NVIDIA Drivers Uninstall When Launching Through Vulkan

9 votes

Every once in a while, I have to reinstall my drivers or scan for hardware changes in Device Manager after launching through Vulkan. I have a Surface Book 2 with a GTX 1050, and I've run into this a few times. I'll only know once the game launches, and I'll be met with 1 FPS because it'll be running on the Intel Integrated Graphics instead.

Not sure if this is due to the game, but just decided to send a suggestion anyways.

Under consideration Suggested by: Jorge (12 May, '21) • Upvoted: 22 Dec, '21 • Comments: 6

Comments: 6

12 May, '21
Smiffe Admin
Hi Jorge,

You don't have to run the game through Vulkan. it's only an option.
I've not heard this before. But I can pin this message and we'll see if someone else have or have had this issue.
12 May, '21
Wendulan
I've not had this exact issue but something similiar. Since updating my Nvidia drivers one or two months ago I cannot get Valheim running with Vulcan. Backrolling the drivers makes it work again. I run a Nvidia RTX 2060 currently on the 466.27 Drivers. It's a shame because I get almost double the frames through Vulcan.
13 May, '21
Mike
I have never seen it roll back any drivers for me after using the Vulcan build. Though I didn't notice any improvements with using it and it seemed to crash for me when I did use it so I went back to using the regular version of the build and not the vulcan one.
13 May, '21
Jorge
Thanks for pinning the message! The performance improvement running through Vulkan has made the gameplay experience a lot better, so that's why I've stuck with it.
21 May, '21
Jorge
Pretty sure I've identified the issue. The Surface Book 2 seems to have had issues with the dedicated GPU just disconnecting, usually requiring a hardware scan in Device Manager, a driver update, or a restart to fix it. Since Valheim puts my GPU under load a lot more than other games, it's been a recurring problem, but not an issue with Valheim.
22 May, '21
Anton
I know I've had issues previously with the geforce drivers not recognizing certain exes as games and letting them run on the integrated graphics because of it. Iirc there should be some kind of setting in the nvidia control panel where you can decide which GPU that a certain exe should run on, maybe try setting valheim.exe to always use dedicated GPU instead of having it be "auto". This link might have something useful: https://www.getdroidtips.com/force-app-game-use-nvidia-gpu-integrated-graphics/