I have installed the latest SDK from here (as I cant seem to find the stand alone RT): https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home#windows Once installed, it creates a folder containing the 1.0.46 RT, I copied this to another folder and uninstalled the SDK as I am not a developer. I then installed the 1.0.46 RT saved earlier, this installs to C:\Program Files (x86)\VulkanRT\1.0.46.0 When I run doom, it tells me I am running 1.0.39.0 - I assume this installed AMD drivers 17.4.1. How do I uninstall the old Vulkan and get Doom to use the new one?
1.0.39.0 is the AMD driver Vulkan version, you are still using the 1.0.46.0 runtime but the driver has it's own version. ("amdvlk32 and amdvlk64 .dll" version 1.0.39.0) Though you can also check to see if there's multiple versions installed. C:\Program Files (x86)\VulkanRT Should only be a 1.0.46.0 folder, if there's more you can run the uninstaller in them and clean them out, perhaps uninstall them all and then re-install 1.0.46.0
What were you hoping to achieve with that? Just use the version bundled in the driver's installer. Installing a newer runtime manually does not have any effect for end-users.
I was experiencing some odd stuttering that could only be resolved by having afterburners osd displayed. I had tried a lot of different options and thought I might try and update the Vulkan run time. Seems quite bizarre that AMD would have their own Vulkan time version number that follows the same format as the official one but uses different numbers! Can you tell me who the vulkan runtime benefits if not the end users?
It's for developers. That's why it's in the SDK. There's no runtime installer download. Your graphics driver supports up to a specific Vulkan version number. Installing a newer runtime doesn't make the driver support the newer version. It still only supports the version it ships with. Also, Doom does not make use of newer Vulkan features. It supports whatever it was developed against.
So it works differently than directx or opengl and it is hard locked to a specific graphics card driver version. That seems odd for a third party api.
Nope, Vulkan have it's own runtime, which is distributed and installed usually together with IHVs driver. OpenGL on the other side is completely implemented on the IHVs ICD (Installable Client Driver). DirectX APIs runtimes are installed as part of the OS.
You can (should ONLY) instally the SDK (which includes the newest Runtime) if you are running into problems with the RT that is bundled with the driver. For example there were occasions when DOOM wouldnt run for some people (would not start up) with Vulkan. Then after they installed the SDK from the official Vulkan site, it worked again. But on the other hand, reinstalling a driver or installing another driver revision helped as well!
It does have a couple of fixes including one for the installer as well and it's backwards compatible, I tend to update it just because though as if you go by the changelog it is indeed almost entirely related to the SDK functionality. (I just rip the installer from the SDK though, I don't use the full thing as that's unneeded.) https://vulkan.lunarg.com/doc/sdk/1.0.46.0/windows/release_notes-1.0.html https://vulkan.lunarg.com/doc/sdk/1.0.42.2/windows/release_notes-1.0.html