What is your experience with the new Vulkan API

[bgunner]

Since they have released a new Application Program Interface (API) called Vulkan I am interested in gamers' take on how it helps or hurts your own system while using it. This is meant to be a discussion on this subject of your own experience using the API versus Direct X 11, 12, OpenGL. Please include your full system specs and game/s used to help show where it hurts or helps.

I'll go first

SYSTEM SPECS:
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth 990FX r2.0
CPU: AMD FX 6120 @ 4.515 GHz @1.416V
RAM: GSkill Ares 1866 @ 1873 MHz @1.575V
GPU: XFX AMD Radeon HD 7970 @ 925 core & 1375 memory
SSD's: OCZ Vertex 3 60GB & Sandisk V300 120GB
HDD's: Hitachi Deskstar 500GB & Seagate barracuda 1TB
PSU: Seasonic X850 - 850W Fully Modular

My first experience with Vulkan is in Doom 2016 where with Direct X 11 (Correction OpenGL) I get around 34-37 fps. This is just to low for my liking, I like a steady fps of 60, so when I changed to the Vulkan API I get 64+ fps. For me I get a minimum of 30 fps more using the new API. This for me was a huge surprise due to the amount of FPS gain since I was expecting 15 to 20 at most and I gained so much more. Most times I hover in the 70's making the game play very smooth.

What is your experience with it?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

small note: DOOM is using OpenGL, not DX11.
It should be no surprise for you as you are using AMD card.
AMD failed to create decent DX11/OpenGL driver. That's why their HW is under utilized with those APIs. That's why they sell GPUs with more theoretical horsepower for the same price as nvidia theoretically weaker GPUs.
So for AMD users, Vulcan and DX12 are good news as bieng low level API, they are much less dependent on AMD's impotent drivers.
Nvidia users shouldn't really care as there is very little performance improvement.

 

[bgunner]

small note: DOOM is using OpenGL, not DX11.
It should be no surprise for you as you are using AMD card.
AMD failed to create decent DX11/OpenGL driver. That's why their HW is under utilized with those APIs. That's why they sell GPUs with more theoretical horsepower for the same price as nvidia theoretically weaker GPUs.
So for AMD users, Vulcan and DX12 are good news as bieng low level API, they are much less dependent on AMD's impotent drivers.
Nvidia users shouldn't really care as there is very little performance improvement.

You are correct that Doom and almost all if not all of ID's games use OpenGL. My mistake. Other than this have you use Nvidia with the Vulkan API? This is a discussion on how your system does using the Vulkan API Versus other API's( including DX11, DX12, OpenGL). Basically data collection and user accounts. IF you have first hand proof, not a review by someone else or a different site, please share. Otherwise please do not comment, Thank you

 

[n0ns3ns3]

I'm playing DOOM 2016 on GTX 1070.
I couldn't notice any performance/visual difference other than the OSD from EVGA Precision is not working with Vulcan
In my first comment, I explained why there is very little difference for Nvidia users for now and why this is very important for AMD cards owners.

 

[bgunner]

OSD do not work with other API's other than Open GL and DirectX. Since Nvidia, AMD and Intel contributed to Vulkin I will not be surprised if Riva Tuner adds support for it. As many of us know and for those that don't MSI Afterburner, EVGA Precision, HIS iTurbo, Sapphire TriXX and maybe another one out there, are all Riva Tuner just with a different skin applied to it.

Doom 2016 does have an FPS meter and more that can be turned on with Vulkan API enabled.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Yes, you are correct.
my comment about OSD was a bit sarcastic to emphasize the previous point of no immediate value for nvidia cards in those new APIs.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Don't forget to mention that NVIDIA cards do not fully support asynchronous compute workloads, which is one of the reasons the new APIs are not showing great gains on NVIDIA. The Pascal cards do support preemptive compute, but aren't benefitting a whole lot from those sorts of workloads. Two different architectures that have two different sets of strengths. All in all, Pascal really doesn't improve much of anything Maxwell, just clocks the chips higher. At the same clock speeds, you get margin of error difference in performance.

 

[TerryLaze]

You loose the drive thread(s) with Vulkan,for CPUs that have to run those threads on the same cores as the rest of the game threads Vulkan is an immediate gain in minimum FPS as well as max FPS depending on how much better Vulkan is at executing tasks.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cDAWW8nkGU"][/video]

 

[bgunner]

I can see where MMO's can really benefit from Vulkan seeing as they are CPU intensive to start with. While the GPU does get used MMO's are primarily CPU bound and this is where the bottlenecks usually occur.

Anyone else care to share there experiences with the Vulkan API?