Questions about Vulkan

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I just stumbled upon that article on World War Z being running 20% better on the Vega 64 then on the 2080.

It's interesting to see an AMD GPU outperforming one that's almost 3 times more expensive. Then I went to see if there were more games running on Vulkan but I got kinda disappointed.

Therefore I want to know why there aren't more games running Vulkan/Mantle as it's been around for quite a few years already. Also I'm not sure I'm getting the difference between Mantle and that. Is this like AMD's version of DirectX?

[Jurrunio]

21 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Therefore I want to know why there aren't more games running Vulkan/Mantle as it's been around for quite a few years already.

because more developers can use DirectX than any other API. It's the most widespread, so if you're entering this career, you will learn DirectX first and make sure you're at least capable with it.

 

Vulkan's main selling point is compatibility with ARM based systems (so mobile phones and handheld consoles), while also being a low-level API (same as DX12 btw) which means it hands over more capability and risks to the developers. This is a good thing when you're aiming at consoles when there are only several sets of hardware or a big company that can afford to optimize performance on such API for PC, but a bad thing, especially for smaller developers, to work on PC games when there are countless combinations.

 

24 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Also I'm not sure I'm getting the difference between Mantle and that. Is this like AMD's version of DirectX?

Mantle and later Vulkan has the same common target as Microsoft's DX12 on balancing CPU and GPU load on top of what DX11 offers. In fact it's more like Direct3D versus everything else, as OpenGL, Mantle and Vulkan are all somewhat correlated.

[xAcid9]

3 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

It's interesting to see an AMD GPU outperforming one that's almost 3 times more expensive. Then I went to see if there were more games running on Vulkan but I got kinda disappointed.

I like Khalid when he was still active in LTT but not a fan of his articles at WCCF... or whole WCCF in general. 
He conveniently exclude DX11 benchmark, Radeon is still faster but not as high. 

 

The reason this game is so good with Radeon right now.
- Nvidia haven't release game ready driver for it.
- It was optimized for Radeon featuring Shader Intrinsic, Rapid Packed Math, Async Compute.

Spoiler

Vulkan doesn't automatically make Radeon GPU good, optimization did.

If a game with Unreal engine use Vulkan, i bet it still suck on AMD gpu. 

[IAmAndre]

7 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

He conveniently exclude DX11 benchmark, Radeon is still faster but not as high. 

Why would it run better on DirectX11? I though DX12 was better?

[xAcid9]

2 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Why would it run better on DirectX11? I though DX12 was better?

But World War Z only have DX11 and Vulkan?

To answer your question, Nvidia have much better driver/architecture for DX11. Radeon GPU choke a lot easier on high draw call game compare to Geforce, DX12 or Vulkan help mitigate that issue but if dev didn't optimize it on their part it will still crap.

[Stefan Payne]

On 4/21/2019 at 3:22 PM, xAcid9 said:

To answer your question, Nvidia have much better driver/architecture for DX11.

No, that's not how I'd say it.

The Point is that DX11 is higher level, that means that the driver has way more influence over the Performance than on a "lower level" API, wich essentially gives most of the Control to the Application, away from the Hardware Manufacturer.