BENCHMARK CS2 Engine Benchmark: DirectX 11 vs Vulkan Frametimes & Pipeline Latency

Benchmarked both graphics APIs on CS2 (Build Sep 2026) across 10 identical 5v5 demo playbacks on an RTX 4080 + Ryzen 7 7800X3D testbench using CapFrameX:

• DirectX 11: Average FPS: 462.4 | 1% Low: 284.1 FPS | 0.1% Low: 198.5 FPS | Frametime StdDev: 0.62ms
• Vulkan: Average FPS: 441.8 | 1% Low: 212.0 FPS | 0.1% Low: 124.6 FPS | Frametime StdDev: 1.48ms

DirectX 11 continues to deliver substantially tighter frametime distributions and lower 0.1% low spikes on Windows 11. Stick with -dx11 in your Steam launch options.

Vulkan on Windows still interacts poorly with Desktop Window Manager (DWM) composition swapchains. DX11 takes advantage of hardware independent flip model with zero buffering overhead.

Can confirm through memory profiling that Vulkan shader cache pipeline compilation causes transient 8ms stalls whenever new particle effects (like multiple HE grenades detonating in smoke) occur for the first time.