Vulkan Back End broken, latest Dev builds, perhaps by newest AMD Drivers

[ForkWNY]

In the Vulkan back-end, (running AMD driver version 23.7.2), most games seem broken.

In Mario Golf: Toadstool tour, for example, after the intro screen, the movable objects on the start screen aren't even there, though you can clearly hear the audio and button selections working. Launch any game and the issues are similar w/Vulkan - Mario Galaxy, etc. None of the interactive elements of the games really show up, rendering is messed up across the board.

Here's a screenshot, only the game's background is rendered:



None of the interactive or moving elements show up. Going beyond the start/intro screens often results in a black screen...audio present, gamepad buttons are working, but the graphical rendering is not.

By comparison, here's the same screen under D3D12 - no problems as you can see:



D3D11/12 etc seem fine. Vulkan is the only back-end plagued by this issue. Didn't notice this problem until today. The only recent change was updating my AMD Radeon drivers, so I'm assuming the new drivers could be the cause, not 100% sure though because I run Dolphin sporadically. AMD has updated the Vulkan API and drivers in the past couple of Radeon driver updates.

Seems to affect all of the recent Dolphin Dev builds, I've reverted as far back as 5.0-19798 (using a portable Dolphin instance) and the issue occurs with that version, as well as in the latest version, 5.0-19836.

Anyone else noticing these issues in Vulkan? Didn't want to submit this as an issue until others have confirmed it's not just a simple config problem (or perhaps this issue is already known).

PC Specs:
AMD 5950X CPU
AMD RX6900XT GPU
64GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
AMD 23.7.2 GPU drivers

[dio791]

Same problem with my amd radeon 6800xt black screen but audio ok

[ForkWNY]

Thanks for confirming - I've submitted a bug report for this issue. I'm guessing you also keep up with the latest AMD drivers? This issue cropped up, to the best of my knowledge, with yesterday's 23.7.2 Radeon software release.

[dio791]

Yes I confirm I have the latest amd drivers and until yesterday everything was ok

[KHg8m3r]

Looks like AMD broke something real bad in their drivers: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/adrena...md-drivers

[AnyOldName3]

The last time they broke things in impressive ways was when they entirely replaced their OpenGL driver with the 22.7.x release a year ago. That was fairly understandable as a root cause. The latest isn't supposed to be doing anything exciting, though.

[ForkWNY]

Yep AMD has broken their drivers yet again...they broke them pretty badly earlier this year when H.265 decoding was a complete train-wreck. That made apps such as Parsec, OBS studio, and others unusable. The first few releases of 23.x.x were loaded with problems, most of which were carried over by bad drivers for the 7000 series GPU's where decoding was broken for a couple of months during late 2022. When 23.x.x arrived in Jan 2023, decoder functions were broken across the board on all modern AMD GPU's. The broken decoder in AMD's drivers didn't affect games as much as it did apps that decode H.265 video streaming.

I've posted this particular issue (according to one of Dolphin's developers in the bug reports area, this problem has to do with dual -source blending which Dolphin relies on for accurate emulation) in AMD's user forums...AMD will undoubtedly see it but don't expect any resolution for at least a couple of future driver iterations.

The workaround for those experiencing problems with the newest AMD drivers is to use D3D as the back-end, which in my opinion sucks compared to Vulkan but games are still playable. They just look uglier and dithered in D3D compared to Vulkan.

My RX6900XT will probably be my last AMD video card. Don't have any complaints about their CPU's, or the price/performance of their graphics cards (where AMD has generally shined). Their driver support has been god-awful lately (every other driver release seems to break important functionality) and they've worn out my level of tolerance for it.

[sabin]

Any updates or workaround for this? DX12 works on some games, but not others. And I'm getting occasional hitching on DX11. Reverting drivers back resolved the issue for me. Just curious when we can update back to latest drivers

[ExtremeDude2]

Any updates or workaround for this? DX12 works on some games, but not others. And I'm getting occasional hitching on DX11. Reverting drivers back resolved the issue for me. Just curious when we can update back to latest drivers

Sounds like more of an AMD issue than a dolphin one.

[ForkWNY]

Same problem with my amd radeon 6800xt black screen but audio ok

Any updates or workaround for this? DX12 works on some games, but not others. And I'm getting occasional hitching on DX11. Reverting drivers back resolved the issue for me. Just curious when we can update back to latest drivers

I've found for the most part that D3D12 works with most games, you may have to adjust some of your configs and/or graphics settings however when changing back-ends. Vulkan looks and performs MUCH better than D3D, in my opinion, so it's aggravating that AMD's latest drivers break Vulkan + Dolphin. Dolphin appears to be the only emulator affected by this issue...other emulators that use Vulkan for a graphics back-end seem fine with AMD's latest drivers (Cemu, Yuzu, and most others I use on occasion are not broken).

Reverting drivers is another workaround...23.7.2 breaks the dual -source blending that Dolphin relies on for emulation. When AMD releases its next graphics driver iteration, you can try installing it to find out if the issue is resolved with new drivers, otherwise it may be best to stick with 23.7.1 until the problem is resolved. Always use DDU when rolling back graphics drivers as it completely removes all traces of the drivers so that it's safe to roll back.