One-Line Patch To Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Can Help Modern Games By A Few Percent

A patch merged into Mesa 22.0 on Tuesday for Intel's "ANV" open-source Vulkan Linux driver is helping bump up the perforrmance in modern games.

The one-line patch can help modern games both native and via Steam Play (Proton + DXVK) by a few percent. The change is simply increasing the binding table pool size from 4KB to 64KB.

With modern games the binding table pool has been exhausted and ultimately leads to excesses flushes and stalls as a result. By simply increasing that binding table pool capacity up to 64KB, games like Fallout 4, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3, and likely many others are benefiting. At least for the games mentioned it's in the 3~4% range, which isn't bad on top of all the other Intel Vulkan driver optimizations in recent months and for just being a simple one-line change.

This patch is now in Mesa 22.0, which is working up to its stable debut in February.