Intel Developing Their DXVK-IGDEXT For Improved Linux Gaming On Arc Graphics

Intel engineers have been quietly developing dxvk-igdext as their own component for DXVK Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 atop the Vulkan API for leveraging Intel Direct3D 11 Graphics Extensions. DXVK-IGDEXT is a new project from Intel that provides the igdext64.dll for letting games use Intel D3D11 Graphics Extensions under Wine. This DLL is handled automatically by Valve's Proton for improving the Linux (Steam Play) gaming experience on Intel Arc Graphics hardware. The project's GitHub sums up DXVK-IGDEXT as: "igdext64.dll for Wine/DXVK: lets games use Intel D3D11 Graphics Extensions (UAV overlap, MultiDrawIndirect, depth bounds) under Wine by forwarding them to DXVK's native implementation, instead of the game silently falling back to slower default D3D11 behavior when the extensions aren't available. Note: Linux/Wine only for now, not for use on native Windows." More details on this recently open-sourced effort can be found via GameTechDev/dxvk-igdext on GitHub.