ID Software has released a major patch for this past May’s DOOM which enables support for the Vulkan graphics API. To the casual observer, this may be unexciting news as games typically support a number of graphic options ranging from DirectX 12, Open GL to Open CL. Vulkan isn’t just a new alternative for developers but may also provide large benefits for players on older hardware.
Vulkan will allow players on newer graphics cards, like the Radeon 480 and Geforce 1070 to experiences higher frame-rates than those available through pre-existing rendering options. Over on the Bethesda Blog ID Software’s Robert Duffy wrote that the Vulkin technology is a cutting edge API that will bring high frame-rates that will improve the feel of movement within DOOM.
Here is the specific quote about the improvements on older hardware:
We also anticipate some older GPUs will now be able to play the game at good framerates. We hope the range of GPU support widens with additional game and driver updates.
Bethesda & iD Software have been working with both AMD and Nvidia to provide new drivers that will optimize performance for Vulkan. According to Robert Duffy the devs have been working with the major graphics card manufacturers since this past March to make this latest update a reality.
In part he wrote:
Since late March 2016 we started working daily with both AMD and NVIDIA. Both have been great partner companies, helping bring full DOOM and Vulkan driver support live to the community. There was a lot of work on all fronts but we are pleased with the results.
Over on Neogaf users have reported increases ranging from 10 – 25 frames per second depending on the particular graphics card and processor configuration. Others have reported that the game is maintaining 60 FPS a lot longer when using Vulkan than it was prior using other rendering technologies prior to the update.
The below graph shows some of the users results:
You can snag the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers at these respective links.