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URL: https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-595.44.06-Vulkan-Beta

⇱ NVIDIA Ships Fixes For Descriptor Heaps, More Vulkan Performance Optimizations - Phoronix


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NVIDIA Ships Fixes For Descriptor Heaps, More Vulkan Performance Optimizations

Written by Michael Larabel in NVIDIA on 2 May 2026 at 06:41 AM EDT. 10 Comments
NVIDIA on Friday released the 595.44.06 beta driver build as their newest Vulkan developer beta for Linux. This was joined by the NVIDIA 595.46 Windows Vulkan beta and there are performance improvements in tow and more work on their descriptor heaps support.

The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is big for introducing VK_EXT_descriptor_heap support. Vulkan descriptor heap functionality allows for explicit management of descriptors and the memory used for descriptors. This extension is important for improving the Steam Play (VKD3D-Proton) experience, can help reduce CPU overhead, and all around a modern efficiency win.

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With Friday's Vulkan developer beta driver update, there are various fixes and performance improvements to the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap support with NVIDIA's driver. The new driver builds also bring performance improvements for some shader operations on BDA data.

This Vulkan developer beta also now allows external buffers and images to be bound to host-visible, device-local memory. Additionally there are various bug fixes.

Downloads and more details on these new Vulkan developer beta driver builds for Windows and Linux via developer.nvidia.com.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.