GTA IV: DXVK is a sham?

[Luis Vercetti]

I came across this youtube video on DXVK with gta 4, heres a link, It goes over some problems with the dxvk fix thing for the game, And it got a lot of positive and negative feedback, What are peoples thoughts on this? theres a lot of pissed off people in the comments for both sides of the video. Personally i kind of agree, dxvk is crappy but I didnt know it went this deep.

 

[zanesix]

This video is nonsense. Basically all of the information is either outdated or just wrong. They claim it runs "perfectly fine" without it while showing what looks like sub-30 fps gameplay, give no performance statistics, and give no source for what this "2009 PC" is other than the graphics card. Stuttering also doesn't happen if you're using an nvidia card and the gplasync fork can be used to remove stuttering for Intel and AMD cards. Experimenting with different command line options can also make it work better, which the video doesn't experiment with or even mention at all.

 

Overall it's not that complicated. Try it out and if it isn't a significant improvement for you, remove it! I'll tell you though that these claims are bogus. It doesn't make the game "not moddable", unless if you use really heavy duty graphics mods like ENB, alt tabbing has always worked fine, multiplayer is still usable, and stutters (if you still have them, which you shouldn't if you configured it properly) go away after the shaders are compiled.

 

LMAO... Found the source of the 2009 PC video, but it has a pretty major catch... during a loading screen you can see the game is CAPPED AT 30 FPS! "Runs well" my ass...

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by zanesix

[Moncastler]

On 12/30/2023 at 2:17 AM, Luis Vercetti said:

I came across this youtube video on DXVK with gta 4, heres a link, It goes over some problems with the dxvk fix thing for the game, And it got a lot of positive and negative feedback, What are peoples thoughts on this? theres a lot of pissed off people in the comments for both sides of the video. Personally i kind of agree, dxvk is crappy but I didnt know it went this deep.

 

"DXVK was made for Linux, is updated for Linux". DXVK was made for Linux because DirectX isn't a thing outside of Windows. DXVK translates DX API calls to Vulkan calls and, given that Vulkan is also supported on Windows, it works just as if it was on Linux. DXVK isn't "updated for Linux", it's a series of DLL files that you can find on Github (and the repo is always updated with the latest version). Vulkan APIs are the same on Windows, MacOS, Linux and other OSes.

"Cards like GTX 1070s are getting bad framerates because people can't install DirectX9 on their PCs"... WTF am I hearing? If you don't have the right dependencies installed the game won't run at all, that's why Steam or RGL will install them for you on the first launch!

"GTA IV is an old game, it can't use DX12"... Well yeah, it was written for DX9!

"Shader caching takes a long time". Technically true, but shader caching is very heavy only in the first couple of minutes, after that you won't even notice it. On Linux it's even better because there's no stutter even in the first few minutes, but something like DXVK-Async probably achieves the same result on Windows

"Crashes more frequently". In my experience it is as stable as it was with DX9, and I've never heard of people complaining about crashes. It's just a translation layer, as long as your GPU supports the Vulkan feature set that DXVK uses I don't see why it would crash.

And, as zanesix pointed out, 30 FPS ISN'T a great experience

 

DXVK is kind of crappy? What? It's an amazing little tool that not only is making gaming on Linux a viable choice, it's also helping older games that had obvious DirectX limitations... GTA IV is one of those titles, if you crank up the visuals (draw/detail distance in particular) you'll reach a DX9 API limit, meaning that your GPU gets underutilized. DXVK fixes exactly that, thanks to it it's now possible to play GTA IV maxed out over 60 FPS with decent frametimes. I can think of only 2 scenarios where DXVK may not be needed:

- You have a old GPU that doesn't support Vulkan

- You're running the game at mid-low settings, and so you're not hitting the API limit

 

That video that claims to "silence those pesky youtubers that are spreading misinformation" is utter garbage, not only it has many errors but he doesn't even attempt at proving his thesis by showing an FPS counter. The DXVK footage he chose to show doesn't make for a fair comparison, those first few minutes on Windows don't represent the whole experience. I think he's trying to criticize this video from TJGM, which has clear proofs that DXVK improves IV's performance.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Moncastler

[ant_sh]

3 hours ago, Moncastler said:

"Cards like GTX 1070s are getting bad framerates because people can't install DirectX9 on their PCs"

This video is not to be taken seriously

[Nico]

DXVK is an absolute game changer for me, I couldn't believe how fluid the game was for me after I started using it. Made me realize I was literally coping with the atrocious performance for many years. I even started applying it to other DirectX games with similar problems, and good results too. However, I'm aware it has different results depending on each player's PC, so I won't try to sell it as a miracolous solution. I've heard that it makes the game perform even worse for some people.

[Rolf Wiedeke]

On 12/30/2023 at 7:24 AM, zanesix said:

This video is nonsense. Basically all of the information is either outdated or just wrong. They claim it runs "perfectly fine" without it while showing what looks like sub-30 fps gameplay, give no performance statistics, and give no source for what this "2009 PC" is other than the graphics card. Stuttering also doesn't happen if you're using an nvidia card and the gplasync fork can be used to remove stuttering for Intel and AMD cards. Experimenting with different command line options can also make it work better, which the video doesn't experiment with or even mention at all.

 

Overall it's not that complicated. Try it out and if it isn't a significant improvement for you, remove it! I'll tell you though that these claims are bogus. It doesn't make the game "not moddable", unless if you use really heavy duty graphics mods like ENB, alt tabbing has always worked fine, multiplayer is still usable, and stutters (if you still have them, which you shouldn't if you configured it properly) go away after the shaders are compiled.

 

LMAO... Found the source of the 2009 PC video, but it has a pretty major catch... during a loading screen you can see the game is CAPPED AT 30 FPS! "Runs well" my ass...

 

Man for 2009 that game play was p good. 

Barely anyone could run the game 25 fps @medium settings back then.

[no_option]

Honestly it's just as simple as looking at the code. Direct3D has a big overhead for rendering especially the older versions like 9, and Vulkan doesn't. It only makes sense to hook D3D calls to Vulkan directly and skip the overhead + handle stuff through their algorithm that caches graphical data.

 

It doesn't take more than 1 brain cell to put 1 and 1 together. This video proves nothing. Not only does the technical concept of DXVK make sense on paper, I saw it with my own two eyes.

[Luis Vercetti]

On 12/30/2023 at 5:48 PM, Moncastler said:

"DXVK was made for Linux, is updated for Linux". DXVK was made for Linux because DirectX isn't a thing outside of Windows. DXVK translates DX API calls to Vulkan calls and, given that Vulkan is also supported on Windows, it works just as if it was on Linux. DXVK isn't "updated for Linux", it's a series of DLL files that you can find on Github (and the repo is always updated with the latest version). Vulkan APIs are the same on Windows, MacOS, Linux and other OSes.

"Cards like GTX 1070s are getting bad framerates because people can't install DirectX9 on their PCs"... WTF am I hearing? If you don't have the right dependencies installed the game won't run at all, that's why Steam or RGL will install them for you on the first launch!

"GTA IV is an old game, it can't use DX12"... Well yeah, it was written for DX9!

"Shader caching takes a long time". Technically true, but shader caching is very heavy only in the first couple of minutes, after that you won't even notice it. On Linux it's even better because there's no stutter even in the first few minutes, but something like DXVK-Async probably achieves the same result on Windows

"Crashes more frequently". In my experience it is as stable as it was with DX9, and I've never heard of people complaining about crashes. It's just a translation layer, as long as your GPU supports the Vulkan feature set that DXVK uses I don't see why it would crash.

And, as zanesix pointed out, 30 FPS ISN'T a great experience

 

DXVK is kind of crappy? What? It's an amazing little tool that not only is making gaming on Linux a viable choice, it's also helping older games that had obvious DirectX limitations... GTA IV is one of those titles, if you crank up the visuals (draw/detail distance in particular) you'll reach a DX9 API limit, meaning that your GPU gets underutilized. DXVK fixes exactly that, thanks to it it's now possible to play GTA IV maxed out over 60 FPS with decent frametimes. I can think of only 2 scenarios where DXVK may not be needed:

- You have a old GPU that doesn't support Vulkan

- You're running the game at mid-low settings, and so you're not hitting the API limit

 

That video that claims to "silence those pesky youtubers that are spreading misinformation" is utter garbage, not only it has many errors but he doesn't even attempt at proving his thesis by showing an FPS counter. The DXVK footage he chose to show doesn't make for a fair comparison, those first few minutes on Windows don't represent the whole experience. I think he's trying to criticize this video from TJGM, which has clear proofs that DXVK improves IV's performance.

The only reason I say crappy is from my own experience, I know it's not atrocious like this video is making it out, but it always is kind of "iffy" when I use it. I think it's partly depending on specs, for people who use high end PCs, dxvk is amazing because it lets you utilize so much more of your hardware. Meanwhile medium and weak pcs either have very little or no, or even worse performance. From what I saw of the video, it seemed to me like the video was more trying to say it wasn't a super fix for every PC (which I'm sure everyone can agree it obviously can't work on every different kind of hardware.) I'm not sure entirely what the video was trying to prove otherwise but interesting stuff.

On 12/30/2023 at 9:05 PM, ant_sh said:

This video is not to be taken seriously

I don't entirely agree with that video, but for you, I think there is something to learn, you try to play devil's advocate for a lag fix. What's the matter with you?

[Luis Vercetti]

I probably should have put my view in the post originally but the video is mostly a crap post. I do actually agree with a few things in the video like It not being perfect, yeah it's not especially on weak PC's. Wish he could have put frame counter.

Edited January 2, 2024 by Luis Vercetti
Misspelling

[ant_sh]

16 minutes ago, Luis Vercetti said:

the matter with you?

I'm all right thank you very much. I don't advocate for anything, I just write what I know from my experience as MSCE and running various versions of this game on my hardware. 

@thedrbat9572 you have very shallow understanding of the subject and this video is misleading. 1. DX12 includes DX9. There's no separate installation package for DirectX versions later than 9 because they are tightly integrated into OS now (Dx10 in Vista, DX11 in Win7, Dx12 in Win10). If your OS is not damaged Dx9 offline standalone package will not install anything because it will check builds of DirectX .dll files which are already installed and if they are newer it will not overwrite them with older builds. 2. DXVK has more consistent frametime in complex areas e.g. Algonquin near park at night or Broker waterfront/Algonquin skyline at night. Dx9 has severe drawcall limit which drops fps in such areas  even on powerful hardware (8 core CPU and RTX30x0).  Testing fps during daytime is not the same. 3. Any  video on this subject without at least fps counter  and frametime graph is useless. In complex areas I described above DXVK has clear and obvious superiority - average fps is higher, fewer or none sudden drops to 40s fps, GPU is better utilized. It can be observed both on AMD and nVidia GPUs.

 

[Luis Vercetti]

31 minutes ago, ant_sh said:

I'm all right thank you very much. I don't advocate for anything, I just write what I know from my experience as MSCE and running various versions of this game on my hardware. 

@thedrbat9572 you have very shallow understanding of the subject and this video is misleading. 1. DX12 includes DX9. There's no separate installation package for DirectX versions later than 9 because they are tightly integrated into OS now (Dx10 in Vista, DX11 in Win7, Dx12 in Win10). If your OS is not damaged Dx9 offline standalone package will not install anything because it will check builds of DirectX .dll files which are already installed and if they are newer it will not overwrite them with older builds. 2. DXVK has more consistent frametime in complex areas e.g. Algonquin near park at night or Broker waterfront/Algonquin skyline at night. Dx9 has severe drawcall limit which drops fps in such areas  even on powerful hardware (8 core CPU and RTX30x0).  Testing fps during daytime is not the same. 3. Any  video on this subject without at least fps counter  and frametime graph is useless. In complex areas I described above DXVK has clear and obvious superiority - average fps is higher, fewer or none sudden drops to 40s fps, GPU is better utilized. It can be observed both on AMD and nVidia GPUs.

 

I only ask because i think every post I have ever made on this subject, you are there, its not an issue I just don't understand what your purpose or role with that is. If you just know a lot about it, great always helpful for more information but atleast allow for others to also address issues with it. if there's an entire video criticizing it (even though it is inaccurate) it shows there is definitely a people who have negative experience with it.

[ant_sh]

1 hour ago, Luis Vercetti said:

I just don't understand what your purpose or role with that is. If you just know a lot about it, great always helpful for more information but atleast allow for others to also address issues with it

I like discussing different technical subjects and share something useful. It's not that I restrict anybody from discussing it too or claim that I'm all-knowing authority on the subject. I understand that there are many factors that affect other gamers' experience e.g. hardware/OS/some settings kn BIOS or GPU drivers/whatnot... and that my experience may differ. What I don't like is not properly verified universal declarations and PEBKAC cases.

[Gillian]

That video is a bunch of crap. There.

[GiveMeLiberty78]

@Luis Vercetti Thanks for sharing that video. For me, DXVK is a game-changer, not a sham; it literally makes GTA 4 playable for me by increasing my mean frame rate from ~20-30 to ~90-100 under varying conditions. I can effectively run GTA 4 at a consistent frame rate >50 with all of the graphics settings at maximum, with very rare stutters (e.g., when there are several explosions, and/or driving very fast in a densely-populated/traffic-heavy area).

Previously, I ran GTA 4 with v1.0.4.0 (ENB) and DXVK v1.10.3 + Simple ENB v1.2 + ReShade v5.4.0, but recently I was finally able to get v1.0.4.0 working with DXVK v1.10.3 + ENB iCEnhancer 301. I even managed to finally install the Enhanced snow mod + the realistic snow fall mod. Personally I prefer iCEnhancer 301 because it offers more vibrant colors and weather, so I will keep playing this version in future. But the good thing is that with time and patience, it is possible to have multiple versions of GTA 4 installed - I have two main installs (one for regular weather, one for snow weather and handling), and I use this Chaos Mod (think riot mode/cheat) which works with v1.0.4.0 (best version for ENB mods, but some other mods worked better or only with v1.0.7.0).

Admittedly, installing DXVK was really challenging for me because I had to try different mods and chain-loaded libraries (plus different ENB settings and in-game settings) just to get the game to load, then to run consistently well without crashing to desktop, and to look good in a way that improved the graphics but without losing GTA 4's dark, gritty atmosphere.

Installing GTA4 and getting DXVK to work was made all the worse by the fact that installing GTA 4 was inherently difficult for me; it took about two days to install it because: (i) it was a terrible PC port with a messy GfWL install; (ii) I had trouble installing XLivelivess v0.999-b7 to bypass the awful GfWL bloatware, to get the right .exe to match the game version and to bypass the date checker; and (iii) because I had to restore some corrupted and missing files from various .rpf archives using a previous install.

I spent at least two more days trying to experiment with different chain-loaded libraries (e.g., ENB, SweetFX, Boulotaur2024.Injector_v1.5) and with ReShade, trying to upscale via AMD Adrenaline, and using higher resolution textures (I never managed to get more than hi-res vegetation and hi-res roads to work due to a memory leak). So getting DXVK to run well can be a frustrating challenge, but not because of DXVK but because GTA 4 is such an old, temperamental port.

Anyway, I think that DXVK has some limitations for sure, but overall I think that it's a great mod - I have read some comments online that it's just a badly cobbled-together mod and a band-aid, but I think that DXVK + iCEnhancer are the closest that I will ever get to a GTA 4 remaster that maintains some of GTA 4's graphical charm while improving its flaws - I think that the original color palette was washed out and too pastel-like, and the lack of AA frankly looked terrible.

I don't have time to upload videos, but here are some screenshots for anyone interested (the second batch shows the fps if you closely at the top left corner):

GTA 4 v1.0.4.0  + DXVK v1.10.3 + Simple ENB v1.2 + ReShade v5.4.0:











GTA 4 v1.0.4.0 + DXVK v1.10.3 + ENB iCEnhancer 301 - some screenshots show this Chaos Mod, or the Enhanced snow mod + the realistic snow fall mod:













Hopefully I've convinced some people that DXVK lets you play GTA 4 smoothly, and looks great 15 years later.

Edited January 5, 2024 by GiveMeLiberty78

[Gravarty]

WTF is this video, it's full of misinformation and most people in the comments section actually believe it. Have people been forgetting that Vulkan actually started out as a real DirectX alternative for Windows?

Well, yeah, of course DXVK won't magically make GTA IV run better, ultimately GTA IV is still a bad port and changing the renderer alone won't solve the problem.

[dev1ance]

This dude literary plays with 30 and less fps and says "Its runs better!!111oneomneone" Maybe its run better on DX9 when u play it on old PC from GTA IV era, but if u have machine which run that game with above 60 then u will have a lot stutters on DX9, and DXVK won't magically change your PC to a faster one

[RecklessGlue540]

This is insane babble. GTAIV is not meant to be a DirectX9 game at all. It was made on DX9 because Toronto had no idea what they were doing when they ported the damned game.

And DXVK is not something you can really compare. You have to pretty much always test it yourself since the experience can be soo random. You either get performance enhancements, stability improvements, or more efficiency on hardware usage...

 

This guy's english is also quite funny. DXVK "handicaps" GTAIV to not be moddable... lool (not true tho)

And also the absolute lies like mUltIPlAyEr DoEs nOt WoRk WiTh DxVK.

Alt-tabbing literally has no issue, tho again this could be pretty random afaik...

 

"Understand that it was possible to run the game at max shortly after release, DuE tO DiREcTx CoMpAtiBiLity."  Just because the hardware supports the thing, does not make the experience acceptable. Not everyone had a powerhouse back then. Not by a long shot.

 

"New hardware don't run GTAIV bad because it has no clue what modern hardware features are, It'S BeCaUsE YoU DoN't HaVe DiRecTx9 InStaLLed" Literally Directx 9 gets installed before you even run the game. But of course you don't get that when pirating the game. Not to mention DX9 is included with the drivers as well...

[Malibu Club]

This youtuber has a roblox profile picture. Anything said by roblox avatars should be taken with the biggest grain of salt as they are unlikely to be much older than 14.

[Meesmoth]

In my own PC, DXVK only made average FPS lower and in some cases frame drops were so noticeable (such as in the golf minigame) to the point that the drops is causing me to miss the highlighted black line when playing golf.

 

Playing the golf minigame feels more smoother without DXVK, but that's a personal experience, and not my overall judgement. In others it works, but for me it isn't. But that means the video above isn't correct also.

[Gillian]

On 1/4/2024 at 6:05 PM, Meesmoth said:

In my own PC, DXVK only made average FPS lower and in some cases frame drops were so noticeable (such as in the golf minigame) to the point that the drops is causing me to miss the highlighted black line when playing golf.

 

Playing the golf minigame feels more smoother without DXVK, but that's a personal experience, and not my overall judgement. In others it works, but for me it isn't. But that means the video above isn't correct also.

DXVK only doesn't help if you have a GPU bottleneck. More often than not.