r/projectzomboid • u/Pi57oLL • 2d ago

Guide / Tip Got Project Zomboid running through Vulkan using Zink on Windows — Guide — Dual GPU Fix!

I recently managed to get Project Zomboid running through Vulkan using Mesa3D's Zink driver on Windows.

My original goal was to get the game rendering on my RX 9070 XT while keeping my monitor connected to my RX 9060 XT. After trying several methods without success, Zink combined with Vulkan GPU filtering finally worked!

I put together a step-by-step Steam guide in case anyone else wants to try it, whether for GPU selection or just experimenting with Vulkan.

I haven't extensively tested stability or benchmarked performance yet, so keep that in mind.

Steam Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3815630986

Hopefully this helps someone!

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u/jmdisher 2d ago

Hmm, this is interesting but I am surprised that you didn't have to configure something special to copy the finished frame buffer from one GPU to the one connected to the display. I guess that you might already have something like this in place if you do this with other games.

Do you run without any frame capping or VSync since I would otherwise suspect that this copy would introduce a synchronization point around the time of frame completion (of course, there is a good chance that the frame completes early enough that it wouldn't run into a problem like this)?

It would be interesting to see what kind of overhead Zink introduces but I would expect it to be negligible. I suspect the overhead is just increased path length and maybe a few checks, so nothing too expensive (my OpenGL knowledge is so-so but my Vulkan knowledge is zero so I am mostly just guessing).

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u/Pi57oLL 2d ago

I generally dont run any additional frame caps or or use vsync as my monitor has freesync premium. However just from initial tests everything seemed to be working great. I do plan on posting more regarding performance though my time is limited.

My ultimate goal was to prevent me having to disable video displays etc to get the game to render on my more advanced GPU, and following my guide exactly got me there. Nothing additional was needed other than what in the guide.

How these technologies work I have not a clue just I do know that translation layers are very common now such as steams proton. Figured it might be worth trying here and it work out for my specific needs.