DX12 to Vulkan Mod Supposedly Boosts Alan Wake 2 FPS by 50% on GTX 1080 Ti

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We couldn't get it to work, so your mileage may vary.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

A user by the name of izy on the TechPowerUp forums posted details on a DX12 to Vulkan mod that supposedly boosts performance on Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti by 50% in Alan Wake 2. This particular mod leverages the DX12 to Vulkan work already done for Linux, except it can potentially work on Windows with older GPUs.

According to izy, the mod has been tested by multiple TechPowerUp forum users with a plethora of older GeForce products like the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and GTX 1080 Ti. According to one forum user, the izy's DX12 to Vulkan mod was able to boost frame rates by 50% in Alan Wake 2, from 22 FPS up to 37 FPS using the low-quality preset.

However, the mod isn't without its faults. izy affirms that the mod won't perform miracles on every system, and revealed that the mod didn't work for a lot of people, including both Nvidia-powered rigs and AMD-powered systems. Our resident GPU reviewer, Jarred Walton, tried to get the mod running on his test setup, but like some others reported, he only achieved a black screen followed by an immediate crash to the desktop. (For reference: Overlays were disabled, VC runtimes installed, rebooted the PC, etc. It may be a driver conflict, but that's enough effort for now.)

Regarding Alan Wake 2 performance, higher performance may not be a universal win for older GPUs. There may be differences in post-processing quality, some users reported significant stuttering, and other issues may arise. But 30+ fps even with some stuttering would be better than the current 22 fps the 1080 Ti gets (still with stuttering).

The Vulkan translation mod is another potential use case for Vulkan translation technologies outside of the Linux ecosystem. In the future, DX12 to Vulkan translation techniques could be a legitimate way to allow older Windows operating systems (Windows 8.1 and Windows 7) and older GPUs to attempt to run the latest DX12 AAA titles. Whether performance would be acceptable will of course vary by game.

If you're hoping to play Alan Wake 2 on a GPU that doesn't support mesh shaders, give the mod a shot. Some have reported getting it working with AMD cards as well, though FPS improvements aren't necessarily at the same level as the 1080 Ti.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • palladin9479
    I use DXVK on a lot of older DX11 games, works wonders. Mostly its more consistent frame times and less jitter caused by single threaded rendering pipelines. Not sure it'll do much of anything to DX12 games.
    Reply
  • coolitic
    In other words, Alan Wake devs weren't "pushing the envelope", they were simply incompetent at optimizing and targeting older hardware.

    it's not a good look when a translation-layer is boosting your performance by any significant margin on relevant hardware.
    Reply
  • palladin9479
    coolitic said:
    In other words, Alan Wake devs weren't "pushing the envelope", they were simply incompetent at optimizing and targeting older hardware.

    it's not a good look when a translation-layer is boosting your performance by any significant margin on relevant hardware.

    This normally happens when a game has some sort of crazy rendering pipeline bug, the translation layer ends up forcing the code down a different render path bypassing the bug entirely.
    Reply
  • Colif
    it looks good for a walking simulator. Shame games need something other than graphics to be worth playing... not much game play in it. Maybe soon games won't have any game play and can be interactive movies. Then Digital Foundry will be in a perfect position as they already think all that matters is what it looks like.
    Reply
  • qwertymac93
    Colif said:
    it looks good for a walking simulator. Shame games need something other than graphics to be worth playing... not much game play in it. Maybe soon games won't have any game play and can be interactive movies. Then Digital Foundry will be in a perfect position as they already think all that matters is what it looks like.
    Interactive movies? Quantic dream has been making those for over 10 years. It's certainly an experience (which I didn't mind in the case of Beyond:two souls and Detroit:become human) but I wouldn't want every game to turn into that!

    I think game devs are under a lot of pressure to make their games better looking than their last, and actually achieving that is getting harder and harder as diminishing returns kick in. That, and modern dev theory may place less focus on performance and more on portability and maintainability as the codebases get bigger and bigger and dev turnover becomes an ever-growing issue.
    Reply