# DXVK v2.7 — Version 2.7

- Product: DXVK (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/dxvk)
- Vendor: Philip Rebohle
- Date: 2025-07-05
- Version: v2.7
- Original notes: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v2.7
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/dxvk/releases/v2.7
- Labels: Platforms: Windows, Linux

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **changed** — Vulkan extension VK_KHR_maintenance5 is now required, with fallbacks for older drivers removed
- **changed** — Descriptor management was rewritten and modernized, with VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer now used by default on newer AMD and Nvidia cards to reduce CPU overhead
- **changed** — Memory defragmentation is now enabled by default on Intel Battlemage and Lunar Lake GPUs
- **changed** — Discrete GPUs will now enforce driver-reported VRAM budget and dynamically evict unused resources to system memory under memory pressure
- **removed** — State cache feature was removed to reduce maintenance burden
- **removed** — The d3d9.forceSwapchainMSAA option was removed
- **added** — Support for planar video output views, required for video playback in JR EAST Train Simulator
- **changed** — D3D11 shaders will now zero-initialize all variables and groupshared memory by default to work around game bugs resulting in undefined behaviour
- **removed** — The d3d11.zeroWorkgroupMemory option was removed
- **changed** — Optimized D3D9 StretchRect in certain multisample resolve cases encountered in Source Engine
- **fixed** — Fixed invalid Vulkan usage in Modulus and possibly other Unity Engine games that use the D3D11 video API
- **added** — Implemented support for the ID3DDestructionNotifier interface
- **fixed** — Vulkan devices that lack the required feature support to run DXVK will no longer be listed as DXGI / D3D9 adapters
- **changed** — Building DXVK in a MinGW environment with AVX enabled will now result in a compile-time error
- **fixed** — Fixed crash in Astebreed when changing graphics options
- **fixed** — Worked around game issue in GTR - FIA GT Racing Game that would cause it to not start
- **fixed** — Worked around game issue in LEGO City Undercover that would cause the intro video to be broken
- **fixed** — Worked around resource leak in Star Trek: Starfleet Command III GOG build
- **fixed** — Worked around alt-tab issue in Test Drive Unlimited 2 causing input loss
- **fixed** — Worked around gamma issue in Wargame: European Escalation when the game detects an Nvidia GPU

##### Driver support

The Vulkan extension `VK_KHR_maintenance5` is now **required**. DXVK has been relying on guarantees made by this extension since version 2.5, so in order to remove some maintenance burden, fallbacks that would allow older drivers to run were now removed.

Please check the [driver support](https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/wiki/Driver-support) page on the Wiki for details.

**Note:** These changes will primarily affect Windows users on AMD Polaris and Vega GPUs, for which AMD has effectively discontinued driver support. On Linux, these older GPUs will keep working on RADV when using Mesa 25.0 or newer.

Due to a growing number of compatibility issues with the AMD Windows driver in general, supporting it is no longer a priority.

##### Binding model changes
Descriptor management was largely rewritten and modernized. On newer AMD and Nvidia cards, `VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer` is now used by default, which significantly reduces CPU overhead compared to the legacy binding model and may thus improve CPU-bound performance in games such as **Final Fantasy XIV**, **God of War**, **Metaphor: ReFantazio**, **Watch Dogs 2** and others.

This feature remains **disabled** on older GPUs due to severe performance regressions in some cases, specifically on Nvidia Pascal or older, as well as AMD RDNA2 or older when using AMDVLK or the AMD Windows driver. RADV is unaffected by these issues.

**Note:** A small hit to GPU-bound performance is expected in some cases, in exchange for more consistent overall performance. Users can override the default behaviour with the `dxvk.enableDescriptorBuffer` option. Enabling Resizeable BAR on supported systems is **strongly** recommended.

##### Memory management
Memory defragmentation is now enabled by default on Intel Battlemage and Lunar Lake GPUs. On older Intel GPUs, this feature remains disabled as it may cause rendering issues for unknown reasons, see #4395.

On discrete GPUs, DXVK will now enforce the driver-reported VRAM budget as much as possible, and dynamically evict unused resources to system memory when under memory pressure. This should improve performance in many **Unity Engine** titles on VRAM-constrained systems, and may allow for higher texture quality settings to be used in some games. Temporary slowdowns and stutters are still expected when exceeding VRAM capacity.

**Note:** This feature currently does not work as intended on AMD GPUs due to kernel driver issues.

##### Legacy feature removal
The state cache was introduced in [Version 0.80](https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v0.80) to reduce shader compilation stutter, and has been largely unused since the introduction of `VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library` in DXVK 2.0. In order to reduce maintenance burden, particularly with pipeline-related changes in this release, this legacy feature was now removed.

Additionally, the `d3d9.forceSwapchainMSAA` option was removed. This feature was not really useful since most games either use additional render targets or provide a built-in MSAA option themselves anyway. For games that do not provide built-in MSAA, users are encouraged to use [Gamescope](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope) to run these games with a higher render resolution instead.

##### Bug fixes and Improvements
- Added support for planar video output views. (PR #4872).
  This is required for video playback in **JR EAST Train Simulator**.
- D3D11 shaders will now zero-initialize all variables and groupshared memory by default in order to work around game bugs resulting in undefined behaviour. The `d3d11.zeroWorkgroupMemory` option was removed accordingly.
- Optimized D3D9 `StretchRect` in certain multisample resolve cases encountered in Source Engine. (PR #5023)
- Fixed an instance of invalid Vulkan usage in **Modulus**, and possibly other Unity Engine games that use the D3D11 video API.
- Implemented support for the `ID3DDestructionNotifier` interface.
- Vul

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