RADV vs. AMDVLK Vulkan Drivers Continue Stiff Performance Battle

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 18 April 2018 at 09:30 AM EDT. Page 4 of 4. 46 Comments.
AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison
AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison
AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison
AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison

While is the trend now, when running this game at 4K the performance between RADV and AMDVLK was about the same to the official AMD Vulkan driver leading by a few frames in some of the scenes.

AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison
AMDVLK RADV Vulkan Radeon Comparison

Serious Sam 3 BFE was much faster on RADV at 1080p while tightened up at 4K.

From these Vulkan Linux gaming tests today, the RADV driver overall remains faster than the official AMDVLK driver most commonly when running at 4K and in other more CPU bound scenarios. However, at 4K and in the more GPU-demanding environments is where RADV does tend to perform about the same as AMDVLK or sometimes better, particularly with the newer Vega GPU. RADV though does have the benefit of working with F1 2017 where as AMDVLK has regressed. Overall, for most gamers, using RADV remains the best choice when it comes to Radeon Vulkan support.

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.