[Gray Zone Warfare] Huge FPS drop after update 0.3.2.0 using AMDVLK
info: AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT:
info: Driver : AMD proprietary driver 2.0.331
205490.980:01f0:01f4:warn:vkd3d-proton:vkd3d_check_extensions: Optional user device extension "VK_EXT_swapchain_maintenance1" is not supported.
You have the proprietary vulkan driver installed and it's also being used by the game. Uninstall it, or use VK_ICD_FILENAMES env var to force the game to use radv and see if the issue persists.
Yeah, I can confirm that I get the same perf drop with AMDVLK on RX 6800, while it's fine with RADV.
That is weird, I was under the impression the proprietary driver was not used unless I set vk_pro %command% in Steam? And it's not configured. Let me try what you suggest and report back.
So, I set vk_radv %command% and it indeed fixed the issue. I'm wondering why Steam / proton / vkd3d-proton picks up amdvlk instead of radv by default?
What is the recommended approach to make RADV the default driver for all Steam games?
To me this seems like a Steam / Proton config, right? Because, when I run vkmark with and without vk_pro, I can see that the driver is not the same in both instances:
In general there is no guarantee which vulkan device (driver) will be picked by applications, and I don't think vkd3d-proton does anything special to select a specific driver when there are two pretty much identical looking devices.
You can just export VK_ICD_FILENAMES="/path/to/radv.icd:/path/to/radv32.icd" globally in your environment to make everything use it if you don't want to uninstall the proprietary driver (which by the way has been dropped by AMD recently and won't get updates anymore). I don't know where the vk_radv and vk_pro env vars are coming from, the AUR package?
You can just export VK_ICD_FILENAMES="/path/to/radv.icd:/path/to/radv32.icd" globally in your environment to make everything use it if you don't want to uninstall the proprietary driver (which by the way has been dropped by AMD recently and won't get updates anymore).
Ah I see. Then, I guess I'll just uninstall that! Thanks for the info.
I don't know where the vk_radv and vk_pro env vars are coming from, the AUR package?
So, vk_radv and vk_pro are scripts from AUR/amd-vulkan-prefixes that let you switch between the drivers without going through the hassle of configuring the paths yourself.
But I'll just uninstall all of this since the pro drivers are abandoned. Thanks for the info!
EDIT: if I understand correctly, not all AMD "pro" drivers are abandoned, but only the open source AMDVLK one, right? And the bug might not occur with AMDGPU-pro and AMDVLK was picked up by default instead of either RADV and AMDGPU-pro.
Since we have an explanation and that the default free software driver is fine, I'll close the issue.
Upstream links
- ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7721x1 2025-06
Patch 0.3.2.0 just came out and there was a massive performance regression. I went from 80-100 FPS to 30-40 FPS. It doesn't matter what graphic settings I use. It's all the same.
I was first playing alright before that patch. I also remember I tried the beta branch yesterday before they applied the patch today and I had the same issue of frame drop. So, the patch clearly made this.
I believe Proton needs to provide a fix at some level. Either this or it's on DXVK side ? I don't know. I'll provide more detail if necessary.
Mangohud shows this in the menu also which is weird:
No FPS. Something's not loaded or something. But in-game FPS counter says:
I actually found this game log here:
GZW.log
It has multiple interesting error messages such as:
That, to me, seems to be a really good hint. The log about D3D12 made me thing I had to report this issue here instead of on Proton's issue tracker where I first posted.
Software information
System information
Log files
steam-2479810.log