D8VK v1.0 Released For Running Direct3D 8 Games Atop Vulkan

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 10 May 2023 at 05:44 AM EDT. 27 Comments
LINUX GAMING
While DXVK is used by Steam Play for implementing Direct3D 9/10/11 APIs atop Vulkan and there is also VKD3D-Proton for Direct3D 12 on Vulkan, D8VK's aim is for the aging Microsoft Direct3D 8 API atop Vulkan for enhancing the experience of older games on Linux.

D8VK 1.0 is considered this project's first "production ready" release and has been said to have been tested against hundreds of games. By going from Direct3D 8 to Vulkan, the aim is to deliver better performance and compatibility than making use of WineD3D that goes to OpenGL or d3d8to9 that converts to D3D9 and can then be used with DXVK.

D8VK 1.0


The D8VK 1.0 release introduces a new custom batcher to help with drawcall-heavy games, implemented support for the BEM instruction, support for compiling on Windows with MSVC, various performance improvements, many game-specific tweaks, and a lot of bug fixing.

Benchmarks of D8VK 1.0 using 3DMark 2001 SE show it solidly outperforming WineD3D and D3D8TO9+DXVK.

Downloads and more details on D8VK 1.0 via GitHub.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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