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.

Version 1.8.1

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fixed a regression that would cause a number of D3D9 games to crash when changing the resolution or during startup.
• Fixed a regression causing black textures in some D3D9 games (#1947)
• Improved performance in many D3D9 games when using MSAA on RADV.
• Improved presentation logic for MSAA swap chains, which are common in older D3D9 games.
• Mafia II: Work around shadows being broken when the game thinks it's running on an AMD GPU.
• Warhammer Online: Work around the game trying to use unsupported image formats. (#1296)

Github actions

Support for automated builds of the current master branch as well as pull requests has been added. Builds can be found here.

Version 1.8

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed some build system warnings with newer Meson versions.
• CPU-based Vulkan implementations such as Lavapipe will now always be enumerated last. This should avoid issues on systems without a dedicated GPU where games could potentially default to a CPU rasterizer.
• Optimized image layout transitions, which may improve performance on Intel GPUs in some games.
• D3D9: Improved performance of texture uploads and occlusion queries in some cases.
• D3D9: Fixed an issue where supported back buffer formats would be reported incorrectly.
• DXGI: Enabled multi-monitor support. This requires a relatively recent Wine version with XRandR 1.4 support to work correctly.
• D3D11: Fixed a number of reference counting issues that could potentially lead to stability issues (PR #1887, PR ##1888).
• D3D11: Improved correctness of NaN handling in shaders with VK_KHR_shader_float_controls, and removed most app workarounds setting d3d11.enableRtOutputNanFixup.
• Enabled d3d11.enableRtOutputNanFixup by default on older RADV versions.
• Enabled d3d11.invariantPosition option by default to fix common Z-fighting issues, especially on RDNA2 GPUs.
• Atelier Ryza 2: Added workaround for video playback breaking D3D11 rendering, like in other games of the series.
• Battle Engine Aquila: Fixed broken textures (PR #1759).
• Dark Messiah of Might & Magic: Work around out-of-memory issues on startup.
• Everquest: Work around performance issues.
• F1 2018/2020: Work around broken compute shaders causing artifacts on AMD drivers, similar to F1 2019 (#1897).
• Hitman 3: Work around AMDAGS issues on AMD GPUs similar to Hitman 2 (PR #1909).
• Mega Man Legacy Collection 2: Fixed rendering issues (#1922).
• Nioh 2: Work around black screen issues.
• Tomb Raider Legend: Work around performance issues (#1685).

Version 1.7.3

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Added support for new DXGI interfaces introduced in Windows 10 version 1809.
• Added an option to scale the HUD on high-DPI displays. Refer to the README for details. (#771)
• Changed generated D3D11 shader code to allow drivers to optimize away texture operations in case no texture is bound.
• Fixed some old D3D9 games crashing on RADV due to invalid shader code.
• Fixed Vulkan validation errors when the HUD is active.
• Optimized away redundant render target clears in some games to potentially increase performance.
• Indirect draw batching can now work with arbitrary strides. This may slightly reduce the draw call count in Trine 4.
• EverQuest 2 Fixed broken cloth rendering on Nvidia. (#1832)
• Trine 4: Fixed rendering issues that would occur on some Nvidia GPUs as well as on RADV. (#1816)

Note: Build requirements have changed to MinGW 8.0 since new headers are required for the DXGI changes. Building on older versions will fail with messages about IDXGIFactory7 not being declared. Do not confuse the MinGW version with the GCC version provided by MinGW.

Version 1.7.2

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fixed a major D3D9 regression that would cause crashes in many games.
• Fixed D3D9 crashes on AMDVLK due to invalid Vulkan API usage (#1742).
• Work around stack overflows in some 32-bit D3D9 games.
• Added workarounds for rendering issues on AMD drivers in some Unity Engine games.
• Work around Unicode support on Windows being garbage (PR #1761).
• Log file creation can now be disabled by setting DXVK_LOG_PATH=none, but logs will still be printed to stderr (#1743).
• Baldur's Gate 3: Fixed crash after character selection screen in D3D11 mode.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Improved stability on recent Nvidia drivers.
• Just Cause 3: Work around a game bug causing flickering terrain on RADV (#1553).
• Marvel's Avengers: Fixed spurious crashes due to invalid resource copies.
• Need for Speed Heat: Fixed some Vulkan validation errors.
• PGA TOUR 2K21: Fixed Vulkan validation errors and potential crashes.
• Trails in the Sky SC: Fixed fog rendering (#1771).