Doom Vulkan Patch Released
by Ryan Smith on July 11, 2016 10:30 AM EST
Bethesda PR has sent over a quick note this morning that the long-awaited Vulkan patch for Doom is now available, allowing the game to be played with either the OpenGL or Vulkan rendering backends. With this release – and although the distinction is somewhat arbitrary – Doom has become the first performance-intensive game released to use Khronos’s new low-level API, and arguably the first game where the rendering path is being implemented for performance reasons rather than proof-of-concept reasons (as was the case with The Talos Principle).
Notably, id is not calling this a beta release, and the Vulkan rendering path is otherwise not hidden. In a full announcement from id’s Robert Duffy, id notes that via the Vulkan rendering path “we also anticipate some older GPUs will now be able to play the game at good framerates.” Though at the same time it should be mentioned that when it comes to older cards, id is specifically recommending against using Vulkan under Windows 7 with 2GB NVIDIA cards, which rules out some early Kepler cards.
The full FAQ for the patch release can be found over on Bethesda’s forums. Meanwhile the patch itself will be distributed as a Steam update, and gamers will want to be sure to grab the latest AMD or NVIDIA drivers for use with the game.
Source: Bethesda
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just4U - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Well.. I don't think this would bother a lot of people provided it was not hinted at that certain full reviews would be out soon... Can't say your going to do it and than not follow thru. If time is a issue with Ryan, he may need pass on some of the video reviews to others.I'm not worried about it one way or another. They will sort it out.. and the previews were nice.
just4U - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
All that being said, it's also possible that there are some backend politics going on.. Many theorize the workings between popular sites and the hardware they review.. so you never know.. could even have to do with some issues they have with their samples and getting them in a timely fashionDevo2007 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Well, if the full RX 480 review isn't posted by the end of this week, then I'll give up.The initial preview mentioned the full review would be posted by the end of that week (which would be July 2nd). Last Thursday after the driver was released to fix the power issue, he said the full review will be posted this week.
We'll see........
pencea - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Ryan promise in the GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and 480x previews he'll follow up with the reviews days after the cards were launch. He also said several times in the comments section that they are coming, but gave us no timeline when exactly. For a site like this, it's simply unacceptable. In the past when Anand was still working on this site. Reviews came out on time like they're suppose too.Since Ryan took over, it's been getting more and more late each time. He didn't even do a review for the GTX 960.
Meteor2 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
I'd actually forgotten that AT had promised reviews. I'm pretty content that the 'previews' will be it. Any in-depth reviews will just be curiosities by the time they're published.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
I don't think the lack of GPU reviews are really that meaningful. Sure, AT is pretty slow about posting reviews, but let's be honest with ourselves about the need for those reviews. Halo products like add-in graphics cards for desktop PCs in a world filled with mobile devices like phones, tablets, and laptops (where laptops are mostly equipped with just an iGPU) are pretty unimportant. Only a small number of people are going to buy a dedicated GPU. Among those that do, even fewer are going to bother picking up something that costs more than $200 and even that's stretching things. If AT wants to appeal to a larger demographic, putting priority on top end graphics cards isn't the way to do that. Instead, it should continue to focus on mobile and review integrated graphics as new CPUs are released rather than investing time in older form factors that aren't as relevant to the technology landscape in which we live today.maximumGPU - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
small number of people buying top end gpus does not mean they're the only ones interested in a review. Even those who only buy at the 200$ mark still want to read about the halo products.How many would buy the 1M+ LaFerrari supercar? yet every car magazine plastered it on their cover when their issue had a review.. readers want that.
xemorc - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I have it hung up with vulkan enabled just by the intro... Dunno now how to it work since I can't even reach the settings. Got 1070.Samus - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Update drivers, had same problem with my GTX970.xemorc - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I have the latest drivers... Going to try to verify the integrity by steam, hope this might help.