DOOM: The Dark Ages needs workarounds on Linux with AMD GPUs, a fix has been merged into Mesa

By Liam Dawe - 13 May 2025 at 11:01 am UTC

With DOOM: The Dark Ages about to release for everyone on May 15th, and with Advanced Access available, it seems it needs some workarounds to run on Linux with AMD GPUs. This is likely what Valve already solved in SteamOS for Steam Deck.

On the Mesa driver GitLab, a request titled "radv,driconf: Add workarounds for DOOM: The Dark Ages" was merged around 2 hours ago. It notes that the game "crashes and/or misrenders" without the workarounds it provides.

Looking at the code it adds in a new "force_64k_sparse_alignment" configuration setting for AMD RADV (the open source AMD Vulkan driver) and then enables radv_force_64k_sparse_alignment, radv_zero_vram, radv_disable_dedicated_sparse_queue and radv_disable_dcc_stores settings by default in the driver. Which then allows it to run.

Hopefully we'll see this fix arrive in a Mesa release soon.

Going by the current Mesa release calendar the next bug-fix update is 25.0.6 that's due May 14th (tomorrow) and 25.0.7 due out May 28th. For the recently released Mesa 25.1 series the first bug fix update there with 25.1.1 is due June 4th.

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Release Date: 15th May 2025

Official links:

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.

Tags: AMD, Drivers, FPS, Mesa, Misc, Open Source, Upcoming | Apps: DOOM: The Dark Ages

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About the author - Liam Dawe

I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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6 comments

Stella 6 hours ago

Supporter Plus

is there a console command to make it still run without the new mesa?

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Liam Dawe 6 hours ago

Admin

Nope, it specifically needs the part that adds in force_64k_sparse_alignment. You'll need new Mesa.

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soulsource 6 hours ago

I don't know Direct3D well enough (by heart) to make any definite statements, but this sounds like a game bug being worked around (namely that a certain memory layout is assumed instead of queried - not sure if this is only an OpenGL thing or also needed in Direct3D). If that's the case, the game might break on Windows too, with future GPU driver updates...

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rustynail 6 hours ago

it may be time to remember/find how to run steam flatpak using mesa-git for early access to patches, was pretty easy to use when Returnal needed a workaround iirc

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Spyker 5 hours ago

@soulsource AFAIK the game is using a native Vulkan renderer so this is not related to Direct3D nor OpenGL.

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soulsource 3 hours ago

@Spyker Oh? I wasn't aware. Then my idea cannot be the case as afaik Vulkan does not need (or even support) runtime resource location queries.

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