Vulkan support is coming to DOTA 2

Vel0city

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Dec 6, 2014
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https://np.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4jzsir/dota_2_update_main_client_may_18_2016/

From Fletcher @ Valve

We're going to release vulkan support soon, probably sometime next week. That DLC checkbox is an error and shouldn't be visible yet. Sorry for the confusion.

For those of you who don't know what Vulkan is: it's sort of similar to DirectX 12 with the main emphasis lying on drastically reduced CPU overhead and more direct coding to the GPU for dat increased performance. One advantage Vulkan already has is that it supports way more platforms than DX12 with Windows 7 and up and Linux (sadly no OS X yet) whereas DX12 only supports Windows 10. Valve is very active in Vulkan's development, and they've said Source 2 would get Vulkan support as soon as Vulkan's out. Now that Vulkan's released Source 2 gets the API option probably some time next week, assuming Valve time does not apply here.
 

Pocket

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Neat. My last graphics driver update added some Vulkan junk that doesn't do anything to my Start menu, so I presume that means my system is ready for this thing.
 

Vel0city

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Neat. My last graphics driver update added some Vulkan junk that doesn't do anything to my Start menu, so I presume that means my system is ready for this thing.
Vulkan supports any AMD GCN 1.0+ cards (HD7000 series and up) and nVidia Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal (GeForce 600 series and up). So if you have one of those cards and the latest driver, you're good.
 

Pocket

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Hilariously, AMD's Vulkan support for Linux is going to be limited to only the very latest cards, which doesn't include mine. Never mind that improving the Linux gaming experience is literally the whole point of Vulkan and that AMD and Valve are the two biggest players in its development. I'm gonna laugh if it turns out this leaves some of the official Steam Machines out of the loop as well.
 

Vel0city

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Dec 6, 2014
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Hilariously, AMD's Vulkan support for Linux is going to be limited to only the very latest cards, which doesn't include mine. Never mind that improving the Linux gaming experience is literally the whole point of Vulkan and that AMD and Valve are the two biggest players in its development. I'm gonna laugh if it turns out this leaves some of the official Steam Machines out of the loop as well.
Afaik most of them (including Valve's own prototypes they shipped) had nVidia cards anyway.


Anyway, I've seen some first benchmarks of Dota 2 at 4K res comparing OpenGL vs Vulkan, and it's not looking very good voor Vulkan.

zy1KLoy.jpg

k9HOQA7.jpg

Then again, there's lots of optimization on both the API part itself and GPU drivers to be done as it's a new API, so it's bound to get better.
 
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