The Vulkan API has supported multiple GPUs since early March 2018 when version 1.1 was released. Since that time, developers have been working to incorporate multi-GPU support into their games, and we’re finally seeing the fruits of those labors with Rebellion’s Strange Brigade.
If you don’t know about Strange Brigade, it’s a monster-fighting adventure game set in 1930’s Egypt. It offers a third-person perspective and allows you to complete quests alone, or with a 2- to 4-player online co-op mode.
With the announcement of Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition 18.8.2, AMD is delivering on the promise of incredible multi-GPU performance scaling. In fact, in Strange Brigade, we’re witnessing nearly perfect scaling using the Vulkan Ultra Preset when running at 4K. With just a single Radeon RX Vega 56 (8GB), performance is locked in at 53.8 frames per second. However, with multi-GPU enabled (2x Radeon RX Vega 56), that figure jumps to 102.3 fps, representing a 1.9x uplift.
“The Vulkan API substantially reduces ‘API overhead’, the background work a CPU does to interpret what a game asks of the hardware,” writes AMD’s Anna Fieger. “Enabling meaningful features, performance, and image quality, Vulkan exposes GPU hardware features that wouldn’t ordinarily be accessible through OpenGL.”
But multi-GPU support isn’t all that developer Rebellion has cooked up with Radeon Software 18.8.2. With Strange Brigade, Async Compute has been enabled, allowing for a 6 percent performance improvement with the Radeon RX Vega 56 using the DirectX 12 Ultra Preset at 4K. In this case, AMD and Rebellion indicate the performance rose from 50.8 fps to 53.9 fps.
Strange Brigade may be the first game to support multi-GPU scaling with Vulkan, but it hopefully won’t be the last.
