NVIDIA 415.18.02 Linux Driver Released With Improved Vulkan Transform Feedback

NVIDIA has updated their Vulkan Linux beta driver series and with that finally re-based onto their current 415 release stream.

The updated NVIDIA Vulkan beta driver re-bases to the current NVIDIA 415.18 state but with a few Vulkan driver updates. In particular, there are bug fixes around the VK_EXT_transform_feedback support.

The Vulkan transform feedback support was added as an unofficial extension to the graphics API this autumn for helping projects mapping Direct3D/OpenGL to Vulkan. In particular, it's a big win for DXVK's Direct3D Stream-Out functionality and is already widely used on that front for better supporting Windows games on Linux when driver support is there.

The NVIDIA 415.18.02 Linux driver update doesn't mention the particular fixes around the Vulkan transform feedback support, but we'll be firing up benchmarks soon to see if it makes any performance difference. This Vulkan beta update is also important as the previous beta driver releases were on the older branch that lacked GeForce RTX 2070/2080 "Turing" series support.

The updated Vulkan beta driver can be fetched from developer.nvidia.com.