[Regression 595.71.05] Blackwell (RTX 5070) — Vulkan swapchain creation fails (VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED) under Proton; worked on 595.58.03

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Summary

Regression introduced in driver 595.71.05 on Blackwell. Vulkan swapchain creation fails with VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED, leaving games running but rendering a black screen. The immediately prior driver, 595.58.03, worked correctly with no other system changes. The failure is in the WSI/presentation path, not the D3D translation layer — it reproduces identically through both DXVK (D3D11) and vkd3d-proton (D3D12).

Hardware / software

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (Blackwell)

  • Driver: 595.71.05 (nvidia-driver-595-open) — broken; 595.58.03 — working

  • OS: Ubuntu 26.04 (resolute), kernel 7.0.0-15-generic

  • Display server: GNOME on Wayland (Xwayland)

  • Test app: HELLDIVERS 2 (Steam AppID 553850), via Flatpak Steam (com.valvesoftware.Steam, Flatpak-bundled runtime)

  • Proton: Experimental experimental-11.0-20260522b

  • vkd3d-proton: 3.0.1

Steps to reproduce

  1. On driver 595.71.05, launch HELLDIVERS 2 through Proton on a Wayland session.

  2. Game process and all DLLs/audio initialize normally; window is created.

  3. Observe black screen with no rendered image.

Expected behavior

Game renders normally (as it did on 595.58.03).

Actual behavior

Swapchain creation fails and retries indefinitely. With D3D12 (vkd3d-proton):

err:vkd3d-proton:dxgi_vk_swap_chain_recreate_swapchain_in_present_task: Failed to create swapchain, vr -3.

(vr -3 = VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED.) Forcing D3D11 via Proton’s --use-d3d11 moves the failure to DXVK at the same step:

err:   Presenter: Failed to create Vulkan swapchain: VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

The requested swapchain is unremarkable: 1920x1080, VK_FORMAT_B8G8R8A8_UNORM, VK_COLOR_SPACE_SRGB_NONLINEAR_KHR, VK_PRESENT_MODE_IMMEDIATE_KHR, 4 images. Because both backends fail identically at swapchain creation, this points to the driver’s WSI implementation rather than the D3D-to-Vulkan layer.

Regression bisect

  • 595.58.03 — works

  • 595.71.05 — broken

The 595.71.05 update arrived as an automatic Ubuntu security/SRU update (595.71.05-0ubuntu0.26.04.1); no other graphics-stack changes accompanied it.

1 Like