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Published: February 17, 2016 | Source: OC3D | Author: Mark Campbell

Vulkan API Performance Review – The Talos Principle

Vulkan Performance Overview - The Talos Principle

Conclusion

 

When looking at these first Vulkan results one thing is obvious, Vulkan performs much better than OpenGL, even with beta drivers in this beta version of the game. This means that this new API will be of great benefit to developers, not just on Windows but on SteamOS, OSX, Linux and even on Mobile platforms like iOS.  

When we compare the results to DirectX 11 we were rather disappointed, in ever case DirectX 11 has better performance, but if we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that that was entirely expected. Yes Vulkan does have new features in it that DirectX 11 does not, but this game was released a long time ago and has no doubt not had as much work done on the Vulkan version of the game as the DX11 version. 

When looking at AMD and Nvidia performance on Vulkan we can see that AMD’s Fury X was able to beat Nvidia’s GTX 980Ti at all resolutions, hinting that AMD may have better driver support for Vulkan at this time, though given that this is just a single game we cannot really confirm this. 

In our testing of this game we can say without a shadow of a doubt that this game runs much better on the Vulkan API than on OpenGL, making this new API a major breakthrough from the Kronos Group. Yes DirectX 11 beats it in this title, but we will need to wait and see what the performance is like in other games or benchmarking utilities before anyone can make the claim that is worse than DirectX 11 or DirectX 12.  

Gaming outside of Windows PC platforms has been held back by OpenGl for some time, making the Vulkan API a breath of fresh air for those who want to game more on these platforms. Given the performance disadvantage that OpenGL has to DirectX 11 Linux Gaming has always been difficult, but now with Vulkan things may move to become a more level playing field.

Vulkan opens up a lot of options for the future, allowing Linux and OSX to become more viable PC Gaming platforms and will no doubt lead to some very interesting developments for games on mobile devices, or at least let them consume a little bit less of your battery life for the same performance. 

 

You can join the discussion on the Vulkan API performance overview on the OC3D Forums. 

 

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