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Latest Valve Proton Experimental update enables DLSS 3 Frame Generation and fixes performance in dozens of games
Last week, Valvereleased a new Experimental update for its Proton compatibility later, which builds upon the stable September 19 Proton 9.0-3 release by providing fixes for dozens of games and even adding support for Nvidia's Optical Flow AI and DLSS 3 Frame Generation technologies. DLSS 3 now being supported under Proton bodes well for the future of Nvidia gaming on Linux, particularly when playing titles where framerate isn't easy to come by.
Aside from these changes, the rest of the changelog lists dozens of fixes for dozens of games, most frequently relating to video playback, crashing issues, performance issues, and input or display problems. There are some exceptions, though, like mod support for Doom Eternal being fixed, showing that an eye for more niche use cases is being kept. This update also fixes Proton not setting priorities correctly for new threads, which should improve performance (or at least stability) in all games.
Additionally, the Proton Experimental update rolls in the latest development work from the DXVK and VKD3D-Proton projects. VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D for DirectX12 games running under Proton and is primarily geared toward high-end PCs instead of handhelds like Steam Deck. DXVK is a Vulkan-based Wine translation layer for older DirectX titles.
Major improvements from recent versions of VKD3D-Proton include the addition of Nvidia Reflex and OpenVR support, which we've covered in a prior article. Numerous game fixes, fixes to software cursor support, and various game engine or hardware-specific issues have also been fixed in the latest versions of DXVK, effectively rounding out the up-to-date support available within the full bundle of Proton Experimental. If you're a Linux or Steam Deck user, all you have to do is opt into using Proton Experimental within the launch options of your games in order to take advantage of all these fixes at once. You can also pick specific past Proton versions if they happen to work better.
It's nice that Nvidia gamers on Linux can now more easily utilize their hardware's built-in Frame Generation features through the Proton compatibility layer, and this is another win for Valve and Linux gaming. Prior to Proton, Linux users did still have the Wine compatibility layer (which is now bundled within Proton, see DXVK), but Valve has really taken (Windows) gaming on Linux to the next level with Proton.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
Is this a prelude to Nvidia GPUs being officially supported by Valve's OS and derivatives (e.g. Bazzite)?
Most likely. SteamOS prior to Deck supported NV hardware fine, and while Proton is primarily associated with Steam Deck and its AMD hardware, it works for any Linux user on a supported x86 distro.
