Intel Boosts Gen7 GPU Vulkan Compute Performance By ~330% For Geekbench

[programmerjake]

Is it possible to use both Discrete gpu and Intel integrated one in a Vulkan game?

Yes, if the game is written to use multiple GPUs. Most games aren't.

[TemplarGR]

Amazi-

....and then, another set of vulnerabilities will be found and the improvement is nullified by the mitigations. :<

While i doubt that it will happen in this particular case, this made my day. LOL.

[FireBurn]

Is it possible to use both Discrete gpu and Intel integrated one in a Vulkan game?

Not yet, though it should be possible

[TemplarGR]

Is it possible to use both Discrete gpu and Intel integrated one in a Vulkan game?

Theoretically, yes.

The sad reality of modern gpu and api architectures is that Intel and Nvidia held monopoly power of cpu and gpu markets respectively for far too long. Since Intel gpus and Nvidia cpus were either nonexistent or occasionally garbage, graphic engines and APIs stagnated for decades and things didn't move in the way of Fusion like AMD wanted.

The thing is, it has been a decade since Async compute was a thing.... Async compute is extremely important, because it allows the usage of shaders in very groundbreakingly creative ways. For example, using shaders on the cpu's igpu to handle physics or raytracing.... Without the async capability the latency would be catastrophic.

Still, now that AMD holds a firm grip on the console market and Intel finally wants to do something better with their gpu parts, we might see that vision come to fruition, eventually. We have been on D3D11/OpenGL4 (2009) level of graphics for far too long, far longer than we wasted on D3D9.... And it is stupidly retarded to waste the additional capabilities/possibilities of Vulkan just to lower overhead a little, while we could do much more.

So i believe in a few years combining the usage of both integrated and dgpus will be the norm.

[Brainiarc7]

Phoronix: Intel Boosts Gen7 GPU Vulkan Compute Performance By ~330% For Geekbench

Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver for Linux doesn't see much attention for pre-Broadwell hardware but today it saw a big improvement for Vulkan compute on aging Gen7 Ivybridge/Haswell era hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...te-Cache-Boost

Talking of potential performance improvements in Vulkan compute, there is one area that stands to gain the most: Vulkan-based video encoding (once Khronos finalizes the spec) and libav-based Vulkan filters, so these Intel GPUs will still be relevant for such features for a long time to come.

This is a welcome bump to performance.

[SilverBird775]

Amazi-

....and then, another set of vulnerabilities will be found and the improvement is nullified by the mitigations. :<

Since it was discovered while revisiting the Gen7 & Gen7.5 caching code on mitigation research (CVE-2019-14615) in the hope to mask or somehow offset the perfomance hit by mitigation then your guess could be most accurate.

Keep your expectations low guys. (Cant wait to benchmark though ).

[chocolate]

Too bad Gen7 and Gen7.5 have an incomplete/broken Vulkan implementation that is not compatible with DXVK anymore. So many older games could work via Steam Play/Proton on an Iris Pro 5200 (e.g. Core i7-4750HQ) or even an HD4600, but now either won't start or will glitch badly. To my understanding, Ivybridge and Haswell lack hardware features, but the driver could be hacked with workarounds. It would be awesome if it could be brought up to par with DXVK's Vulkan 1.1 requirements.

Yes, there's still WineD3D, but now Proton defaults to DXVK and I suspect increasingly more games will become official Steam Play titles while not being tested with WineD3D anymore. Plus, we know now, thanks to the Gen8+ Iris driver and past Phoronix benchmarks against Windows, that i965 does not deliver optimal performance.

This puts cult ThinkPads up to the T440p under a different light, as well as other decent used/refurbished laptops from the same era. It also remains to be seen if final and complete software mitigations for architectural bugs in the iGPU will not incur a significant performance penalty, which might truly be the last nail in the coffin for those systems.

[Dark-Show]

Too bad Gen7 and Gen7.5 have an incomplete/broken Vulkan implementation that is not compatible with DXVK anymore. So many older games could work via Steam Play/Proton on an Iris Pro 5200 (e.g. Core i7-4750HQ) or even an HD4600, but now either won't start or will glitch badly. To my understanding, Ivybridge and Haswell lack hardware features, but the driver could be hacked with workarounds. It would be awesome if it could be brought up to par with DXVK's Vulkan 1.1 requirements.

Yes, there's still WineD3D, but now Proton defaults to DXVK and I suspect increasingly more games will become official Steam Play titles while not being tested with WineD3D anymore. Plus, we know now, thanks to the Gen8+ Iris driver and past Phoronix benchmarks against Windows, that i965 does not deliver optimal performance.

This puts cult ThinkPads up to the T440p under a different light, as well as other decent used/refurbished laptops from the same era. It also remains to be seen if final and complete software mitigations for architectural bugs in the iGPU will not incur a significant performance penalty, which might truly be the last nail in the coffin for those systems.

I had this same issue under Ubuntu (I couldn't get a single game to get past a black screen) and recently switched to Debian (Sid) on my i5-3437U laptop and can actually run DXVK abeit I get much better fps with WineD3D even with working Vulkan, so i understand adding command-line configs for every game you want to play on steam. (Heres hoping this patch fixes that fps!)

[SilverBird775]

Too bad Gen7 and Gen7.5 have an incomplete/broken Vulkan implementation that is not compatible with DXVK anymore.

It had to be expected any moment. The compatibility with DXVK was always a mixed success story unfortunately and performance was never great. Speaking of performance. Lately even for vulkan native titles like dota2 I can see the vulkan performance regressions with OpenGL performance being superior. It was the other way about year ago and overall the vulkan felt leanier and more snappy. Now it is heavy and stuttering even in most basic 2d animation.

So i'm cautiously optimistic about 330% figures, to me it is more like gaining back the losses. With a best of luck the dota2 vulkan perfomance will get back on par with OpenGL or slightly surpass it again.