Which emulators benefit from Vulkan (x86)?

Panja · 12 Jun 2019, 07:27

Which emulators benefit, run better with Vulkan drivers?
At the moment I don't have Vulkan installed on my Ubuntu 18.04.2 x86 machine but are there any advantages if I do install Vulkan? Which emulators are happy with Vulkan?

Hardware:
Intel NUC7
i5 7260U / 8GB ram / Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640

Efriim · 12 Jun 2019, 13:16

@Panja
I might have used it on my phone once, but I don't know how it compares. The driver I mentioned earlier, I really don't know if the emulators make calls to it or if the emulators use their own version compiled and built in, I don't know much about how the linux device hardware system interfaces.

Dolphin(Gamecube & Wii)
lr-BeetlePSX
PPSSPP (PSP)
lr-parallel64 - fork of mupen64plus

Panja · 12 Jun 2019, 13:22

@Efriim

Thanks again mate!

Parabolaralus · 12 Jun 2019, 18:49

@Panja

Vulkan on Dolphin standalone isnt straightforward and i believe you mentioned using this emu in a past thread.
You need to go into home/.dolphin-emu/Config/Config.ini and search for (near the bottom) GFXBackend which will be blank like:
GFXBackend =
Fill out
GFXBackend = Vulkan

To switch back either replace Vulkan with OpenGL, or leave it blank as it was before. I noticed a pretty ok performance difference in FZero GX, but im also running in 4k internal.

lr-beetle-psx, bsnes and i believe lr-mupen64plus supports vulkan as well though i dont think youll see much of a difference. Note that if you switch to the vulkan driver that you must use GLSL shaders with that core instead of the standard as they do not work.

pcsx2-unstable (1.5.0) does not seem to support vulkan at this time nor does the version in the setup script 1.4.0.

Panja · 6 Dec 2019, 20:48

@Parabolaralus

Many thanks! Useful info as well.

I do use Dolphin indeed.
Backend is blank in Dolphin-GUI if I recall correctly.
Blank is OpenGL, is that correct?

Parabolaralus · 12 Jun 2019, 20:01

@Panja Thats correct! I dont know why that is greyed out by default when the feature is there, but at least you can still enable it anyhow.

Panja · 13 Jun 2019, 00:31

@Parabolaralus

Cheers mate!
Gonna have a look.

barbudreadmon · 13 Jun 2019, 08:28

@Efriim said in Which emulators benefit from Vulkan (x86)?:

lr-Kronos(Sega Saturn) - In development

The author showed interest in it and bought a book for this purpose, but development hasn't started yet. That's why i said in https://www.libretro.com/index.php/kronos-1-7-0-new-renderer/ that it was added on the roadmap but to not ask for an ETA, at the very least don't expect anything this year.