NVIDIA are working on a "general optimization" for VKD3D / DirectX12 games on Linux

For a while now Linux users with NVIDIA GPUs have been reporting performance issues with DirectX12 titles using VKD3D, but a fix may finally be coming.

A post was opened on the NVIDIA forum all the way back in August 2024, with it building up multiple hundreds of replies over time from different users talking about the performance issues. There's many posts about it elsewhere, and you often find the advice to Linux gamers building systems is to use an AMD GPU, with one of the biggest issues (aside from open source drivers) being the performance difference especially for DirectX12 titles.

Sometime soon, that annoying performance problem might be a thing of the past. On August 5th, NVIDIA developer amrits replied to note:

Hi All,
While looking at Horizon Zero Dawn Linux performance we identified a general optimization that benefits multiple titles with VKD3D. It is still in development. We will give an update when it is available.

The same NVIDIA developer did post back in June to note:

I really apologize for not communicating earlier.
Team is currently investigating performance issues, and we do have identified the root cause for Horizon Zero Dawn and are working on a fix.

So no time-frame and no other information, just that something is actually properly in progress and it will now benefit multiple titles.

Really hope to see it arrive soon!