Valve Lands Another Radeon Vulkan Performance Optimization For An "Upcoming Game"

Yesterday just hours after writing about a RADV optimization by Valve for an "upcoming game" to nearly match the performance they see under Windows, another performance improvement for an "upcoming game" has been merged.

Hitting Mesa 23.2-devel yesterday following that earlier article about a Valve optimization for an upcoming Steam game, another patch landed. With radv: track DB_COUNT_CONTROL changes to avoid context rolls, longtime RADV developer Samuel Pitoiset at Valve noted:

"This can be really noticeable for the BeginQuery/Draw/EndQuery pattern. It seems to improve a depth-only pass by +35% in one upcoming game because this removes a bunch of context rolls."

Given the timing, presumably this "upcoming game" that Valve is optimizing for is the same as the prior commit on Thursday. Samuel added in the MR, "Hans-Kristian confirmed that this specific pass no longer have any context rolls. We did compare against native." With Hans-Kristian Arntzen being the lead VKD3D-Proton developer.

These optimizations will be found in Mesa 23.2 that will be out as stable around August.

Great seeing this optimization work by Valve for ensuring a great launch-day Linux gaming experience for whatever this title ends up being and even if it's within Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.