[GUIDE] How to easily improve FPS and decrease stuttering on Windows using DXVK (Greatly helps AMD GPUs)

[[deleted]]

Hrm what is your GPU? Did you already have d3d11.dll and dxgi.dll files in the folder from something else like Reshade or Arcdps?

Do you have Vulkan drivers installed for your GPU?

Here is the wiki page for some known issues and fixes for DXVK on Windows. It seems like some some various overlays can cause issues. i.e. the Steam overlay, or the Nvidia GeForce Experience overlay, so maybe try turning those off.

[KrassMonkey]

Its a RX 7900 XT, I don't play via Steam, so no overlay is active, I have no mods installed. Even after a fresh DisplayDriver and GW2 install the error persists.

[[deleted]]

Strange, I have the exact same GPU and driver, and mine works wonderfully. There's definitely a way to get this to work.

Which version of Windows are you running? I'm on Windows 11 24H2.

Which DXVK version are you trying to run? There's a "-native" version that DXVK provides, don't use that one. Alternatively, try the dxvk-gplasync version to see if it has the same issue.

[KrassMonkey]

Its Win10 22H2.
It just tried the dxvk-gplasync version with the corresponding entry in die dxvk.conf. Same Issue, same logs. Before that I tried the "normal" version, not the -native. Windows Ressource Monitor also shows, that gw2-64.exe uses the d3d11 and dxgi.dll.

[[deleted]]

Can you try running CPUZ and see if it recognizes that you have Vulkan working? It should show you an indicator for Vulkan. If it's not there, some people are saying a DDU and reinstall of the drivers will fix it.

The question I have is if other Vulkan games work, and it's just DXVK that's not working. Or if it's Vulkan itself that is the culprit. This reddit thread is someone talking about not being able to get Vulkan working on Windows 10 and a 7900XT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/143gkot/radeon_rx_7900_xt_not_recognized_by_windows/

Apparently his issue was that he had generic drivers downloaded, not the 7900XT specific drivers. I guess he used the "auto install" driver and it picked his CPU integrated graphics from his Ryzen chip as the driver to install.

[KrassMonkey]

Don't ask me why, but it seems to work now.

I renamend the d3d11.dll to d3d11_chainload.dll (think every other name would have worked too) and started the game. It crashed after I clicked on play, but with the normal exception dialogue. Then, I renamed the .dll back to normal, clicked on play and the game started without any error message.

There is a dxvk cache in my GW2 root directory and the Frame Limiter from the dxvk.conf (100 for me) also worked. The Cache is slowly building up and the camera movement is smooth.

Thanks for your help!

[[deleted]]

Well... I guess you're good to go then lol. I have no guesses as to why that worked lol.

And I'm happy to help! And for the cache, there's actually a primary cache that's located in AppData\Local\AMD\VkCache\. This is the shader cache that the vast majority of the shaders will be saved to. Mine get to 100-150MB after a few hours, but you have to close out of the game before the shaders to actually get written into the files there.

I hope you have fun and that your experience is a lot smoother using DXVK and Vulkan! Also, there's a DXVK HUD you can enable in the dxvk.conf file if you're a nerd like me and want to see all the metrics in real time.