.1

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fixed a number of performance and stability issues introduced with the D3D9 locking rewrite in 1.9 (#2142, #2149, #2150, #2164, #2168).
• Rewrote the way staging textures are handled in D3D11. This can reduce memory usage and the number of image copies necessary to move data between the CPU and GPU, and fixes severe performance issues in Roblox on Nvidia GPUs.
• Removed some workarounds for very old Mesa versions (19.0 and older).
• Reimplemented locking primitives based on Windows SRW locks. This may be more efficient compared to the winpthreads implementation in mingw builds.
• Earth Defense Force 5: Work around performance issues caused by the game frequently turning vertical synchronization on and off between frames (#2127)
• Far Cry 1: Spoof Nvidia GPU in order to enable higher-quality water rendering.
• Far Cry 5 and other Dunia Engine games: Fixed various issues due to uninitialized memory (PR #2137).
• GTA IV: Fixed broken app profile that would break the game on Nvidia GPUs.
• Risen 3: Fixed crash on Nvidia GPUs (#2154).
• World of Final Fantasy: Forcibly disable MSAA to work around game bugs. Note that this should not impact visual quality since the game only uses MSAA for full-screen passes where it has no effect (#1216, #2136).

Version 1.9

Features

• Implemented basic support for various subsampled YUV texture formats such as NV12, which is used for video playback in some games, as well as basic support for ID3D11VideoProcessor APIs. This is needed for videos in Nier Replicant to play back (#2048), and may also be required for Contra: Rogue Corps (#1676). Note that Nier videos currently do not work with Proton for other reasons.
• Implemented Conservative Rasterization for supported GPUs, which allows enabling the Nvidia ShadowLibs option in Final Fantasy XV and possibly similar options in other games.
• Reduced presentation latency by up to one frame under some circumstances. This may help with games that are limited by vertical synchronization, DXGI frame latency settings, or external frame limiters that operate on vkAcquireNextImageKHR (PR #2075).
• Added a frame rate limiter. This is mostly intended as a workaround for games that do not work correctly at high frame rates, but can also be controlled with an environment variable. Check the README for detais.

Device selection

Software-only Vulkan implementations such as Lavapipe are no longer reported to the application as long as there is a Vulkan-capable GPU present on the system. This should fix issues where games try using Lavapipe over a proper driver on some setups with recent Mesa versions and then crash due to hitting an unsupported texture format.

Lavapipe can now be used with DXVK by manually setting the VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable. While some of DXVK's feature requirements have been lifted in order to allow it to run, note that limitations of this driver may still cause some games to crash or render incorrectly, while others (such as The Witcher 3) were tested successfully.

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Improved texture and buffer uploads in D3D9.
• Fixed the Origin overlay not showing up when using DXVK's DXGI implementation (#1996).
• Disabled Wine Gecko/Mono installers showing up when using install script.
• Disabled a workaround to reduce the amount of random crashes on Nvidia drivers since the underlying driver issue was fixed in the 465.xx releases (#1963), which may improve performance in some games.
• Fixed precision issues in shaders that do not have the refactoringAllowed flag set.
• Fixed some potential issues around image clears that could lead to artifacting or broken rendering.
• Fixed an issue where games with upper-case file extensions may create duplicate logs or cache files (#2079).
• Fixed monitor layout issues when restoring display modes on multi-monitor setup (#2064).
• Fixed a bug in D3D9 where child windows did not have their positions converted relative to their parents (#1958).
• Removed workarounds specific to RADV with the LLVM shader compiler. Please use the ACO backend instead (default since Mesa 20.2).
• Further reduced the size of state cache files. State caches from previous DXVK versions will be converted automatically.
• Debugging symbols now work in GDB with wine-reload (4kb file alignment)
• Misc. vector/matrix math fixes and optimizations in D3D9.
• Atelier Mysterious Trilogy Deluxe Pack, Dal Segno and Nights of Azure: Added the usual white screen workaround (#2035, #2022, #2044).
• Days Gone: Implemented missing DXGI frame statistics functions in order to fix very low frame rates (#2065).
• Demon Stone: Work around the game breaking at >60fps (#2103).
• Dragon Quest Builder 2: Fixed an issue where the game would immediately run out of system memory (PR #1995).
• Final Fantasy XIII, Spec Ops: The Line: Fixed a bug with some postprocessing effects on NVIDIA.
• GTA IV re-release: Work around incorrect VRAM amounts being shown when nvapi and atidlxx libraries are not present as it assumes all GPUs to be Intel IGPs with unified memory in that case.
• Halo 2: Fixed fog rendering issues (#2059).
• Kohan II: Fixed out-of-memory crash on startup (#2030).
• Nier Replicant: Enabled 60 FPS limit to work around issues with the game running too fast, and enforced full-rate vertical synchronization in order to work around related issues with the game sometimes being stuck at weird frame rates.
  Note that AMD RX 5000 and 6000 series GPUs may need to be put into high performance mode manually in order to fix performance issues caused by aggressive power management.
• Second Sight: Fixed missing UI (#2056).
• TrackMania Forever: Fixed rendering issues introduced in DXVK 1.8.