There's Finally A Decent Vulkan Ray-Tracing Benchmark

[bridgman]

Just had a nagging thought - the Vulkan ray tracing extension may have only been provisional at Navi21 launch. It appears that we might have enabled RT support after the extension was ratified, and then re-spun the 20.45 driver package for Windows but not for Linux. Checking now.

OK, looks like the 20.45 release does not include the RT extensions since it came out a week before the spec was ratified, but the upcoming 20.50 release should include the RT extensions. Sorry for the noise.

[blacknova]

Ok, so I learned one thing about the benchmarks. Only the lights move. Neat.
Not much to screenshot there, I guess.

So, they simplified it as much as possible -> no BVH updates and I'd guess that is most expensive operation.

[bug77]

The OpenBenchmarking.org screenshots I took, but the scenes are static so basically appear the same...

Ok, so I learned one thing about the benchmarks. Only the lights move. Neat.
Not much to screenshot there, I guess.

[Michael]

Yeah, copied from the github page. I've seen them, but I still don't know which is which.

Funny thing, when I saw it work with Nvidia cards I started looking about installing it. Then I realized I'm still on Pascal

The OpenBenchmarking.org screenshots I took, but the scenes are static so basically appear the same...

[bug77]

Go to the linked OpenBenchmarking.org page... There are screenshots of each test.

Yeah, copied from the github page. I've seen them, but I still don't know which is which.

Funny thing, when I saw it work with Nvidia cards I started looking about installing it. Then I realized I'm still on Pascal

[Michael]

This being a new benchmark and everything, it would have been nice if you included a representative screenshot of each benchmark.

@M@GOid Check the github page. It says the benchmark was developed for Nvidia initially, but was converted to plain Vulkan as extensions got approved/standardized.

Go to the linked OpenBenchmarking.org page... There are screenshots of each test.

[bug77]

This being a new benchmark and everything, it would have been nice if you included a representative screenshot of each benchmark.

@M@GOid Check the github page. It says the benchmark was developed for Nvidia initially, but was converted to plain Vulkan as extensions got approved/standardized.

[bridgman]

Intel is working on supporting it: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/3709

Will AMD add support after?

I checked with our Vulkan team and they confirmed that we do support ray tracing in the closed source Vulkan driver for both Linux and Windows.

Just had a nagging thought - the Vulkan ray tracing extension may have only been provisional at Navi21 launch. It appears that we might have enabled RT support after the extension was ratified, and then re-spun the 20.45 driver package for Windows but not for Linux. Checking now.

EDIT - I'm now getting conflicting answers about RT support in the Linux driver - hold on until we get consensus.

[Laughing1]

I think the RT for Vulkan support has only been released on Windows yet.

Intel is working on supporting it: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/3709

Will AMD add support after?

[BNieuwenhuizen]

I'll check, but I thought our closed-source Vulkan driver included ray tracing support.

I think the RT for Vulkan support has only been released on Windows yet.