NVIDIA 396.24.10 Linux Driver Brings Vulkan 8-Bit / Renderpass2 / Conditional Render

NVIDIA developers today released the 396.24.10 driver, their latest beta driver for Linux focused on the latest Vulkan innovations and improvements and is joined by the Windows 398.58 driver.

The NVIDIA 396.24.10 Linux driver (and 398.58 beta for Windows) are focused on delivering the functionality added with the recent Vulkan 1.1.80 specification update.

In particular, this beta driver update brings support for VK_KHR_8bit_storage, VK_KHR_create_renderpass2, and VK_EXT_conditional_rendering extensions. That basically amounts to adding 8-bit type support for some operations, making render pass creation more extensible, and initial support for conditional rendering.

This driver update also fixes intermittent hangs of Vulkan applications running full-screen when page-flipping is allowed on Linux. There are also other driver and Vulkan SPIR-V compiler fixes. Some users are reporting this new Vulkan beta driver is working better with the DXVK layer for Wine D3D11 apps/games over Vulkan.

This latest Vulkan beta driver can be downloaded from developer.nvidia.com.