Direct3D to Vulkan layer DXVK v2.7 released with performance improvements and Intel support upgrades

DXVK v2.7 was released over the weekend with lots of improvements for the Direct3D to Vulkan layer. Here's what's new and improved.

For driver support, you now need to ensure you have a GPU driver that supports the VK_KHR_maintenance5 Vulkan extension, as it is now required. The DXVK developers having been relying on some guarantees from it since version 2.5 but now it's required to "remove some maintenance burden". For AMD and Intel they now recommend Mesa 25.1 and for NVIDIA 575.51.02.

The "Descriptor management" was "largely rewritten and modernized" to make use of the VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer Vulkan extension for newer AMD and NVIDIA cards. They said it "significantly reduces CPU overhead compared to the legacy binding model" and for CPU-bound games like these below it should improve performance:

• Final Fantasy XIV.
• God of War.
• Metaphor: ReFantazio.
• Watch Dogs 2.
• And others.

It's disabled on older GPUs due to performance issues. They're also "strongly" recommending enabling Resizeable BAR now on supported systems.

For modern Battlemage and Lunar Lake Intel GPUs, "Memory defragmentation" is now enabled by default.

On discrete GPUs they're now enforcing driver-reported VRAM budget and will "dynamically evict unused resources to system memory when under memory pressure". The result should be improved performance for many Unity Engine games on VRAM-constrained systems, along with potentially allowing higher texture quality settings in some games. However, it doesn't currently work on AMD GPUs due to "kernel driver issues".

Some legacy features were removed in this release like the state cache to reduce maintenance burden. Plus these other bug fixes and improvements:

• Added support for planar video output views. (PR #4872).
  This is required for video playback in JR EAST Train Simulator.
• D3D11 shaders will now zero-initialize all variables and groupshared memory by default in order to work around game bugs resulting in undefined behaviour. The d3d11.zeroWorkgroupMemory option was removed accordingly.
• Optimized D3D9 StretchRect in certain multisample resolve cases encountered in Source Engine. (PR #5023)
• Fixed an instance of invalid Vulkan usage in Modulus, and possibly other Unity Engine games that use the D3D11 video API.
• Implemented support for the ID3DDestructionNotifier interface.
• Vulkan devices that lack the required feature support to run DXVK will no longer be listed as DXGI / D3D9 adapters. This may fix crashes in case an outdated graphics driver or an unsupported integrated GPU are present on the system.
• Trying to build DXVK in a MinGW environment with AVX enabled will now result in a compile-time error.
  We cannot support AVX builds due to toolchain issues, nor is it expected to be beneficial.
• Astebreed: Fixed crash when changing graphics options. (PR #5034)
• GTR - FIA GT Racing Game: Worked around a game issue that would cause it to not start. (PR #5072)
• LEGO City Undercover: Worked around a game issue that would cause the intro video to be broken. (#4997, PR #5000)
• Star Trek: Starfleet Command III: Worked around resource leak in GOG build. (PR #5056)
• Test Drive Unlimited 2: Worked around alt-tab issue causing input loss. (PR #5057)
• Wargame: European Escalation: Worked around gamma issue when the game detects an Nvidia GPU. (PR #5055)

Source: GitHub

As for how to update — you don't need to do anything. Valve's Proton pulls in updates from DXVK directly in future releases. However, if you do wish to upgrade DXVK early, then check out my dedicated guide on it.