Vulkan 1.0 Released: What You Need To Know About This Cross-Platform, High-Performance Graphics API

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Vulkan 1.0 Released: What You Need To Know About This Cross-Platform, High-Performance Graphics API

Today's the day! It's Vulkan day! After the better part of two years of hard work, Vulkan 1.0 is ready to meet the world! Today The Khronos Group is announcing the release of Vulkan 1.0 with an embargo that just expired. This hard-launch today is met by the public release of the first conformant driver. The first Vulkan-powered game is also in public beta as of today, but the Linux situation as of today isn't entirely exciting for end-users/gamers as most vendors are still baking their Linux support with Windows generally taking priority. However, even ignoring operating system differences, you need to make sure your expectations are realistic before trying to fire up a Vulkan game while giving developers time to learn and design for this new graphics API.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=22837

[haagch]

Since the intel driver link is not working: Is this the official/canonical intel driver:

https://github.com/LunarG/VulkanTools/tree/master/icd/intel

Or do we get another one?

[zanny]

So we get dead links for Intel, no driver from AMD, more proprietary bullshit from Nvidia, and a PDF. Sounds like just another day in the Linux graphics shitshow.

[JonathanM]

Nvidia releases firmware for maxwell, Vulkan is released, what's next? Major Linux distros shipping with wayland as default?

[pracedru]

Why would AMD suddenly have a new approach to graphics drivers for Linux?

[entropy]

So, it's really that AMD f***ed up the psychological very important bit to provide a Vulkan Linux driver on release day?
I know AMDGPU isn't ready yet. But wasn't there any other option via Catalyst for a start?

That was a BIG missed opportunity to raise reputation on that platform folks!

[bug77]

Yep, no mention at all of AMD, which was quite the jaw-dropper when I was sent over this material last week

You're just being mean. We all know the Vulkan driver will be much simpler and thus it will allow AMD to close the gap with Nvidia.
But seriously, was anyone expecting same-day support from AMD? Anyone?

[haagch]

So The Talos Principle Benchmarks when?

I was forewarned

not to expect any performance miracles out of Vulkan titles at this point. The straightforward explanation is that while the Vulkan API offers a lot of performance possibilities and greater optimizations, the current games/engines are still tuned for DirectX 11 / OpenGL with just calling into the Vulkan functions. It won't be until the new games or reworked engines appear that are really designed around Vulkan will there be much greater performance over OpenGL/DX11. In fact, be forewarned, in some cases right now the Vulkan versions of games may actually be slower than the OpenGL renderer until various bugs are worked out in both the drivers and games.

But that's the thing. We are already seeing performance that is far from what it should be. Remember the recent Talos Principle benchmark with AMD's open source drivers?

http://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1602139-GA-TALOSRADE33,1602126-GA-TALOSPRIN19&sha=6aa959a&p=2

Yea, the Fury is slower than a GTX 650. I never expected performance miracles, I always only expected performance to get in the area where it was supposed to be all along. Clearly that did not happen so far with OpenGL. Caffeine (Unreal Engine 4) and Saints Row IV were just another two example that ran at a fraction of the speed it should have...
So what does "the current games/engines are still tuned for DirectX 11 / OpenGL with just calling into the Vulkan functions" mean exactly? Does it still use the drivers' OpenGL implementation or does it use their own implementation that just is similar to the OpenGL model?

[chuckula]

As I noted a little earlier, I'm willing to give AMD a few months of time to "catch up" but considering all the hype about how Vulkan was just a slightly tweaked version of Mantle -- hype that I guess was wrong - it looks like AMD still has a lot of work to do and drivers still matter even if Vulkan is "low level".

[Michael]

So we get dead links for Intel, no driver from AMD, more proprietary bullshit from Nvidia, and a PDF. Sounds like just another day in the Linux graphics shitshow.

Stay tuned...