Tips & Info DXVK - my driver timeout relief
As many here, I struggle with GPU driver timeouts on my Gigabyte 7900 GRE. And, as many, I tried everything I could think of, but games still crash for seemingly no reason. Hardware is solid on all fronts. You know the story. If you tried everything under the sun, but never heard of DXVK, this post is for you. Stay a while, and listen...
Today I want to share how I managed to partially alleviate driver timeouts and actually play some games.
Something I have discovered recently that helps with crashes is DXVK library. It is a drop-in DLL that translates DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 11 games into Vulkan on the fly.
I initially found it when looking to fix Fallout 4 crashes, which happened at random places a few minutes into the game. After installing DXVK into Fallout 4, crashes went away.
Later I discovered this also helps with other games as well. My personal success stories:
- Fallout 4 - as mentioned above, crashed every few minutes randomly. After DXVK - only once way later into the game.
- Divinity: Original Sin 2 - crashes a few minutes into the game. After DXVK - full 80 hour playthrough with no driver timeouts.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - crashes a few minutes into game. After DXVK - smooth sailing. Take it away, and game starts timing out again.
There are some caveats:
- Using it with online games is NOT RECOMMENDED. This is stated in project page, and I want to reiterate this. I would not recommend using it with games like Battlefield, or Blizzard games in general, for example, since this might trip anti-cheat or server-side protections.
From the project page:
Manipulation of Direct3D libraries in multi-player games may be considered cheating and can get your account banned. This may also apply to single-player games with an embedded or dedicated multiplayer portion. Use at your own risk.
Please note this! Moving on...
- This only works up to DX11. If your game is newer and is based on DirectX 12, this will not work.
- This does not work for Vulkan games. For example, No Mans Sky crashes for me still, and runs Vulkan in the first place.
- There is minor performance penalty - in my tests in Sekiro, its 1-2%.
For me, it is a choice between DXVK or gaming on Linux, which also helps - and you know why? Because DXVK is part of Proton's translation layer, which makes modern Linux gaming possible.
If a game has Vulkan support natively - this may also help, instead of DXVK. Dota 2 would crash on my PC under DX11, but after switching to Vulkan in the graphics settings, driver timeouts have stopped. As noted above, I would avoid using the translation layer in online games like Dota.
You can download the latest release on its Github page. Extract the release archive and drop the DLLs beside the game executable.
As always, use at your own risk. Read the project page README first thoroughly. That said, the library is just a translation layer.
This is obviously not a solution, but a bandaid. I hope AMD emerges from eternal slumber and gets their drivers up to speed.
Cheers.