Doom Vulkan Patch Released
by Ryan Smith on July 11, 2016 10:30 AM EST
Bethesda PR has sent over a quick note this morning that the long-awaited Vulkan patch for Doom is now available, allowing the game to be played with either the OpenGL or Vulkan rendering backends. With this release – and although the distinction is somewhat arbitrary – Doom has become the first performance-intensive game released to use Khronos’s new low-level API, and arguably the first game where the rendering path is being implemented for performance reasons rather than proof-of-concept reasons (as was the case with The Talos Principle).
Notably, id is not calling this a beta release, and the Vulkan rendering path is otherwise not hidden. In a full announcement from id’s Robert Duffy, id notes that via the Vulkan rendering path “we also anticipate some older GPUs will now be able to play the game at good framerates.” Though at the same time it should be mentioned that when it comes to older cards, id is specifically recommending against using Vulkan under Windows 7 with 2GB NVIDIA cards, which rules out some early Kepler cards.
The full FAQ for the patch release can be found over on Bethesda’s forums. Meanwhile the patch itself will be distributed as a Steam update, and gamers will want to be sure to grab the latest AMD or NVIDIA drivers for use with the game.
Source: Bethesda
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Zak - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
I have not noticed any difference on i7-6700 and GTX1080 at 2560x1440. On max settings the game was already running at around 90-100fps with peaks up to 160 fps. Maybe if it was more demanding there would be a more noticeable difference. Doom is not a very demanding game: there is no foliage, no large open spaces, very little detail in the world. It was built for speed.hyno111 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
"We are working with NVIDIA to enable asynchronous compute in Vulkan on NVIDIA GPUs. "Fine, what about async compute for dx12?
Ferazel - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Doom was released like other idtech games as an OpenGL game. It does not have a directx11 or 12 renderer.Eidigean - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
DirectX is not inherently any faster than an OpenGL implementation:http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-ope...
The only reason DirectX is still kicking around is because it's the only way to write a game for the Xbox; as Microsoft wants to lock in developers.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
With ass kicking they're receiving from PS4 i don't think they're in a position to lock in sh*tMichael Bay - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
"Ass kicking"? With what, multiplatform sequel electric boogaloo and dog in feathers that will fail to release again?Wake up, both are in the gutter, right next to that Mario factory.
dudusmaximus - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Doom doesn't use dx it currently uses OpenGL.zmeul - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
they "forgot" to add it to the demo :(zepi - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Vulkan and other new graphics API's are not just about increasing performance in old software, but in fact make things possible that just weren't before.The fact that you can have 5 times more draw calls without tanking the performance could be huge, but as long as you design your program with the limitations of old API's, you can't use this benefit to its fullest potential.
Samus - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
That's a good point, I hadn't even thought of that. Indeed, boss scenes in Doom have slowdown even on my GTX970 at 1080p, I'm interested to see if Vulkan smooths that over. In other words, scenes once thought too intense/inconsistent from a performance perspective could be implemented the way the developer wanted it to be without dumbing down the detail or changing the scene altogether.