Vulkan API and drivers released

Uh-huh, so how does this stack to GTX 970+i5? I'm about to order any day now.
 
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Nothing to get excited about for end users, at least not for a while. All the major engines are being adapted to use it (many of them had a hand in creating it), but it's only games going into production now that will see the benefit. Early reports suggest it is looking very promising.

It has essentially all the benefits of DX12, but it runs on Windows 7 and 8, Android, Linux, and likely on the PS4. Makes porting a heck of a lot easier. Many of us are hoping games support it as standard.
 
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Yeah, I installed the drivers. Checked out the two demos.

The fish fireworks one ran well holding 60fps with maximum fish. it had me thinking it was going to be more useful where devs would use physx particles.

The choppers one didn't run properly for me and I think it was because it was trying to force Vsync over my GSYNC monitor settings. (even if I pressed V)

There's really nothing much to see, just yet.

Even with Ashes of the Singularity, which is going to use dx12 to have huge unit counts, still runs better on dx11. dx12 is supposed to give the same/similar low level hardware access of Mantle/Vulkan, so maybe its not possible to make all the fish from the demo have "complex" ai routines and still take advantage of this mass fish threaded tech?
 
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Could also just be that these are very early and unoptimized drivers, that don't perform very well yet in comparison to mature DX11 drivers. Also, devs have to code their games differently to take advantage of this stuff, so they're new to it, and may not yet be doing a great job.
 
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You know what I think needs to happen for Vulkan to really kick off?

Half-Life 3, fully co-op and in VR. :) (with some survival and building mechanics!)
 
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That would certainly do the trick for me!
 
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The only current game I've heard that supports not just dx but also Vulkan is The Talos Principle.
 
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Yes, that's right, and I think that was largely arranged just so there would be something to show. It wouldn't have made much sense for major projects to use Vulkan until the specs were finalised and the drivers were available, which only happened last week.
 
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IMO every competition is good.
Will Vulkan be more efficient than DX12 or vice versa, who knows. But one will chase another so each will have to improve.
 
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SirJames said:
Even with Ashes of the Singularity, which is going to use dx12 to have huge unit counts, still runs better on dx11.
Click to expand...

Only if you have an Nvidia card, using DX12 gives a performance increase on AMD cards since day one.
 
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No. Since day one pairing one nVidia card with one AMD card brings more gain on dx12 that two nVidia or two AMD cards.
Noone, to this day, didn't explain how's that even possible but the tests shown it.
 
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First that wasn't day one, only Anandtech seems to have go access to a preview build of the feature in October (I haven't found any other benchmark), while DX 12 support date back to June. maximunPC did a new test just a few days ago because Oxide is finally releasing that patch to Steam though (they also talk a bit about Vulcan might I add).

Second, using a AMD primary is faster than the same two cards with the nVidia as primary.

Third, I haven't seen Fury X + Fury X or GTX 980 Ti + GTX 980 Ti results in those benchmarks. They are basically comparing GTX 980 Ti + GTX 980 Ti (Fury X + GTX 980 Ti) to GTX 980 Ti + GTX 980, not too surprising that GTX 980 TI x2 is faster.

Fourth, maximunPC mention graphical anomalies with dual GPUs and their card going into weird states.
 
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Yes, I wouldn't infer too much from those early tests. Again, I think this is probably the first time an actual game has used DX12 explicit multi-adapter support (which is a completely different ballgame from SLI), so there probably all sorts of vagaries in the implementation. We would need far more data from a wider group to draw any general conclusions.
 
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We don't need data, we need a game.
Not just any crap of course - we need a proper epic singleplayer RPG.
 
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Looks like NVIDIA isn't going to support Vulcan on the Fermi series (400 and 500 series, they are 6 years old), citing low install base as reasons...

I suspect we are going to get more news of the sort over the year.
 
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Yes, AMD said something similar regarding Linux Vulkan driver support - only the latest generation of cards and forwards will be supported.
 
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This shouldn't be surprising - recent minimum requirement in plenty of games is GTX 660. Games with "looks" ofc. :)
 
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Yes, in many ways I like to see standards that are pushing things forward, unconstrained by legacy considerations. But, it does exclude Vulkan for a fair chunk of the user base.

EDIT: Also, Unreal Engine has added Vulkan support. Here is an Unreal Vulkan demo, running on a Samsung Galaxy. Don't have a meltdown, Joxer, it's just to give an indication of what it can get out of even quite limited hardware.

 
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