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Windows
While using DXVK on Windows may generally work, especially on a clean and well-maintained Windows install, we do not support it officially. Many issues with running DXVK on Windows are outside of our control and cannot be fixed within DXVK.
Some games fail to load all required DXVK DLLs even when they are correctly placed next to the game's executable. Applicatons may choose to only load DLLs from the system's System32 directory rather than the exxecutable path, in which case the game will either crash or continue using the native D3D implementation. A common scenario that causes a crash is when the game loads dxgi.dll from System32, but then uses the d3d11.dll provided by DXVK.
Similarly, some games will refuse to run with DXVK DLLs even if it could theoretically work. This commonly affects games with anti-cheat systems, such as Genshin Impact.
It is possible to work around games loading the wrong DLL by enabling DevOverride in the registry. However, every Registry modification has a certain risk to break your system associated with it and this is a feature meant for developers. Only enable it at your own risk if you know what you're doing.
Note: Make sure to use the 32-bit DLLs for 32-bit games. Windows applications will never load DLLs of the wrong architecture.
Note: DO NOT replace Windows DLLs in System32 or SysWOW64 with DXVK's. This will break your Windows install.
Third-party software that interacts with D3D11 and/or Vulkan at the API level will often interfere with DXVK and cause it to crash or not work as expected. This includes the following applications:
- Any overlay provided by game launchers (Steam, Epic Games Store, Uplay, Origin)
- The Nvidia GeForce Experience overlay
- The RivaTuner Statistics Server overlay
- Open Broadcaster Software recording
- Certain game mods (e.g. FiveM)
While any of these may work with DXVK, please disable any potentially problematic software when running into issues.
Note: The RTSS overlay is implemented as a Vulkan layer, and gets loaded even if the application is not running. Recent RTSS versions should work with DXVK, but if not, the software may need to be uninstalled.
Games that tightly integrate AMDAGS or NVAPI libraries may not work with DXVK on Windows if they do not handle errors gracefully and provide fallback paths. These libraries will generally try to interact with the D3D11 user-mode driver directly, and will crash or otherwise fail if any device or resource passed to their functions was not created through the native D3D11 runtime.
Specifically for AMD and Intel GPUs, we generally do not test the Windows drivers with DXVK, and both drivers may have issues running specific games with DXVK, sometimes only on specific GPU generations. In general, unless a game is also known to be broken on the corresponding Linux drivers, or if an issue can be proven to be a DXVK regression (e.g. by comparing to an older DXVK version), or otherwise a plain bug (e.g. by debugging the Vulkan side), we are not interested in bug reports specific to these drivers.
This generally does not apply to Nvidia GPUs, since the Vulkan driver is largely shared between both platforms.
Note: Please use the latest driver version available from your GPU vendor. Drivers installed by Windows Update tend to be out of date, and on some OEM systems, come without Vulkan support.
Microsoft built a Vulkan to D3D12 translation layer for devices that do not provide a proper Vulkan driver (Qualcomm devices). This translation layer is not capable of running DXVK, so having it installed on a system with a real Vulkan driver can cause issues. Make sure you don't have the OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan Compatibility Pack installed on a system with an AMD, Nvidia or Intel GPU.
In some D3D11 applications, using Exclusive Fullscreen can cause issues on Windows due to subtle differences in window handling between Wine, DXVK, and a native Windows environment. While we are not opposed to fixing these issues, the root cause is generally not known, and debugging these problems ourselves is not a high priority. Similarly, alt-tabbing may cause issues in some games.
If available, always prefer Borderless Fullscreen when running games with DXVK on Windows.
Games that support both D3D11 and D3D12 may try to create a device for both API versions. When using DXVK, this will only work if vkd3d-proton is used as the D3D12 implementation, in addition to DXVK. Likewise, some D3D12 games will require DXVK's D3D11 implementation to be present.
Any issue reported with an outdated versions of Windows will be ignored. Please do not use DXVK as a way to work around a game's minimum system requirements and expect things to work; if a game requires Windows 10, it probably does so for a reason.
If you are having an issue with any particular game, please look up the game on protondb first. If the game has a Gold or Platinum rating, and if comments do not mention the specific issue you're experiencing, your issue is likely not related to DXVK.
Reports about rendering or stability issues are still useful if the game is not known to work on Linux systems.