Vulkan API Performance Review – The Talos Principle

Game Settings and 1080p Testing

One key thing that must be remembered here we are testing a Beta release of The Talos Principle and are using Beta drivers from both AMD and Nvidia, so results from here will not be representative of all titles, but it gives us a great look at what to expect when compared to OpenGL, the Khronos Group’s old graphics API.

Game Settings 

The game will be run at Ultra settings, with a resolution of 1920×1080 for both the screen resolution and the Max 3D rendering MPIX. We will be playing the game with no AA options enabled. 

1080p Results

The 1080p results for this game are very interesting, as we can see that the Vulkan Version of the Game does not perform as well as DirectX 11. We must remember that this is a Beta version of the game on beta GPU drivers, so performance can improve in the future, but also that DirectX 11 is the default option for the game and is no doubt what the developers have spent the most time on. 

When compared to OpenGL we can see a great deal of performance improvement, giving a 24FPS boost to Nvidia and a 38FPS boost to AMD. Since OpenGL is the API that is used for the Linux and Mac versions of the game, Vulkan represents a opportunity to gain a lot of performance on those platforms.    

One other interesting thing is that when using Vulkan AMD gains a lot more performance than Nvidia, with Nvidia beating AMD in the DirectX 11 and OpenGL results and AMD having the best performance when using Vulkan. This could mean that AMD has the best drivers for Vulkan at this time, but this is expected given the new API’s origins coming from AMD’s Mantle API.