ESO switching to Vulkan

ssorgatem

With the upcoming switch on OSX from OpenGL to Vulkan (over Metal, through MoltenVK)... I hope the Windows client also moves from D3D11 to Vulkan.
The PS4 client could probably also benefit from it!

It would be certainly helpful for those of us playing on Linux, too :P

What do you think? Will we ever see ESO on Vulkan for Windows?

majulook

Probably not.

max_only

I saw that, I don’t know what it is though... but I have the exact Mac they listed as a minimum requirement. I was going to get a new Mac but the cards are AMD, and this game had a problem with AMD cards a year or so ago. If the next iMac version is nvidia then that’s what I’ll wait for.

ssorgatem

max_only wrote: »

I saw that, I don’t know what it is though... but I have the exact Mac they listed as a minimum requirement. I was going to get a new Mac but the cards are AMD, and this game had a problem with AMD cards a year or so ago. If the next iMac version is nvidia then that’s what I’ll wait for.

A problem with AMD cards...?
Maybe it was specific to Apple's horrible OpenGL implementation. But ESO is dropping the OpenGL backend in favour of Vulkan.

Smasherx74

ssorgatem wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

I saw that, I don’t know what it is though... but I have the exact Mac they listed as a minimum requirement. I was going to get a new Mac but the cards are AMD, and this game had a problem with AMD cards a year or so ago. If the next iMac version is nvidia then that’s what I’ll wait for.

A problem with AMD cards...?
Maybe it was specific to Apple's horrible OpenGL implementation. But ESO is dropping the OpenGL backend in favour of Vulkan.

AMD cards have poor OpenGL performance, Apple doesn't manufacture AMD architecture and drivers last I checked.

I'm not aware of any significant performance differences for AMD vs Nivida users on ESO, but some games or emulators that run on OpenGL tend to yield lower performance on AMD cards compared to Nivida. Wouldn't be surprised if us AMD users see decreased load times or less stutters once ESO goes Vulkan.

ssorgatem

Smasherx74 wrote: »

ssorgatem wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

I saw that, I don’t know what it is though... but I have the exact Mac they listed as a minimum requirement. I was going to get a new Mac but the cards are AMD, and this game had a problem with AMD cards a year or so ago. If the next iMac version is nvidia then that’s what I’ll wait for.

A problem with AMD cards...?
Maybe it was specific to Apple's horrible OpenGL implementation. But ESO is dropping the OpenGL backend in favour of Vulkan.

AMD cards have poor OpenGL performance, Apple doesn't manufacture AMD architecture and drivers last I checked.

I'm not aware of any significant performance differences for AMD vs Nivida users on ESO, but some games or emulators that run on OpenGL tend to yield lower performance on AMD cards compared to Nivida. Wouldn't be surprised if us AMD users see decreased load times or less stutters once ESO goes Vulkan.

AMD cards have wonderful OpenGL performance... on par with NVIDIA... on other OSes.
Note that OpenGL on Windows tends to be rather bad too (it's a second class citizen there, after all...)

Apple does make its OpenGL implementation, which is why it sucks and also why they are removing it from their next OSX version.
If it were up to hardware manufacturers, OpenGL wouldn't be removed from OSX, sinc ethe hardware is still capable of running it.

But yes, Vulkan is so much etter than OpenGL or DirectX11 in so many ways, that performance improvements are almost guaranteed.
That's why I hope for the Vulkan renderer to be included for the Windows build too...

Smasherx74

ssorgatem wrote: »

AMD cards have wonderful OpenGL performance... on par with NVIDIA.

Going to stop you there. There is a significant performance difference with current AMD and Nvidia, you can just google it and you'll find dozens of threads on various forums and reddit explaining and questioning why this is. What this ultimately boils down to is the knowledge and investment in how efficiently AMD/Nvidia utilize openGL. Nvidia had and still does have much more of an investment in gaming and professional applications utilizing OpenGL. It is only relatively recently that the norm is shifting away from OpenGL, and this is what AMD had been expecting to happen all along hence why they never tried to compete with Nvidia on OpenGL support or efficiency. They both have different approaches to how they utilize openGL, and to retract what I said previously this has almost nothing to do with physical architecture and is primarily due to the drivers. There are plenty of other more technical reasons why AMD chose to focus on more important things than bothering with trying to compete with Nvidia's method of utilizing the openGL environment.

If you don't believe me for whatever reason then by all means just google it. The most blatant example of this is how some games or emulators have performed on various hardware with different APIs. For example, CEMU running on identically performing hardware will have anywhere from a 60-120fps difference just because of how poorly AMD drivers work in an OpenGL environment. Sure there are plenty of minor performance boosts that can be done, but the simple fact of the matter is AMD just doesn't perform as well as Nvidia with openGL. This same issue has plagued various games, and especially emulators, and based on this knowledge It's safe to assume that with ESO moving to vulkan we can expect to see some significant performance increases for AMD users.


Edit: Also your original posts, I misread it and thought ESO was shifting from OpenGL or DirectX to Vulkan. Didn't realize you were talking primarily about the OS, in which case you can ignore my posts. I'm specifically talking about AMD drivers versus Nvidia drivers, I'm sure the issues with AMD carry over to OSX as well though. If you're running AMD GPU hardware then basically you can expect performance increases with Vulkan over OpenGL in relation to Nvidia's performance at the same specs.

ssorgatem

Maybe those emulators are optimized for NVIDIA hardware.
Or maybe it's a Windows-specific problem with OpenGL.

On Linux they are on-par: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-amd-20180828&num=3

Which means it must be a software issue, not a hardware issue.

Smasherx74

ssorgatem wrote: »

Maybe those emulators are optimized for NVIDIA hardware.
Or maybe it's a Windows-specific problem with OpenGL.

On Linux they are on-par: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-amd-20180828&num=3

Which means it must be a software issue, not a hardware issue.

It is a software issue as I said above, I clarified this was not specifically an architecture problem. This is in fact a driver problem, and no it's not because the emulators were designed for different hardware, or that windows has issues with OpenGL. AMD drivers perform poorly relative to Nvidia drivers in an openGL environment. You can have the exact same specs but have different GPUs that perform similarly, and there will be a significant performance difference when inside a intensive openGL environment.

Like I said before, just research this yourself if you don't believe me or feel the need to argue with me. I'm sure for a lackluster applications using openGL that don't have much demand, you wont see much of a difference from AMD and Nvidia. But in gaming specifically there is a big difference. AMD drivers are not specifically designed to optimally utilize the opengl workspace, Nvidia drivers are, they have a much larger investment in these things, which is why AMD never "fixed their drivers" because it's not worth trying to compete with nvidia and overtime opengl will be phased out in most games and applications.

Also that link you posted doesn't state anything about OpenGL, it's irrelevant to this conversation as it's just comparing hardware performance in different games. What I'm talking about here is the different methods each companies' drivers use to do stuff with different APIs. As I said many times before, AMD has poor usage of OpenGL compared to Nvidia, this difference is extremely significant in high workload areas such as gaming.

Now as for the emulators, it's the same issue with the games. You don't seem to understand the problem we're talking about here isn't something that can be optimized to the point of identical performance on the same API, as that'd required intense and in depth knowledge of how the drivers are designed and their own drivers for hardware just for a certain application, it's not feasible. What we're talking about here is the backend API, essentially how the software or game is rendered. When you use a OpenGL backend on AMD software(which means you're using AMD hardware) you're going to experience significantly slower rendering than with Nvidia, this isn't a debate it's a fact. That link you posted, notice those games were rendered using Vulkan, if they were done with openGL instead you would see a difference in performance despite physical specs. What emulators like CEMU or PSX do to "optimize for Nvidia/AMD hardware" is mostly minuscule outside of their backend support.

Here is a video explaining exactly what I've said in the past two posts
https://youtu.be/yutM-OkzAB0?t=449

ssorgatem

The link I posted had mostly OpenGL benchmarks, not just Vulkan.

Kadoin

Older Open GL implementations should have been fixed on AMD in March - May 2018 driver updates.

SpiderCultist

awesome!

because I've tested DXVK with this game on Win10 and the performance is still a bit subpar compared to DirectX
it'll be great having Vulkan for ESO

Smasherx74

Kadoin wrote: »

Older Open GL implementations should have been fixed on AMD in March - May 2018 driver updates.

It's not something that's just fixable, hence why even now AMD drivers perform poorly compared to Nvidia. Watch the video it sums everything up much better. Essentially AMD doesn't have the interest or reason to dwell into optimizing their openGL usage, let alone compete with Nvidia on that front. Bottom line, AMD is never going to invest the money into "fixing" or optimizing their openGL usage.

ssorgatem wrote: »

The link I posted had mostly OpenGL benchmarks, not just Vulkan.

No, it didn't. Just checked again, I see literally no mention of openGL anywhere. I think I'm done with this conversation since you appear not to be willing to accept information given to you. Just go ahead and play any game or emulator that allows you to change the backend api, go buy a Nvidia/AMD gpu and test both of them in that game. You will see a performance difference even with identically spec'd hardware.