Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

AMDVLK 2019.Q3.6 Vulkan Driver Brings New Extensions & Performance Tuning

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • AMDVLK 2019.Q3.6 Vulkan Driver Brings New Extensions & Performance Tuning

    Phoronix: AMDVLK 2019.Q3.6 Vulkan Driver Brings New Extensions & Performance Tuning

    AMD's AMDVLK open-source Vulkan Linux driver recently fell off its weekly release wagon with the last release being nearly one month ago. But today they finally tagged their next milestone and given the time that's lapsed there are a number of new features and improvements...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I'm a longtime Phoronix reader but I've created an account because I found out something about AMDVLK that nobody seems to talk about. The thing is that since one of the latest versions, all games started to look a lot better on AMDVLK compared to RADV, both native Vulkan and on DXVK/D9VK. First I thought it's my imagination, but after checking some games with both drivers, I would say the difference is pretty big. On AMDVLK textures look sharper and the colors are more vivid. On RADV everything looks more washed out. I would say that on AMDVLK games look even better than on Windows while on RADV they look worse. I mean it's so weird that I have a theory that Radeon Image Sharpening is integrated in AMDVLK because everything looks so good on it. So far AMDVLK has two downsides: The shader compilation performance in DXVK/D9VK games seems to be a bit slower even compared to RADV with LLVM so these games stutter a lot in the beginning and it has a bug that vsync doesn't work if your framerate is below your monitor refresh rate (i'll see if this is fixed in Q3.6). Now I'm in a dilemma because RADV now has the ACO compiler with the superior compilation performance and AMDVLK with the superior visuals. Has anyone else noticed that games look better on AMDVLK?

    Comment


    • #3
      You're just lying to yourself. Things should look *exactly* the same -- the Vulkan specification exists for this reason.

      Comment


      • #4
        Well, I'm not a developer, but I don't think it's something unusual that there is a difference in how games look on different drivers. For example, someone compared how games look on Nvidia and AMD cards, and there were some differences.

        Comment


        • #5
          Don't know now. But I have tried GTA V in Proton and used RADV and AMDVLK. RADV was awesome, but AMDVLK drew really awfull sparkles all around and messed the colors in some cases. Performance was also better using RADV. This was April/May. Just chose RADV and never again tried AMDVLK.

          Comment


          • #6
            290x user here. AMDVLK seemed to have better performance for me in quake champions, but it is awfully slower in shader compilation compared to RADV. Can't say I noticed quality differences between the two for the brief time I used AMDVLK though.
            Last edited by funforums; 24 September 2019, 05:33 PM.

            Comment


            • #7
              When it works correctly, it should look the same. The trouble is, AMDVLK is not appropriate for all games, native or with DXVK back end.

              Right now, I have two where AMDVLK actually works better than RADV. Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

              Honourable mention: Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Performance is better (perfect) with maxed out graphics settings using AMDVLK, but it takes spells where everything turns black and I have to save and quit right out of the game to fix it. Also, pipeline stalls in a few places with AMDVLK.

              It works correctly with Witcher 3, but I get better performance with RADV at the back end.

              I am also using D9VK and the lib32 AMDVLK with Fallout 3 and I get better performance, but bodies of water don't render correctly (invisible water once you get up close)

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by user1 View Post
                Has anyone else noticed that games look better on AMDVLK?
                It shouldn't be too difficult for someone to run a benchmark and take screenshots of a particular frame under both drivers. Then you can compare them pixel by pixel to see if there's any difference.

                I doubt there is any, but it's not impossible that there's some kind of bug going on causing colors to be washed out or something. But it's pretty unlikely any special image sharpening or anything is going on, without anyone knowing about it.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by user1 View Post
                  I'm a longtime Phoronix reader but I've created an account because I found out something about AMDVLK that nobody seems to talk about. The thing is that since one of the latest versions, all games started to look a lot better on AMDVLK compared to RADV, both native Vulkan and on DXVK/D9VK. First I thought it's my imagination, but after checking some games with both drivers, I would say the difference is pretty big. On AMDVLK textures look sharper and the colors are more vivid. On RADV everything looks more washed out. I would say that on AMDVLK games look even better than on Windows while on RADV they look worse. I mean it's so weird that I have a theory that Radeon Image Sharpening is integrated in AMDVLK because everything looks so good on it. So far AMDVLK has two downsides: The shader compilation performance in DXVK/D9VK games seems to be a bit slower even compared to RADV with LLVM so these games stutter a lot in the beginning and it has a bug that vsync doesn't work if your framerate is below your monitor refresh rate (i'll see if this is fixed in Q3.6). Now I'm in a dilemma because RADV now has the ACO compiler with the superior compilation performance and AMDVLK with the superior visuals. Has anyone else noticed that games look better on AMDVLK?
                  You know, maybe it could be that AMDVLK is defaulting to full colorspace while RADV is utilising limited colorspace.
                  Could You please double-check?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I don't think RADV is utilising limited colorspace because the main difference is that everything looks sharper on AMDVLK so the colors look a bit better as a result. I was thinking maybe it has something to do with how RADV handles Anisotropic Filtering?

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X