Vulkan To Get Broad OS Multi-GPU Support

Irrelevant ? RSI just announced thet DX12 will be dropped for Star Citizen and that they will go Vulkan. That's only irrelevant if you're in the camp of those who believe the game will never be finished.

And I wish people would stop talking about moving away from MGPU. Triple 4K monitors can't be driven with proper FPS without MGPU, period. And 8K displays are on the rise. Single cards will never evolve fast enough to be able to handle the latest cutting edge display technology.

 

The... 0.0000001% of the users? Seriously, multi-GPU outside 2-cards is a big no-sense on fast responsive real time applications like games (NVIDIA decision to limit 2-cards SLI only, except for benchmarks, with Pascal is a wise decision).

What is really irrelevant is not Vulkan (probably the only decent thing The Khronos Group Inc. ever made), but Star Citizen, the biggest hyped fraùd (seriously, censored???) ever made in the videogames history.
DooM proved Vulkan is a valid alternative to Direct3D 12, but SC is a big "who cares?".

 

Q: Why is there not a single Vulkan exclusive game?

especially considering that its compatible with far broader range of both HW and OS than is DX12

 

None of the Microsoft and Sony consoles use Vulkan at all.

 

I'd gladly run Vulkan in Doom. However, there is an issue that if you have another Nvidia GPU installed, it will select that one to render versus your primary. In other words, when I set the game to use the Vulkan API, it selects my 980 Ti instead of running on the 1080 Ti. This same thing happened when I was running the 980 Ti as the primary and a GTX TITAN as the PhysX gpu. That was the reason behind the huge drop in FPS I get using Vulkan.

 

Yep, i do think Vulkan makes things easier for porting mobile games to PC and vice versa.

This is good news as it's one of the things that is pushing me away from Vulkan, the others issues will never go away but i accept that.

It's been a long day, but does the clarification regarding this make it sound like it possible that the best results from Vulkan MGPU are to be gained on W10?

 

DX12 backers : "M$ is awesome, stop trying to ruin monopoly." Might as well stab your ears and eyes with skewer driver and enjoy DX12.

 

Well, the move to Win10 will increase gradually through this year and next, most likely, until 2019, when it will become a stampede because Win7 will EoL 1/2020. Right now there is no new feature support for Win7 at all, only bug fixes and security patches up until EoL 1/2020. Personally, I don't know why anyone would have refused the free upgrade to Win10--but they have--guess it doesn't really mean that much to them, I suppose. I'm fairly sure that given the choice between Win8 and Windows 10, that when Win7 becomes a footnote pretty much everyone will be moving to Win10. It makes no sense not to. Win10 is the OS into which Microsoft is investing all of its time and energy, hardware support moving ahead, etc.

Why not move to Linux, for instance? That's easy--backwards compatibility. Many people like me have hundreds of Windows-compatible programs and games and utilities that they don't wish to abandon. But Windows doesn't really require anyone to abandon Linux or OS X, even. Dual booting works great--did it myself for years until I got very tired of maintaining two OSes when 98% of my software was Windows-only.

But, I am amazed that some people are clinging to Windows XP right now, believe it or not, so there are always those irrational diehards who will gladly spend hundreds or thousands of dollars every 2-3 years on hardware, but who balk at a new OS for $100--even though the OS will last them a lifetime provided they activate through a Microsoft account--Win10 activation can be keyed through you Microsoft account as opposed to your present hardware, provided you bought/own the retail version.

Windows 10 supports Vulkan just fine, btw--d3d and Vulkan coexist just like OpenGL and D3d coexist in Windows--so it doesn't seem as if Vulkan will "wound" Windows 10 or D3d at all, imo... I like Vulkan fine and like the idea of it. But it won't do anything to hurt Microsoft, if for some reason you are thinking that. OpenGL was/is cross-platform too and that hasn't hurt Windows sales in the slightest. I'm sure Khronos is *not* trying to hurt Windows with Vulkan--I mean, right now by far Windows is where 95% of Vulkan and OpenGL games will be developed. As a developer's API of choice, Vulkan will not surpass d3d until such time as Khronos can deliver developer tools for implementing Vulkan support that either equal or exceed the quality and quantity of Microsoft's d3d developer tools. It's always ever been about the tools--it's why John Carmack dumped OpenGL for D3d years ago. Etc. None of this is to put down Vulkan--it's just that Khronos isn't attempting to hurt Microsoft with Vulkan at all, imo.

 

I always get the feel that Vulkan is a cash grab aimed more at quantity than quality, and the whole time the devs have their priorities pointed towards the massive mobile market and less at PC gaming. Not that i blame them, but it's just not something i am into.

Even with all things equal, a Vulkan version is always going to suffer compared to DX12 when resources are split across multiple operating systems.
It's nice for the publishers, but are they going to cough up the extra money or ask the devs to take shortcuts?

 

That's not accurate actually. Vulkan handles the rendering part of a game, and can be fairly cross-platform. The other parts of games need to be cross-platform too, and have parity there too. I actually wish that Vulkan succeeds, I just can't see it happening with Khronos at the helm and vendor-specific extensions allowed.

 

So you think that development on a Vulkan game is fine by using just using a W10 test system, and hoping for the best on W7/8 Linux and Android.

 

No, I just understand that the renderer (that Vulkan handles), is just one part of a game. There are tons of others. It's a very important part, and it does make porting easier, but don't throw it on the renderer immediately when something goes wrong.

 

I'm aware of tools like Visual Studio, and I'm aware there are plenty of amazing developers who work just fine without them. They're not required to make a good product or a better product, they just make it easier to do so.
And yes, earlier support does mean more time to test, but, it's the total man hours that matter, not the duration. Glitches are a statistical anomaly, not a guarantee. When you have an application compiled for various binary-incompatible OSes and different CPU architectures and it still runs the way it was intended to, that says a lot more about stability than a single OS that runs on x86 (Xbox One, to my knowledge, is currently based on Windows 10).

It doesn't inherently mean more stability, but as I already stated, if something runs properly despite the differences in OS, drivers, and hardware, it is made very well.
I think you're forgetting that both Vulkan and DX12 took code directly from existing projects like Mantle. Vulkan was technically developed before it even existed, but putting semantics aside, it was in development for a shorter period of time than DX12.

Yes, they do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Compatibility

Uh... MS doesn't support Vulkan on Windows 7 either, yet it is readily available. I don't understand how you're missing the point that Vulkan is open source and therefore can be compiled on whatever you want, assuming you have the hardware support.

If I'm understanding you correctly, I still don't see your point. Vulkan updates come with the GPU drivers themselves (and if it's anything like OpenGL, it could come with the games too), so nobody is left in the dark. Since it isn't integrated with the OS, you don't have to deal with Windows Update, which in my opinion is an advantage. Case in point - the issue you brought up about people advising against updates.

I agree.

I use Steam on 64 bit Arch Linux (something Valve doesn't support) on a regular basis. I have Linux-native games that aren't attached to my Steam account. I am well aware of the dependency situation. It's only hell if you don't know what you're doing, because unlike Windows, Linux and it's development tools don't spoonfeed you everything.

I'm well aware there's a depressingly high amount of Intel GPU gamers out there, but my point is they're not the ones who care about things like DX12 or Vulkan. It's going to be a long while until we regularly see games that will not support DX11 or OpenGL, which Intel IGPs currently handle pretty well. Remember, the primary benefit to DX12 and Vulkan is reduced CPU and PCIe overhead, which Intel IGPs don't really benefit from due to their relative weakness.

Understood - I'm aware even new phones could still be 2 versions behind. It's rare for things to be cutting-edge. But the fact of the matter is Vulkan support will still arrive at some point for the average Android phone, it's just going to take a while.

Do you know how many versions of DX12 there are? Probably not, because MS doesn't actively advertise it, but I'm sure there are also several. I don't see how that matters anyway; unlike Vulkan, DX12 wasn't a complete re-write from scratch. The version of Vulkan also doesn't really matter - most new releases just simply add features; that's it. If a game doesn't support the new features, why bother with the new update? If a game does support the new features, it will either come with the patch or the GPU drivers will. When it comes to bugfixing, that's up to the GPU drivers, not the library.

 

Agree!!!!

It's like people nowadays are the target of 'habits'...and branding is focusing on...

For example:
If a new brand shoes that might just cropped up named SAMSUNG you will surely have idiots queuing up for the launch sales...

:micro:

 

Why should people play mobile games, which are touch based and extra simple gameplay, on a PC?
Actualy, on mobile Vulkan has 0 share rate. And as I said, the biggest issue is the mobile word itself.

Windows 10 does not have any issue at all with multi-GPU and DirectX 12, Vulkan is going to take the same capabilities (more or less, just technical details related to extensions).
Vulkan has only a big win-card that is called Windows 7. It also would allow better manual resource sharing across Windows 8.1 (I am not sure how much improvement could bring on Windows 7 and WDDM 1.1) then IHVs extension on linked adapter mode multi-GPU.
Unlinked adapter mode requires WDDM 2.x, ie Windows 10. Unlinked adapter multi-GPU is a valid alternative to linked adapter mode, as demonstrated in AoS, it has less sharing restrictions (even across GPUs with the same architecture), though the sharing of the resource could be less efficient compared to linked adapter mode (especially on current NVIDIA GPUs). It also allow to use GPUs of different architectures and vendors (like an iGPU + dGPU, which is a very common scenario).

 

Are you not aware that there are laptops out there with touch screens? Are you not aware there are x86-based Windows tablets (for example - Microsoft's Surface Pro)?

Again - there is more to the Vulkan market than just Windows 7 and 10. Kind of the benefit of Vulkan is the fact that it doesn't depend on WDDM (otherwise, how else does it work on other systems?).

It seems your main issue is you keep thinking Vulkan is supposed to behave like DirectX, and it's not. DirectX is an entire collection of libraries, which includes input, sound, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, and so on, all of which are heavily integrated with Windows. Vulkan is strictly a graphics library and is not required to comply with Windows standards. It has little to no integration with any OS (hence it's portability) and it's general functionality is primarily dependent upon GPU drivers. The Vulkan library itself is actually pretty small - roughly 1MB. Most of Vulkan's bulk is in the GPU drivers. The DirectX runtime is much larger. But again, it's not just a graphics library, and, DirectX does a lot of the dirty work instead of the GPU drivers.

 

Dude... too much text, I am gonna just say two things:

- Intel official drivers do not support Vulkan on haswell nor broadwell. Mesa drivers are different thing.
- I know what DirectX is better then you, and I was play around with Direct3D 12 in the closed preview since first IHVs private alpha drivers (I participated in the DX12 EAP).

Sorry but I am tired to explain things. I will let people believe whatever they want, even.

Bye.

 

Intel officially supports and is the primary developer of their Mesa drivers.

I'm hardly disagreeing with your facts about DirectX. What I disagree with is how you think it's better. You have made it apparent that you aren't very fluent in how Vulkan works, nor do you understand that the things you think are worse about it are intentional. Portability comes at a price.

 

Direct3D 12 is not better then Vulkan. As I said, they can do the same things more or less (again, much differences are tied to extensions, which you can love or hate, but they are still better then OGL extension too so..).
What is better on DirectX is the development environment, full-stop.
Mesa driver will never run on Windows. Windows is the biggest market on gaming PC, while Linux is quite irrelevant.
It would be interesting to see how much gamers systems you are able to target on Vulkan (which includes W7 and W8.1) without Intel Gen 7.5 and Gen 8 graphics... I bet is pretty similar to the entire D3D12 market in numbers.
Unfortunately Apple (second PC gaming market) also does not allow 3rd party drivers on it's platform. Again, it's not Vulkan fault, is the development environment.