Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Adds Experimental Vulkan Support

Following recent Steam database entries suggesting as much, Valve this evening formally pushed out a new Counter-Strike: Global Offensive build introducing initial Vulkan API rendering support.

As with the recent Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 updates, this Vulkan rendering support for CS:GO is making use of DXVK-Native for translating Direct3D calls to Vulkan in an efficient manner. Up to now the Linux builds for CS:GO have only supported OpenGL.

This DXVK-Native based Vulkan rendering support for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can be enabled using the -vulkan launch option.

The 12/14/2021 release notes indicate this Vulkan support is still treated as experimental.

I'll be working on some OpenGL vs. Vulkan CS:GO Linux benchmarks shortly, but if the other Valve DXVK-Native-enabled games are any indication, this Vulkan support should offer a nice frame rate boost. This is great news ahead of the Steam Deck slated to begin shipping in Q1.