The upcoming Mesa driver 23.1 release is sounding like it's going to be pretty great, with the Graphics Pipeline Library ("GPL") being enabled by default, plus we're looking at smaller shader cache sizes too.
We're still around a month away from the release of Mesa 23.1 but that doesn't stop me being excited by it. Going by the current roadmap, the estimated release date is May 3rd. When you will get the update will depend on the usual update times for whatever Linux distribution you're on, and for Steam Deck — likely for the next major upgrade.
Merged into the AMD RADV driver in Mesa a couple of days ago, was a change to enable GPL by default. What this should do, is much improve the stuttery situation that many games on Linux and Steam Deck face when they don't have a shader cache. You can read a whole lot more about how it works in the original announcement post from The Khronos Group who oversee the Vulkan API.
Another recent addition that was merged into Mesa only a day ago, "re-implements the RADV pipeline cache based on the common vk_pipeline_cache", and as a result the developer noted they saw a reduction in the cache file size by "~60%" for single-file disk-cache and "~2%" increase for multi-file disk-cache "due to the overhead from additional small files".
All this and more was summed up in my recent Steam Deck overview news video:
Direct Link
DamonLinuxPL Apr 13, 2023
Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWorth to add to use GPL you need good CPU. If someone try it on old or weak CPU then game experience can be worse. The important thing is that you can easily turn it off. Just a reminder, in case anyone else experiences this.Too bad, on my system the bottleneck is the cpu already.
Do you have more precise numbers on how much overhead one should expect on cpu side?
Quoting: whizseYou're thinking of AMDVLK, the driver from AMD. It's not widely used but I'm not sure if half-baked is the correct description.You are right thanks for correction.
mr-victory Apr 13, 2023
Quoting: kokoko3kFrom whai I've read, the GPL feature needs specific userspace support by the "game".* DXVK 2.0 and above support it, use proton experimental
Is DXVK/VKD3D ready right now?
* afaik gpl is not related with vkd3d so it can't be used with DX12 games
* DX games need to attempt to compile shaders before render time to completely eliminate stutter, otherwise GPL can do only so much.
Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWorth to add to use GPL you need good CPU. If someone try it on old or weak CPU then game experience can be worse. The important thing is that you can easily turn it off. Just a reminder, in case anyone else experiences this.I don't think this is true.. I've been gaming for a few months now on Mint with gpl enabled manually on 8 years old 4790k (though my gpu is new) and for example on God of War (2018) FPS is very good (though stuttering exists but less so than on Windows 7 + dxvk where gpl does not exist). Another example, Plague Tale Requiem has basically same performance with/without gpl (tho didn't test much without gpl..) on 4790k.. can't say I have seen any performance tanking on my CPU (it runs good btw considering my CPU..)
Quoting: MangojuicedrinkerI don't follow, how do you enable it manually since months?Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWorth to add to use GPL you need good CPU. If someone try it on old or weak CPU then game experience can be worse. The important thing is that you can easily turn it off. Just a reminder, in case anyone else experiences this.I don't think this is true.. I've been gaming for a few months now on Mint with gpl enabled manually on 8 years old 4790k (though my gpu is new) and for example on God of War (2018) FPS is very good (though stuttering exists but less so than on Windows 7 + dxvk where gpl does not exist). Another example, Plague Tale Requiem has basically same performance with/without gpl (tho didn't test much without gpl..) on 4790k.. can't say I have seen any performance tanking on my CPU (it runs good btw considering my CPU..)
Isn't this a new extension?
Doesn't the GPL need to be explicitely supported by the game engine or dxvk and the likes?
Quoting: kokoko3kGPL has existed for a while now as development version of RADV mesa driver (but disabled by default since it wasn't fully ready) but anyone who wanted it could pass "RADV_PERFTEST=gpl" as an environment variable to a game (I did this through lutris) and it becomes enabled. It is now becoming enabled by default (after 23.1 driver is released that is) so doing above is no longer needed. It is a driver feature and AFAIK independent of dxvk/proton..Quoting: MangojuicedrinkerI don't follow, how do you enable it manually since months?Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWorth to add to use GPL you need good CPU. If someone try it on old or weak CPU then game experience can be worse. The important thing is that you can easily turn it off. Just a reminder, in case anyone else experiences this.I don't think this is true.. I've been gaming for a few months now on Mint with gpl enabled manually on 8 years old 4790k (though my gpu is new) and for example on God of War (2018) FPS is very good (though stuttering exists but less so than on Windows 7 + dxvk where gpl does not exist). Another example, Plague Tale Requiem has basically same performance with/without gpl (tho didn't test much without gpl..) on 4790k.. can't say I have seen any performance tanking on my CPU (it runs good btw considering my CPU..)
Isn't this a new extension?
Doesn't the GPL need to be explicitely supported by the game engine or dxvk and the likes?
anv: implement VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/commit/3d49cdb71ee8cb07ca922b9ffa15edd27627959c
also add feature for be possible use in dxvk
Quoteprops->graphicsPipelineLibraryIndependentInterpolationDecoration = true;
anv: introduce a base graphics pipeline object
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/commit/b2d3d818d57b9288fcdd98965c81d981540b1aba
anv: Only enable GPL if ANV_GPL=true, or if zink or DXVK are the engine.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/commit/647ca8165407fcdb2695917599a803f8b0c804bb
Last edited by mrdeathjr on 18 April 2023 at 1:43 am UTC
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