GUIDE: Vulkan drivers for older Snapdragons

[ArminiusTux]

Greetings fellow windowed ARMenians,

almost 3 months have passed since @driver1998 released his great guide (US-EN/ZH-CN) on how to retrofit older Snapdragon SoCs with graphics drivers for the Vulkan API.

The basics remain (the transfusion comes from the SD Elite's graphics drivers package), however there were some developments worth mentioning:

• THE BAD - Qualcomm stopped / blocked the usage of the Vulkan ICD on older Snapdragon SoCs (back in April starting with v31.0.53)

1. The last usable package remains the mentioned one (v31.0.47)
2. Maybe patching the qcvkarm64xum.dll will remedy this in the future 🤞

• THE GOOD - LunarG released their Vulkan Runtime for Windows on ARM by now

1. No more hunting for the vulkan-1.dll, it's included
2. The accompanying command line tool vulkaninfo.exe, can display and export the supported Vulkan feature palett

• THE UGLY - The few Vulkan applications I have tested so far (tech demos, benchmarks & games), produced mixed results - so there is no way around meticulous testing

Last but not least, let's gather additional information and compile a compatibility chart:

GPU	SoC	Vulkan_status	Vulkan_extensions
Adreno 685	Snapdragon 8cx Gen2	✅	77
Adreno 642L	Snapdragon 7c+ Gen3	✅	87
Adreno 630	Snapdragon 850	❌	0
Adreno 618	Snapdragon 7c Gen2	❌	0
Adreno 618	Snapdragon 7c Gen1	❌	0

[ArminiusTux]

UPDATE January 2025:

After ugprading to Windows 11 version 24H2 (build 26100) you might lose the Vulkan capability.

The culprit is the OpenGL Compatibility Pack (MS store / GitHub), which lately also contains a Vulkan to Direct3D12 wrapper called Dozen (part of the Mesa 3D project).
Unfortunately Dozen is not working / not enabled for pre Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoCs, but overrides and thus breaks the above-mentioned manual but native Vulkan driver installation.

There are two options to remedy this:

• Uninstall the whole Compatibility Pack (NOT recommended as you will lose the OpenGL driver functionality)

• Deactivate Dozen (only the Vulkan part of the Compatibility Pack):

1. Take ownership of the following hidden folder (to gain full access rights):

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.D3DMappingLayers_*app-version-number*_arm64__*app-ID*

2. Rename (e.g. *.json -> *.old) or delete the following six files:

dzn_icd.arm64.json
dzn_icd.x64.json
dzn_icd.x86.json
dzn_layer.arm64.json
dzn_layer.x64.json
dzn_layer.x86.json

3. Check the situation by executing vulkaninfo.exe (part of the Vulkan Runtime) or download the Vulkan CapsViewer tool.

4. Dear @jenatali , please introduce a wrapper switch (for OGL, OCL & VK compatibility), accessible through the Windows settings' apps section in order to make steps 1 & 2 obsolete.