Vega finally beats RTX? Vulkan strikes again!

[BluJay614]

Noticed this while going through Google News. Straight from WCCFTech and TechQuila, both will be linked to at the bottom.

 

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World War Z got an update recently that enabled the Vulkan API on PC. Like DirectX12, Vulkan is a low-level API succeeding OpenGL and tends to favor AMD’s CPUs as well as GPUs. This is because the driver optimizations which is one of the main reasons for NVIDIA’s success over the years become obsolete with Vulkan. Sure, we’ve seen DX12 make things worse in many games early on, but Vulkan being an Open Source API, built on the remains of AMD Mantle has had much better luck. This is evident in Doom as well as its successor. World War Z, an AMD sponsored title proves that once again, although if you’re an NVIDIA user then you’re better off sticking with DX11.

Well, we haven't heard anything from Vulkan since Doom (2016), so it's nice to see that Team Red is getting some love. I would like to say that I disagree with the claim that it's made NVIDIA's success obsolete, especially with the marketshare, lack of decent competition, and lack of implementation of Vulkan(Though the same can be said about RTX at this point, but I digress). Would also disagree that DX12 has made things worse, just in the beginning, there was no motive to utilize it the way it should. Now, it's more the way games are being marketed and the kind of bugs being found that are making them garbage.(We will not speak of some of the horrors that EA, Bethesda, Blizzard and the like have tried cramming down our throats)

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Radeon RX Vega 56 Outperforms the GeForce RTX 2080, Vega 64 Beats the RTX 2080 Ti

Credits: GameGPU

At 1080p, Vulkan is a nightmare for NVIDIA cards, with even the $299 Radeon Vega 56 performing on par with the $1000 RTX 2080 Ti if you consider the lows. The GTX 1080 Ti beats the RTX 2080 here, once again showing that the Pascal cards are still quite competitive, despite what NVIDIA might have you believe. The Radeon VII and the Vega 64 leave the green flagship in the dust with significantly higher averages of 192 and 169 FPS, respectively.

Well now, ain't that something. At 1080, even the air cooled Vega 64 which start at $420 (if you can find one) is readily beating the ~$1100+ RTX 2080 Ti. Even the $279+ Vega 56 is matching the 2080 Ti in the lows, and is 11 FPS lower in the average, which would make it a smoother experience, at that that high a framerate, more people won't be able to tell the difference.

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Credits: GameGPU

At 1440p, things get a bit better for team green but there’s still a lot left to be desired. Although the RTX 2080 Ti pulls ahead of the Vega 56, the 64 and Radeon VII still maintain a considerable lead. The GeForce RTX 2080 manages to beat the Pascal flagship here but still lags behind the Radeon Vega 56.

Credits: GameGPU

At 4K, things get back to normal with the RTX 2080 Ti winning back the first spot from the 7nm Radeon VII. The RTX 2080 also one-ups the Vega 56 which levels with the GTX 1080 Ti, but the Vega 64 and Vega VII still maintain a noticeable lead over the Turing 2nd in command. It’s still quite unbelievable with the Radeon RX 590 battling it out with the RTX 2060 while it normally is quite easily crushed by the GTX 1660 Ti.

The story continues with the gaps closing, and NVIDIA gaining back the lead at 4K, though by a small margin. Still, even the RX 590 is putting up a fight against the much more expensive RTX 2070 at 1440p and 4K.

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One conclusion that can be drawn from these results is that World War Z is heavily biased against NVIDIA GPUs and since the performance falls back to normal at 4K means that these gains can be mainly attributed to a lower CPU overhead at 1080p and 1440p whereas at 4K the GPUs are the bottleneck. However, that begs the question as to why are NVIDIA’s GPUs falling behind? Well, to be honest, it can’t be said for sure. The most likely case is that since it’s an AMD title, team green didn’t have much access to the game’s code, thereby resulting in reduced optimization for NVIDIA cards.

Well, while game was only just recently released, and does not seem to be getting the best reception, it does seem to be an AMD sponsered title, and use their open source API, which would give them the obvious edge, though this much at lower resolutions is a bit much.
 

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Secondly, Vulkan has proved time and again that it favors AMD hardware, mainly because (as already mentioned) it is built on top of AMD’s Mantle. Still, I expect NVIDIA to come up with an update or something to at least bridge part of the performance deficit at lower resolutions.

Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that they will try to come back, should they deem it worthy. With the reception of the game however.... Well, only time will tell. Either way, a very nice showing from AMD, and something for Team Red to be happy about.






As promissed, here are the links(TechQuila was used for this, as it seemed that WCCFTech was just using their artical to go off of):

TechQuila: https://www.techquila.co.in/amd-radeon-vii-vs-nvidia-rtx/

WCCFTech: https://wccftech.com/amd-rx-vega-64-outperforms-nvidia-rtx-2080-by-14-in-vulkan-enabled-world-war-z/

[RejZoR]

Still, to get such framerates from Vega 56 at 4K it's rather incredible...

[exetras]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Still, to get such framerates from Vega 56 at 4K it's rather incredible...

I think this is the best point to come out of all of this. It's quite amazing that they are able to push out those Frames at that speed for a really good looking game. even a old R9 290 or 1060 is able to get a good 60 frames @ 1080P for something this new and good looking.

[RejZoR]

Or just most mid end RX 590. It's pisitioned really high for what we'd consider rather low end card by today's standards.

[Princess Luna]

Competition intensifies, Vulkan is probably going to de-throne DX12 sooner than later, specially how it can be natively used on other OS without need to port everything.

 

nVidia better get their stuff together before they lose the crown to AMD, while Intel is also getting started... things are not looking so great to team Green right now.

[Stefan Payne]

The Problem with Vulkan is that it doesn't allow for as much Driver Optimization like DX11 does, wich is why nVidia might not be happy about it.

Because it removes the "driver magic" from the equation..

And as this shows, VEGA can beat the nVidia Chips under certain circumstances.

 

And since we are bashing nVidia here:

Remember Wildlands?? That Ubi Coop Game??

The one that crashes on nVidia Turing cards? Wich is still not fixed today.

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1934983-GR-Wildlands-crashes-in-inventory-menue

 

And no, Ubi is not to blame as the Game was there before the Cards. And Maxwell and Pascal seem to work.

 

[NumLock21]

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

[SolarNova]

4 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

At this point we should all be "AMD desperate" with the Sh*t NVidia is pulling with £1000+ 80ti cards.

If things don't change you can fully expect to see future generations have 80ti cards at the £1000+ price point for no other reason than "because they can".

[BluJay614]

3 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

They beat Nvidia at other games as well, just not as readily. Not to mention, this is an example they finally get to show off Vulkan again, as only two games I'm aware of are using it.
 

 

8 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Competition intensifies, Vulkan is probably going to de-throne DX12 sooner than later, specially how it can be natively used on other OS without need to port everything.

 

nVidia better get their stuff together before they lose the crown to AMD, while Intel is also getting started... things are not looking so great to team Green right now.

it is great that competition is heating up, but I don't think that Vulkan and AMD are going to overthrow DX12 or nVidia anytime soon. Microsoft and nVidia have too much fight in them to let that happen.

[maartendc]

Can someone explain to me exactly what Vulkan is? Is it a way for the game to talk to the OS, the same way DirectX does? So does a game that uses Vulkan not use DirectX at all?

 

This is nice for AMD, but at the same time, 99% of games use DirectX, so not really that usefull.. Why would a developer use Vulkan over DirectX? Is it easier to program for?

 

I am sure all the developers that are sponsored by Nvidia with their "game ready" or "plays best on..." will NOT use it, if Nvidia has any say over it.

 

I find it funny that everyone is up in arms about something like the Epic Game Store getting exclusives, but nobody ever complains about Nvidia throwing money at developers to optimize their games for their hardware. Way bigger of a problem if you ask me... And we see the results now with Nvidia selling you $1200 GPU's because they own the market.

[Stefan Payne]

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

Its at least the 3rd one.

You miss Forza Horizon 4?

https://gamegpu.com/racing-simulators-/-гонки/forza-horizon-4-demo-test-gpu-cpu

 

 

And also Ni No Kuni 2 as well:

https://gamegpu.com/rpg/ролевые/ni-no-kuni-ii-revenant-kingdom-test-gpu-cpu

 

Doesn't look to o bad in Resident evil either...

[Stefan Payne]

1 minute ago, maartendc said:

Can someone explain to me exactly what Vulkan is? Is it a way for the game to talk to the OS, the same way DirectX does? So does a game that uses Vulkan not use DirectX at all?

TL;DR:
Opened Mantle, given to the Khronos Group.

It works on Windows since at least Version 6.1 aka 7 and also under Linux.

 

Its a low Level API like DX12.

 

1 minute ago, maartendc said:

This is nice for AMD, but at the same time, 99% of games use DirectX, so not really that usefull.. Why would a developer use Vulkan over DirectX? Is it easier to program for?

There are already a ton of Vulkan games.

Its just not well known.

Most of them are on Linux.

 

But on Windows you have at least DOOM 2016 and newer Wolfenstein games.

 

1 minute ago, maartendc said:

I am sure all the developers that are sponsored by Nvidia with their "game ready" or "plays best on..." will NOT use it, if Nvidia has any say over it.

Correct and even if, they will be asked by nVidia to implement things that don't work well on the red side.

1 minute ago, maartendc said:

I find it funny that everyone is up in arms about something like the Epic Game Store getting exclusives, but nobody ever complains about Nvidia throwing money at developers to optimize their games for their hardware. Way bigger of a problem if you ask me... And we see the results now with Nvidia selling you $1200 GPU's because they own the market.

Yeah, true.

But there was a small outrage about the closedness of Gameworks.

 

And also the Lead Developer took a slight piss at nVidia and called it a "business decision".

[TVwazhere]

3 minutes ago, maartendc said:

I find it funny that everyone is up in arms about something like the Epic Game Store getting exclusives, but nobody ever complains about Nvidia throwing money at developers to optimize their games for their hardware.

Nvidia doesnt have allegations of spying/excessive system registry use to the best of my knowledge, which is the primary reason I'm staying away from them. I'm okay with multiple game launchers, but I should be able to choose if I want programs to know my hardware, and that they not be necessary for games/hardware to work (I.E, geforce experience)

 

Back to OP: Vulkan is good, because development options are good. However, if these VII numbers are anything to go off of, The VII might not be the RTX 2080 killer we need it to be

[Stefan Payne]

6 minutes ago, BluJay614 said:

They beat Nvidia at other games as well, just not as readily. Not to mention, this is an example they finally get to show off Vulkan again, as only two games I'm aware of are using it.

Its a bit more than 2 games, though not as well known.

And many of tham are Linux Only.

 

Here a List of those Games that run on Vulkan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Software_that_supports_Vulkan

 

Many (for example Ashes of the Singularity) are multi API games that support at least DX11.

The most known are Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein 2.

 

But the Talos Principle from Croteam was the first game to do that.

As said, Ashes of the Singularity got support in an update, as did Doom.

 

Lesser known is that X4 FOundation exclusively supports Vulkan.

 

[BuckGup]

16 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

Except Vulkan is now going to be used on most if not all AAA future titles due to stadia and proton. They also released version 1.1 which simplified the work a bit. But as a dev either spend a little bit more time using Vulkan and not have the need to really port anything and have it available for EVERY platform including IOS and MacOS or use DX12 and then spend all that time and money porting it to Metal or Swift/C#

[BluJay614]

1 minute ago, maartendc said:

Can someone explain to me exactly what Vulkan is? Is it a way for the game to talk to the OS, the same way DirectX does? So does a game that uses Vulkan not use DirectX at all?

 

This is nice for AMD, but at the same time, 99% of games use DirectX, so not really that usefull.. Why would a developer use Vulkan over DirectX? Is it easier to program for?

 

I am sure all the developers that are sponsored by Nvidia with their "game ready" or "plays best on..." will NOT use it, if Nvidia has any say over it.

 

I find it funny that everyone is up in arms about something like the Epic Game Store getting exclusives, but nobody ever complains about Nvidia throwing money at developers to optimize their games for their hardware. Way bigger of a problem if you ask me... And we see the results now with Nvidia selling you $1200 GPU's because they own the market.

Vulkan is a low-level API, just like DirectX. The difference is DirectX is Windows specific(proprietary) where as Vulcan is Open Source. Anyone can get ahold of Vulcan and alter it, or even have it function natively on other operating systems, like Linux or (theoretically) Mac OS.
Yes, the majority of games are DX11/DX12, however an open source API(like Vulkan) allows devs to reach out to a much wider audience, like those who don't want to use Windows.

Yes, companies sponsering games are, and probably will always be a thing, and no, Nvidia will not be happy about someone they are funding using a competitor's resources.

As far as people being upset about exclusives is irritating, but understandable. Companies don't like competition. Having more places and more accounts for us to keep track of is also cumbersome. However, even in cases like Boarderlands 3, it's only a temporary exclusivity.

[BuckGup]

1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

Nvidia doesnt have allegations of spying/excessive system registry use to the best of my knowledge, which is the primary reason I'm staying away from them. I'm okay with multiple game launchers, but I should be able to choose if I want programs to know my hardware, and that they not be necessary for games/hardware to work (I.E, geforce experience)

 

Back to OP: Vulkan is good, because development options are good. However, if these VII numbers are anything to go off of, The VII might not be the RTX 2080 killer we need it to be

Hahaha yeah right. NVIDIA is notoriously known for its spyware in GeForce experience. Never install GeForce experience as it’s basically the same as what Epic is doing. They send an immense amount of data frequently. 

[GoldenLag]

19 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Beats nvidia at 1 game and starts hyping. Boy is amd desperate. 

Its honestly just a nice demo of how nice Vulcan actually is. Its especially interesting for consoles seing as that is a large portion of the market. 

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Hahaha yeah right. NVIDIA is notoriously known for its spyware in GeForce experience. Never install GeForce experience as it’s basically the same as what Epic is doing. They send an immense amount of data frequently. 

Wait people use Nvidia software? I thought they installed it for drivers and just use anything else instead of it

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

Hahaha yeah right. NVIDIA is notoriously known for its spyware in GeForce experience. Never install GeForce experience as it’s basically the same as what Epic is doing. They send an immense amount of data frequently. 

Hence the:

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they not be necessary for games/hardware to work (I.E, geforce experience)

I can run an Nvidia GPU without it. I personally do have it because I utilize Shadowplay frequently, but I've never installed it on anyone elses system I've helped them build because of that. 

[Misanthrope]

AMD had technical wins before. What they need is to capitalize on those: a couple of games isn't going to do it and they just don't have the bank to outspend Nvidia when it comes to purchasing developers to optimize (That is to say, they could but it would be risky to eat up all the company's success on processors just to prop up GPUs)

 

They need to bet heavier and harder on pushing Vulkan and people away from windows. I am not saying is going to be easy or that it will work but there's probably never going to be a better chance to push back and try and gain some market back.

[porina]

API war is probably even more complicated than the GPU war... let's look at the major x86 platforms.

 

PS4 uses its own API, do we assume PS5 will continue that or will it adopt something else?

XBox family is obviously going to be DirectX and will probably continue along that route.

PC supports DX and Vulcan

Mac, does anyone care for gaming?

 

If you're a game dev, with limited time and resource, what would you target? DX gets you PC and Xbox in one go, which is a good chunk of the potential market. PS4 probably still has more momentum so will continue as its own thing. Is there much incentive for a dev to pick Vulcan? I'd argue cloud streaming is still an unproven market so it would be a higher risk area to get into.

 

Also it is not as simple as "use Vulcan, get massive performance". A lot of work goes into it. The lower level the access, the more work you might have to do yourself, as opposed to higher APIs.

 

Right now, if you were to offer me either DXR support, or Vulcan support, I'd take DXR. A few more fps over some level of adequacy doesn't change the experience, whereas new functionality does.

[Stefan Payne]

37 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Wait people use Nvidia software? I thought they installed it for drivers and just use anything else instead of it

They wanted to stop releasing the "game ready" drivers on their website and only do that through GFE...

And also other shit.

 

AMD had their GFE alternative as well but dropped it with the new Adrenalin thingy...

[TetraSky]

Great news that AMD's implementation of this is paying off... In the few games that support it.

 

Nvidia having some competitions is good for all of us. Hopefully Navi will close the gap even more.

[S w a t s o n]

23 minutes ago, porina said:

API war is probably even more complicated than the GPU war... let's look at the major x86 platforms.

 

PS4 uses its own API, do we assume PS5 will continue that or will it adopt something else?

XBox family is obviously going to be DirectX and will probably continue along that route.

PC supports DX and Vulcan

Mac, does anyone care for gaming?

 

If you're a game dev, with limited time and resource, what would you target? DX gets you PC and Xbox in one go, which is a good chunk of the potential market. PS4 probably still has more momentum so will continue as its own thing. Is there much incentive for a dev to pick Vulcan? I'd argue cloud streaming is still an unproven market so it would be a higher risk area to get into.

 

Also it is not as simple as "use Vulcan, get massive performance". A lot of work goes into it. The lower level the access, the more work you might have to do yourself, as opposed to higher APIs.

 

Right now, if you were to offer me either DXR support, or Vulcan support, I'd take DXR. A few more fps over some level of adequacy doesn't change the experience, whereas new functionality does.

 

Honestly at this point I would hope Sony goes for Vulkan instead of making their own again. There's no reason for any game to ship without both DX12 and Vulkan now. It almost is as simple as use Vulkan get more FPS. DX12 is low level too and if you can implement one you can implement both.

 

DXR is part of DX12, you dont have to choose DXR vs Vulkan. Vulkan has it's own ray tracing API as well, it's really down to DX12 vs Vulkan as a whole