Dota 2 Vulkan vs. OpenGL Performance Redux

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 26 May 2016 at 02:10 PM EDT. Page 4 of 4. 44 Comments.

Lastly are the 4K numbers.

Dota 2 at 4K is where all of the GPUs except for the TITAN X and GTX 980 Ti had drops in their overall FPS under OpenGL.

At 4K is where the Vulkan performance with Dota 2 right now was slower or the same as with OpenGL. The high-end NVIDIA cards were slower with Vulkan than OpenGL, the R9 Fury / R9 290 saw only slight improvements in frame-rate, and the low-end R7 260X was running at the same speed between these two renderers for Dota 2 on Linux.

At 4K, the CPU usage of Dota 2 remained noticeably lower with the Vulkan renderer compared to using OpenGL.

Those are the latest numbers to share from the past two days of benchmarking. At the lower resolutions where Dota 2 was more CPU bound, the Source 2 Vulkan renderer allowed for around 16~18% better frame-rates than OpenGL with the same in-game settings. Thanks again to the folks at Valve for some fresh guidance on Source 2 / Vulkan benchmarking improvements. If you appreciate all of the Linux hardware benchmarks I do at Phoronix on a daily basis, consider returning the favor by becoming a Phoronix Premium member to help support my future testing efforts.

If you enjoyed this article consider joining Phoronix Premium to view this site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. PayPal or Stripe tips are also graciously accepted. Thanks for your support.

Related Articles
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.