DXVK 2.5 Brings Memory Management Rewrite & Other Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: DXVK 2.5 Brings Memory Management Rewrite & Other Improvements

DXVK 2.5 was just released as the newest version of this open-source project implementing Direct3D APIs atop the Vulkan API for better handling of Windows games on Linux systems as used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) software...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/DXVK-2.5-Released

[Danny3]

This is an awesome release!
Many thanks to its developers and testers / bug reports!

Also this reminded me how much faster GTA V worked on Windows 7 and then Linux because of this great project.
Which reminded me about its shitty developers, so the mandatory fuck you Rockstar, you are a POS company!
From which I will never buy anything again and recommend to anyone!

[MastaG]

The memory savings are welcome for winlator games as well.
gta v would always run out of memory on my phone.

[muncrief]

I still can't play Crysis on Linux without downloading some shady binaries made by someone or some group. I remember years ago there were links to 64 bit binaries that were supposed to work, and now there are links to something called "c1-launcher" which is an entire replacement for various Crysis games.

Of course I'm not an idiot so I would never do such a thing.

But it just amazes me how Steam Play ever got so popular as it really doesn't support many games compared to the totality created over the decades, and the ones it does usually require some kind of custom settings or binaries.

That's why I have my trusty QEMU/KVM Windows 10 VM, as it still plays most everything out of the box. Of course soon I'll have to do the equivalent of trading in a perfectly working color TV for a black and white one by converting to Windows 11, but that's why I still run Linux as my primary OS and just use Windows VMs for things I absolutely must.

And heck, if I wanted a black and white Linux DE I have the choice of using KDE or Gnome, but I'm sticking with full color XFCE unless it converts to the ridiculous black and white mode nonsense as well.

[Brisse]

This sounds like something that could really benefit my old 4GiB GPU. Probably my newer 8GiB one too, as some modern games will hit that VRAM ceiling on that one too.

[J.King]

I still can't play Crysis on Linux without downloading some shady binaries made by someone or some group. I remember years ago there were links to 64 bit binaries that were supposed to work, and now there are links to something called "c1-launcher" which is an entire replacement for various Crysis games.

Have you tried the GOG release? I got it to work with minimal fiddling about three years ago. I've no idea if it still works today, though.

[skeevy420]

I still can't play Crysis on Linux without downloading some shady binaries made by someone or some group. I remember years ago there were links to 64 bit binaries that were supposed to work, and now there are links to something called "c1-launcher" which is an entire replacement for various Crysis games.

Of course I'm not an idiot so I would never do such a thing.

But it just amazes me how Steam Play ever got so popular as it really doesn't support many games compared to the totality created over the decades, and the ones it does usually require some kind of custom settings or binaries.

Because back in the day all Valve had to do was target WinXP. The more Microsoft fuckery that happened with each Windows update since XP has made long-term gaming on Windows more and more difficult. Windows compatibility modes only go so far and using non-Microsoft provided compatibility tools can result in better gaming experiences; DOSBox, Wine, DXVK on Windows, etc.

Anyways, that has resulted in situation where it doesn't really matter what OS a person uses provided those tools work to play the game so Steam Play is a counter to Microsoft fuckery between OS versions. If I ass grabbed some numbers I'd wager that 80% of games work well enough on both Windows and Linux and that there's 10% that either work better on Linux or only run on Windows due to either anti-cheat or the tools just not supporting that specific game.

Steam, Valve, can't rely on Microsoft for LTS gaming support. The farther back we go in time to get our games the more issues like Crysis where we have to rely on 3rd party projects and pirate cracks to keep the game alive. Some games on Steam make use of those fan projects and cracks (Don't ask, I don't keep a list. I occasionally see people bitching about the ethics of Steam using cracks to get legitimate games to run.)

To Valve, the difference between Windows and Linux is that more games are being made to work on Linux while Microsoft keeps breaking games with OS updates. Now that Windows has a rolling release model games and programs alike have been known to break from 10 to 10 and 11 to 11 updates. The amount of games that worked on Linux 10 years ago compared to how many that work now is just staggering.

IMHO, and this is assuming that the game works, the real problem with Steam Play isn't playing the games themselves, it's using 3rd party tools in conjunction with the game and having to install it to the game's Proton prefix. It's even worse when it's something that you use with multiple games due to prefixes and how data isn't shared between games like it is on Windows. Anything more you do than play the game can be a real hassle with Steam on Linux. If all you do is play a game that works well, Steam Play is awesome.

I feel like I'm fortunate that the super-majority of my games work just fine on Linux.

That's why I have my trusty QEMU/KVM Windows 10 VM, as it still plays most everything out of the box. Of course soon I'll have to do the equivalent of trading in a perfectly working color TV for a black and white one by converting to Windows 11, but that's why I still run Linux as my primary OS and just use Windows VMs for things I absolutely must.

And heck, if I wanted a black and white Linux DE I have the choice of using KDE or Gnome, but I'm sticking with full color XFCE unless it converts to the ridiculous black and white mode nonsense as well.

If XFCE were a color TV:

[isaacx123]

Have you tried the GOG release? I got it to work with minimal fiddling about three years ago. I've no idea if it still works today, though.

The GOG version doesn't work on Windows 11 or Arch with Heroic.

[muncrief]

Have you tried the GOG release? I got it to work with minimal fiddling about three years ago. I've no idea if it still works today, though.

Thank you for the suggestion J.King but it works on my Windows 10 VM and I don't want to spend more money on it. There are other things that don't run under Linux Steam anyway, and it's just not worth the effort trying to fix everything. In any case I'm really not a gamer and was always more interested in the technical aspects of the hardware and software that enables their implementation. In fact I was a Wine maintainer for a few games many years ago until it finally just took up too much time and I resigned.

The saddest thing is that if Valve would have worked on properly fixing the fundamental problems with Wine, instead of the creating special bottles and specific workarounds for most every game, I'm sure Wine would work much better for gaming than it does. But they chose to create the incredible mess that is Proton instead, so I can't foresee a day when pure Wine works with games out of the box as it could have, and should.

[pinguinpc]

This dxvk version in my case seems more smooth in various heavy vram (around or more than 4gb) games and work with mesa 25-dev