Intel recently added official support for Vulkan to their Windows main driver line. I immediately wanted to test it in Dolphin, to compare performance to DX12, and loaded it up after doing a clean install of the driver post DDU removal of the old one.
Well, this did not go well at all. Thankfully I already had MSI Afterburner up and showing the log graphs with my selected monitored statistics, namely Pagefile and System RAM utilization.
Less than a second after launching my test game (Metroid Prime), RAM utilization spiked to 100% of my available memory, 16GB, and the Pagefile also shot up to 24GB (!) and at this point, I thought my computer froze. There was no further screen updates, and my mouse wasn't working. But my poor, poor HDD was chattering away like crazy, showing that the system was still in operation and performing tasks. I believe it was really trying to write 24GB to the HDD's pagefile, and the complete system freeze was because of the total flood of RAM usage crippling iGPU to 0 frames per second. After 20 seconds I did get a desktop frame update, yep 1 frame per 20 seconds, and the mouse moved location and all other dynamic elements updated in that one frame.
If you have a Skylake or Kaby Lake system and are running the integrated GPU, do NOT try using Vulkan on this new driver. I mean, if you're feeling dangerous and want to try it for science, go ahead. But be ready for a total system halt with your drive being thrashed heavily.
Well, this did not go well at all. Thankfully I already had MSI Afterburner up and showing the log graphs with my selected monitored statistics, namely Pagefile and System RAM utilization.
Less than a second after launching my test game (Metroid Prime), RAM utilization spiked to 100% of my available memory, 16GB, and the Pagefile also shot up to 24GB (!) and at this point, I thought my computer froze. There was no further screen updates, and my mouse wasn't working. But my poor, poor HDD was chattering away like crazy, showing that the system was still in operation and performing tasks. I believe it was really trying to write 24GB to the HDD's pagefile, and the complete system freeze was because of the total flood of RAM usage crippling iGPU to 0 frames per second. After 20 seconds I did get a desktop frame update, yep 1 frame per 20 seconds, and the mouse moved location and all other dynamic elements updated in that one frame.
If you have a Skylake or Kaby Lake system and are running the integrated GPU, do NOT try using Vulkan on this new driver. I mean, if you're feeling dangerous and want to try it for science, go ahead. But be ready for a total system halt with your drive being thrashed heavily.
CPU: AMD 7950x3D GPU: RTX 4090 Founder's Edition Mobo: ASUS B650E-F STRIX RAM: G-Skill 64GB DDR5 6000Mhz PSU: EVGA Supernova 850w Titanium Case: Coolermaster HAF X O/S: Windows 11 22H2 Pro x64