Vulkan Benchmarking Plans, Last Day For Valentine Premium Special

By now hopefully you've read our big launch day article with everything you need to know about Vulkan on Linux. In there I also said a few words about benchmarking.

Since writing that article, I've had time to play with a few more Vulkan tech demos and such. However, I'm still brewing my initial benchmarking plans. There are some tech demos sporting both Vulkan and OpenGL renderers that can be used for benchmarking, but they are synthetic test cases at best. There were the two numbers I tossed out in the main article as one data point while it may be a waiting game before having some interesting real-world Vulkan benchmarks.

While I'm part of the closed-beta for Talos Principle, it was made quite clear that the game isn't really ready to be used for benchmarks yet as it's just a OpenGL/DX designed engine with Vulkan currently plumbed into it. It won't be until more time is spent optimizing and reworking things that the numbers would be really interesting. But are you interested in seeing benchmarks right now anyways of Talos with Vulkan? Talos Principle on Windows vs. Linux with Vulkan? Talos Principle from the in-game menu does allow selecting between the OpenGL and Vulkan back-ends.

I'm hearing that the first game likely showing a performance advantage with Vulkan at this stage over OpenGL is Dota 2. So once that's available, I'll surely run some tests on that front.

Of course, right now NVIDIA Vulkan testing with my vast assortment of graphics cards from the GTX 400 "Fermi" through GTX 900 "Maxwell" series is my prime target. We're still waiting on the AMD Linux driver to bake and also on finding more details about the Intel Linux ambitions. Once the various drivers tip up, they'll be benchmarked, of course.

With this morning's release of Phoronix Test Suite 6.2 the initial plumbing is already in place there for at least reporting the version of Vulkan ICD drivers (right next to the OpenGL data) to get an idea for how quickly systems are upgrading to Vulkan support. The Vulkan analytics will be turned on with OpenBenchmarking.org in the next few days. The various Vulkan benchmarks will be available as they become ready on OpenBenchmarking.org for fully-automated benchmarking via the open-source Phoronix Test Suite software.

Anyhow, feel free to voice any Vulkan test requests and such by commenting on this article in the forums. Priority, of course, is given to Phoronix Premium members. With that said, don't forget you have until the end of the day to participate in our Valentine Premium deal to support the site and ensuring enough resources are available for plenty of interesting Linux hardware tests in the days, weeks, and months to come. Vulkan was part of the reason why I planned the Valentine's deal to run through today and with running low on sleep the past few days in prepping for today's launch. Tips are welcome as well, especially as it looks like it's time for yet another server for powering the site with how much interest there is in today's Vulkan article... Pardon the slowdowns.