id Software has just released a new patch for DOOM that adds support for Vulkan. Naturally, we went ahead and tested some scenes that were performing poorly under OpenGL 4.5. And we are happy to report that id Software has nailed it as DOOM runs way, way, way better under the Vulkan API. 

As we wrote in our PC Performance Analysis, there were some scenes in DOOM during which our GPU usage was dropping for no apparent reasons.

“Now while DOOM runs exceptionally well on the PC, we did notice some optimization issues (that could be very well due to the OpenGL API). As we can see in the following screenshot, our GPU was underused for no apparent reason. In this scene – and other outdoor scenes – our GTX980Ti was not used to its fullest, even though we were not VRAM or CPU limited. Yes, we were still above 90-100fps, however it appears that the game does not fully utilize the GPU in specific scenes. It will be interesting to see whether these scenes run better with Vulkan.”

As you can see, that scene ran with 100fps in OpenGL 4.5. Well, that same scene ran with 160fps in Vulkan. Yeap, we’re talking about a 60fps performance boost, which sounds unbelievable.

Not only that, but the game is now able to “properly” scale on multiple CPU cores. Below you can see the CPU scaling of our Intel i7 4930K on both OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan. As you can see, Vulkan was able to take advantage of all of our six CPU cores. On the other hand, and while the game scaled on our hexa-core under OpenGL 4.5, it relied mostly on a single CPU core.

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All in all, DOOM runs incredibly well under Vulkan. All of the optimizations issues that we reported in our PC Performance Analysis are now fixed thanks to it, so kudos to id Software.

 

So how about them performance gains eh?. Seems to me like id were keen on getting that patch out as soon as they finished talking about it's benefits from last week's news: http://gamingbolt.com/id-software-dev-puzzled-by-devs-choosing-dx12-over-vulkan-claims-xbox-one-dx12-is-different-than-pc

Although it's working for AMD, id are also working with Nvidia to get it running as soon as. I imagine sometime either this week or enxt is when Nvidia will likely have a driver out by then with the needed support. I've already completed DOOM's SP and I have no desire to play the MP, though once the driver rolls out I might start from scratch again just to see the perf gains on my 980.

All in all I'm happy that they managed to make it work out for themselves in the end rather than it coming out borked to hell and doing worse than DX 12. I only hope now that Bethesda take this as a sign that id can do things right and maybe even start supporting other Bethesda titles with Vulkan as all other OS's will benefit from the API rather than slapping DX 12 and only supporting WIn 10 while shutting everyone else out. 

News source: http://www.dsogaming.com/news/doom-benefits-greatly-vulkan-vulkan-versus-opengl-performance-comparison/

I wonder if it's really that simple to measure GPU and CPU usage, to just launch one of those tools and watch the % number.

Good news.

And AMD has released a new driver optimisation for this Vulkan update: http://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-radeon-software-crimson-edition-16-7-2-now-available-optimized-driver-doom-vulkan/

Currently waiting on Nvidia to get off their arse and roll out their driver for Vulkan.

It's surprising that they still haven't  launchedtheir driver, as they used DOOM and OpenGL to tease the performance of their back then still unreleased GTX 1080.

Meanwhile AMD shows again how they've been improving its driver launches the last few months.

I think they originally thought that AMD wasn't going to do squat for DOOM. Nvidia seems that bit more complacent despite the fact that they are behind on Vulkan, behind on DX 12 and not getting the gains AMD is with 12. They seem to be boasting this or that but I'm not seeing them throwing their weight around with the exception of the 1080 (we've yet to see AMD dethrone it with their own single card later this year).

Yeah, but that's nothing new.

AMD had a tessellation unit on their cards many gens before DX11 came out, but when games started to use it, Nvidia added it to their GPU architectures. And we know which cards perform better with tessellation now.

I expect something similar this time around from Nvidia and Async Comp and other DX12 bits. They'll rely on brute force to to make the games run fast, and only add those features when they can no longer avoid it.

That said, I honestly though Nvidia's 10 series and AMD's 4xx would be fully DX12 compliant. And they aren't better than the last gen of cards.