17 R5, Vulkan API very slow

Question

Hello I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed and am having good FPS with DX11/12. However when I use Vulkan in any game I’ve tested the FPS drops from 70-100 down to 10-15. When it happens the Gpu usage also seems to be very low. I have also tried the old dell drivers on the product page but have the same behavior. Hoping to have some tips pin what to try. Vulkan is a great API

BionicAgent · Accepted Answer

So an interesting find... I was reading on the Nvidia driver forums and found this: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/386100/massive-fps-problems-with-nvidia-drivers-above-ver/ I have tried many different driver versions (including the latest Dell one) and none worked. However when I installed (with clean option) 442.74 and re-tested my Vulkan games it worked. Kind of concerns me though that I may need to stick with an outdated driver. However it is working now.

A51-06 · Answer

Hello There,

Hope your days good.

I see that you're having low FPS on the Vulkan API while DirectX has much better preformance.

Have you tried DDU and cleared the Driver for the GPU entirely and then reinstalled the latest one and the Game Ready Driver? Also, is that game natively run on Vulkan or is Fully Compatible?

BionicAgent · Answer

I did try the latest version of DDU (in safe mode) and the latest game ready driver but no change in performance. The game I am using for my test is Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Just to make sure it wasn't just that game I tested Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 which also exhibited extremely low fps.

I have latest BIOS for my Alienware and up to date windows updates/drivers.

Not sure if it is important or not but my gaming set up is hooked up via HDMI as Laptop->Sony Soundbar->Phillips 4k TV.

Also in my GPU never goes over 61C so it seems to be functioning with normal heat ranges and during Vulkan benchmarks (and gameplay) doesn't seem to utilize the GPU much.

A51-06 · Answer

Well then you may have an outdated driver but at least you get the performance you wanted.

A51-06 · Answer

Do those games have a DirectX mode so that it can run?

BionicAgent · Answer

Well I do have bad news to share... So the earlier driver did give the Vulkan performance back however when I tried to play many of my games they did not start due to having an old driver. Many games are blocking startup due to too old of an Nvidia driver. So unfortunately won't be able to use Vulkan API in games until Nvidia fixes their drivers. Just wanted to share so someone doesn't go through the trouble I went through to install/uninstall old drivers just to find out that their will be other compatibility issues.

BionicAgent · Answer

Yeah, those games do have DX options so this isn't a show stopper thankfully. The only bummer is that Vulkan (for me) provided a noticeable FPS increase. Just for information I did test installing versions one at a time to find in which build it broke. Vulcan stopped working for me starting at 451.48. Which is interesting because that is when DX12 ultimate support and gpu scheduling was added. Some of the more recent game releases (and updates) either force or strongly recommend the more recent broken drivers w.r.t Vulkan.

A51-06 · Answer

Weird. Never thought that a Update could break an API so badly.

Alienware

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