Vulkan Will Support Multiple GPUs Only in Windows 10

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trparky said:
Change is a part of life. Either deal with it or... hell, I don't know.


That's because the software industry as a whole, not just Microsoft, has moved to a rapid deployment process in which things change fast instead of every ten years.


Again, the software industry as a whole has moved to this kind of deployment strategy. Apple does it, Google does it, Mozilla does it, they all do it.

See Waterfall Development and Agile Development to see what I mean. And then we have the comparison between the two development methods.
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Oooh Buzzwords! What a load of horseshit. I've barely started reading and I want to throw something. From their description of the problems with 'Waterfall' development:

POOR QUALITY First off, when the project starts to run out of time and money, testing is the only phase left. This means good projects are forced to cut testing short and quality suffers.
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Uh, cutting testing is exactly what Microsoft has done under this 'Agile' system.

Here's a real translation of the marketing BS: 'We laid off a substantial portion of our Windows team to save money and we will be delivering a lower-quality product going forward. We own this market and we really don't care about your concerns.'
 
I would understand that kind of thinking if Microsoft were the only ones to implement this kind of development but others have as well. Google has, Apple has, Mozilla has also done it as well, a lot of companies have.
 
trparky said:
Change is a part of life. Either deal with it or... hell, I don't know.
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Oh as a gamer, I imagine I probably will switch to Windows 10 eventually, but I'll have to gut out everything I hate with 10, which is a long list. There's good change and there's bad change. Changing something only for its own sake is the path of stupidity. I was an early adopter of XP. It was honestly a breath of fresh air compared to Windows 98, which would ALWAYS crash for me, given a long enough time span. That added stability was overall a great change. My OS is a tool, not performance art. I want it to fulfill functions I need. If it ceases to do so, that's a bad change.

That's because the software industry as a whole, not just Microsoft, has moved to a rapid deployment process in which things change fast instead of every ten years.
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Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's beyond terrible. There are games from just a couple years ago that are literally unplayable now because they depended on central severs from the parent company because of their wonderful rapid changes plan. This didn't use to happen. The fact that I can play a game from 20 ago, but not many from 5 is farcical. Introducing vulnerabilities to my software is not a good change. At best it's TOLERATED, that's not the same as GOOD.

Again, the software industry as a whole has moved to this kind of deployment strategy. Apple does it, Google does it, Mozilla does it, they all do it.

See Waterfall Development and Agile Development to see what I mean. And then we have the comparison between the two development methods.
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I'm reminded of the classic "if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?" lesson. Apple can do whatever the hell it wants, they've never made anything I've been interested in and has traditionally relied on a cult mentality for their business. Google's made good changes and it's made awful changes. They have a de facto monopoly on streaming video and internet searches. Their model leaves me completely powerless either way, so... yay? Mozilla has competition to its products. You can disable their automatic updates. I can use an older copy if necessary. So I can use a different browser, or I can reign in theirs as I see fit. Those two factors alone put it in a completely territory than Windows 10.
 
oldmanbal said:
Since there is no market for MGPU, there is 0 incentive for a dev to put a single dollar into integrating MGPU into their game. Unless a mainstream console decides to go cheap and use hi yield, low cost low level gpus, instead of a standard low-midrange option, This isn't going to change. For Nvidia, SLI is just part of their drivers and should be supported as much as they have control over, short of paying off studios to implement it, however, on the studio, they DGAF about it.
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I think a lot of people are looking at this wrong. There is a market for MGPU, it's just not in the gaming industry.
 
yeah we're generally just discussing it for video gaming, but there are other uses that are explicitly designed for leveraging large clusters of GPU.
 
DPI said:
I don't buy the "agile" excuse in 10's case, because who cares what's trendy Microsoft isn't able make the software better or in any way innovative because of it. Everything has been a regression in Windows 10, a trail of botched patches and bugs getting through to GA releases every step of the way. You can't teach an old bureaucratic, dinosaur of a developer new agile tricks. All they've apparently done is used in as an excuse to lay off QA.

Bottom line just because agile is trendy, does not create in the consumer a sense of obligation to tolerate a shittier product while MS tries to figure out how to me-too in yet another industry trend.
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So I get the telemetry complaints but the idea it is unstable or slow is nonsense. I work with Windows 7 at work and use a Windows 10 PC at home I will take win10 any day of the week. It is significantly faster and manages resources significantly better. It is an all around more refined OS. Does this mean I like everything Microsoft is doing, absolutely not, but lets not pretend that under the hood it is not a solid OS>
 
DPI said:
In related news, Star Citizen dev has stated DirectX being dropped to focus on Vulkan exclusively. Love them or hate them, this is big news. The cracks in MS's API wall continue to widen as Windows 10 uptake remains stalled and developers don't want to restrict their user base to only one version of one OS.

https://www.neowin.net/news/star-citizen-plans-to-drop-directx-and-exclusively-use-vulkan-graphics-api
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Like all those games using OpenGL ended DX8, DX9, DX10, DX11... oh wait yeah they didn't. I am all for everyone going with open API but lets not kid ourselves DX is the industry standard and it will take a lot more than a small handful of Devs to switch ship before anything else becomes dominant.
 
trparky said:
Again, the software industry as a whole has moved to this kind of deployment strategy. Apple does it, Google does it, Mozilla does it, they all do it.
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Not really.

Apple and Google are constantly adding features, as a user of both products I really don't see them limiting user control over their own devices or implementing targeted advertising in the OS itself. Basically Apple and Google are constantly improving their operating systems while Microsoft are going backwards at a great rate of knots.
 
Presbytier said:
Like all those games using OpenGL ended DX8, DX9, DX10, DX11... oh wait yeah they didn't. I am all for everyone going with open API but lets not kid ourselves DX is the industry standard and it will take a lot more than a small handful of Devs to switch ship before anything else becomes dominant.
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Except OpenGL had issues that Vulkan is looking to resolve and for all intents and purposes appears to be showing more promise than OpenGL ever did, especially with DX12 floundering. Times change and there's nothing to state that the dominant platform will stay dominant forever, especially with the dominant platform making shitty decisions relating to the direction of their product.
 
Presbytier said:
Like all those games using OpenGL ended DX8, DX9, DX10, DX11... oh wait yeah they didn't. I am all for everyone going with open API but lets not kid ourselves DX is the industry standard and it will take a lot more than a small handful of Devs to switch ship before anything else becomes dominant.
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The Windows ecosystem wasn't a fragmented mess back then.

Presbytier said:
I work with Windows 7 at work and use a Windows 10 PC at home I will take win10 any day of the week. It is significantly faster and manages resources significantly better. It is an all around more refined OS.
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Bullshit. The performance differences between Windows versions have been negligible since NT 6.0.
 
Presbytier said:
Like all those games using OpenGL ended DX8, DX9, DX10, DX11... oh wait yeah they didn't. I am all for everyone going with open API but lets not kid ourselves DX is the industry standard and it will take a lot more than a small handful of Devs to switch ship before anything else becomes dominant.
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lets not kid ourselves... OpenGL is the industry standard... CAD will only ever go for OpenGL because of its conciseness. OpenGL is not tied to a specific hardware revision and could all be done on the CPU.
As the "industry standard for gaming" sure (only after some underhand tactics around DX8 and some bad management with the original custodian on OGL) ... but which one? DX9, 10, 11, 12 ... DX9 is the closest to the "industry standard" At each subsequent DX release it was artificially bolted to a specific windows version


Vulkan stands to reset this from the gaming perspective. Whether it can do it for the CAD industries has yet to be seen as so far it is all about speed and not about correctness SOMETHING Pixar, AutoCad, Aeospace, automotive will always have and DX cannot deliver
 
naib said:
lets not kid ourselves... OpenGL is the industry standard... CAD will only ever go for OpenGL because of its conciseness. OpenGL is not tied to a specific hardware revision and could all be done on the CPU.
As the "industry standard for gaming" sure (only after some underhand tactics around DX8 and some bad management with the original custodian on OGL) ... but which one? DX9, 10, 11, 12 ... DX9 is the closest to the "industry standard" At each subsequent DX release it was artificially bolted to a specific windows version
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I totally agree with this, the poor management decisions relating to OpenGL was a big contributor to the success of DirectX.
 
BulletDust said:
Except OpenGL had issues that Vulkan is looking to resolve and for all intents and purposes appears to be showing more promise than OpenGL ever did, especially with DX12 floundering. Times change and there's nothing to state that the dominant platform will stay dominant forever, especially with the dominant platform making shitty decisions relating to the direction of their product.
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Again to be clear I would love to see an open standard dominate but there are a quite a few more DX12 and DX11 titles on the docket then Vulkan at the moment.

naib said:
lets not kid ourselves... OpenGL is the industry standard... CAD will only ever go for OpenGL because of its conciseness. OpenGL is not tied to a specific hardware revision and could all be done on the CPU.
As the "industry standard for gaming" sure (only after some underhand tactics around DX8 and some bad management with the original custodian on OGL) ... but which one? DX9, 10, 11, 12 ... DX9 is the closest to the "industry standard" At each subsequent DX release it was artificially bolted to a specific windows version


Vulkan stands to reset this from the gaming perspective. Whether it can do it for the CAD industries has yet to be seen as so far it is all about speed and not about correctness SOMETHING Pixar, AutoCad, Aeospace, automotive will always have and DX cannot deliver
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I was specifically talking about gaming.

DeathFromBelow said:
Bullshit. The performance differences between Windows versions have been negligible since NT 6.0.
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Yeah there are differences and they are noticeable.
 
Presbytier said:
Again to be clear I would love to see an open standard dominate but there are a quite a few more DX12 and DX11 titles on the docket then Vulkan at the moment.
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I'd say they're competitively trading blows with no clear winner ATM. The issue is DX12 requires Windows 10, which no one likes. Whereas Vulkan runs on literally anything. Last time Microsoft dropped the ball like this was with Vista and DX10, but the management consortium's in charge of the OGL implementation at the time were so fragmented with stupid ideas than even in it's vulnerable state Microsoft still won. From what I see with Vulkan, Chronos has no intention of letting that happen again and they are pushing hard. Furthermore, this time it's MS making all the stupid decisions.

Don't get too confident on Microsoft's continued success. Times change.
 
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tetris42 said:
See, you don't get it. Say there's an update that happens to cause a major problem with your system in particular and it never gets patched up (something I've personally seen on Windows 7). What's your backup plan?
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I have been using Windows 10 on all of my personal PCs for almost two years now. Sure, updates can cause problems but there are generally workarounds. I've not personally experienced any major issues with updates in 10, not any more than prior versions of windows. But I am aware that they happen.

tetris42 said:
Another user, Dekoth-E I believe, depended on group policies on his system. Now they're gone. What if some feature you use disappears or is broken in an update and DOESN'T GET FIXED? As far as I can tell, it's not possible to have a backup plan for this scenario on Windows 10. That's a massive vulnerability to me and I'm not going to touch any OS where I can't control when and if it's modified. I do too much on my system to let Microsoft tinker with mine whenever they feel like.
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I've long argued that there should be better control over updating for consumer facing versions of Windows. These types of issues aren't a problem with enterprise 10 deployments and I think this type of control should be more generally available.

tetris42 said:
By saying people rejecting Windows 10 are thinking longer term, anyone on Windows 7 / 8 / Linux can guarantee how their computer will behave in the future if they want. True, some newer software and eventually hardware may not get proper support, but if you have things you need to do TODAY or have software from the past you depend on, you're set.

With Windows 10, NO ONE can give ANY guarantee how it's going to behave in 5, 10 years. Microsoft is constantly modifying it. I like things nice and stable, not perpetual betas. If what happens to your system is not of paramount concern and you can afford for it to have unforeseen issues, then sure, Windows 10 is very functional. If you DEPEND on your system to function the way you're accustomed to however, it's a nightmare.
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A huge part of a my devices behave revolves around the software they support. I'd have no problem using Linux, but right now regardless of how much control one has over it, it doesn't begin to behave anywhere the way I need for everything from work to gaming. I'm pretty sure VR headsets will work fine in future versions of Windows. Right now Linux VR is at the early developer stage and who knows what kind of support there's going to be for Linux VR?
 
heatlesssun said:
Fair enough. It's just that when someone spends this kind of money, preaching is pointless. Show me some data, that's all anyone would ask. Show me some metrics of Windows 7, 8.x and Linux distros across the things I do. For all of the Windows 10 haters out there, maybe you should tell Kyle and company to do testing of all of the latest things they do on something other than Windows 10. I've not seen any of the popular hardware sites test the 1080 Ti on Windows 7 or 8.x. Phronix did some testing under Ubuntu 17.04 but the only game that's remotely new was Deus Ex MD.

So call me a fanboy all you want. I'm more than happy to take the hit IF YOU HAVE SOME DATA.
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i never called you a fanboy.

i was saying that your rig doesn't have any limitation on windows 7,8,8.1,or 10.
 
Master_shake_ said:
i never called you a fanboy.

i was saying that your rig doesn't have any limitation on windows 7,8,8.1,or 10.
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I've beat my head through walls trying to explain this simple concept to him, he isn't interested. Promoting Windows 10 is the only thing that interests him, everything else is just noise.
 
heatlesssun said:
The title of this thread is saying otherwise in that mGPU in Vulkan under Windows requires Windows 10.
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you don't even have hard evidence that multi-gpu even works on vulkan.

right now multi-gpu is a waste on windows 10 in dx12 games, except for ashes it actually does something.

so currently today right now in march in 2017 your computer has no limitation on 7,8,8.1 and 10 as far as windows is concerned.
 
Master_shake_ said:
you don't even have hard evidence that multi-gpu even works on vulkan.

right now multi-gpu is a waste on windows 10 in dx12 games, except for ashes it actually does something.

so currently today right now in march in 2017 your computer has no limitation on 7,8,8.1 and 10 as far as windows is concerned.
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Furthermore, conventional DX11 and SLI is still supported of which DX12 and mGPU offers no real game changing advantage....
 
Master_shake_ said:
you don't even have hard evidence that multi-gpu even works on vulkan.

right now multi-gpu is a waste on windows 10 in dx12 games, except for ashes it actually does something.

so currently today right now in march in 2017 your computer has no limitation on 7,8,8.1 and 10 as far as windows is concerned.
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I didn't create this thread, OP pointed to a document that indicated that a Windows 10 only feature was need to support mGPU under Vulkan. Regardless, whatever new comes in for gaming, it's going to get support under 10, that's simply not true of 7 and 8.1 anymore. As for DX 12 mGPU scaling, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Sniper Elite 4 scale very well under DX 12.
 
jiminator said:
don't fuck with microsofts world domination through advertising plan
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This is the one thing I find baffling no OS company outside of Google has tried this and google is even seeing ad revenue begin to shrink and is switching to selling hardware amongst all the other business diversification plans on their docket. I really don't see how Microsoft makes money at this people don't buy stuff on the Windows Store, if they did Microsoft would be trumpeting it, and their hardware has been super slow in growing compared to Apple's dominance in the OEM hardware world. I don't want to get to the day where we won't be able to build custom windows PC and would need to buy the PC directly from them which really looks to be their end goal right now.
 
Presbytier said:
This is the one thing I find baffling no OS company outside of Google has tried this and google is even seeing ad revenue begin to shrink and is switching to selling hardware amongst all the other business diversification plans on their docket. I really don't see how Microsoft makes money at this people don't buy stuff on the Windows Store, if they did Microsoft would be trumpeting it, and their hardware has been super slow in growing compared to Apple's dominance in the OEM hardware world. I don't want to get to the day where we won't be able to build custom windows PC and would need to buy the PC directly from them which really looks to be their end goal right now.
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Bear in mind that as an OS Android does not pass on private metadata, Gapps contains the tracking software and you can run Android without Gapps. Furthermore, there is no targeted advertising in Android itself. Applications provide notifications which can be blocked, but as an OS Android does not advertise.
 
The update completely discredited that article by not making any sense at all.

The update: "Obviously in this article I’m talking about the Windows operating systems. From the looks of it, Linux will support multi-GPUs."

wtf?
 
DukenukemX said:
So what you're saying is that we should switch to Linux? I like the sound of that.


Seriously, we need EA and Blizzard to get on this. Where to fuck is my OverWatch on Linux Blizzard?
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LoL still hasn't even been ported to Linux yet. Sure you can use WINE but it's not 100% perfect and runs at about 30% of the speed that it does on Windows. If the devs of the most played game on Earth can't be bothered to make a Linux client then the narcissistic likes of Blizz/EA aren't going to either.
 
the update makes more sense, yeah it does take the developer to do some extra heavy lifting, but that is true of Dx12 and Vulkan in general.
 
Revdarian said:
the update makes more sense, yeah it does take the developer to do some extra heavy lifting, but that is true of Dx12 and Vulkan in general.
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Which is why all the complaining is more academic and principal of the thing as I don't expect a lot of developers to code in mgpu support as the demand just isn't there.
 
The whole concept is to remove multi GPU support at driver level as GPU manufacturers tend to drag their heels when it comes to multi GPU profiles, sadly developers aren't much better. I want to see mixed GPU support, I don't think that'll ever happen.

Bankie said:
LoL still hasn't even been ported to Linux yet. Sure you can use WINE but it's not 100% perfect and runs at about 30% of the speed that it does on Windows. If the devs of the most played game on Earth can't be bothered to make a Linux client then the narcissistic likes of Blizz/EA aren't going to either.
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Never say never, times change and it'd be nice to think Blizzard and EA will come around eventually. Just look at the link below for some interesting Linux gaming statistics, that's a market not to be ignored. I think Blizzard may come around eventually, EA may be a different story however.

https://hardforum.com/threads/a-snapshot-of-linux-gamers-just-one-year-ago.1927523/
 
BulletDust said:
The whole concept is to remove multi GPU support at driver level as GPU manufacturers tend to drag their heels when it comes to multi GPU profiles, sadly developers aren't much better. I want to see mixed GPU support, I don't think that'll ever happen.



Never say never, times change and it'd be nice to think Blizzard and EA will come around eventually. Just look at the link below for some interesting Linux gaming statistics, that's a market not to be ignored. I think Blizzard may come around eventually, EA may be a different story however.

https://hardforum.com/threads/a-snapshot-of-linux-gamers-just-one-year-ago.1927523/
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Those numbers aren't particularly helpful to your argument. Growth of Linux Gamers within Linux usage doesn't translate to huge gains since Linux usage is so small to begin with. I don't see the big players spending money on a minority of the minority.
 
Presbytier said:
Those numbers aren't particularly helpful to your argument. Growth of Linux Gamers within Linux usage doesn't translate to huge gains since Linux usage is so small to begin with. I don't see the big players spending money on a minority of the minority.
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Sooner or later, AAA games will be for the mobile first. It's inevitable imho. At which point, Linux could take off a lot easier for desktop PCs, as ports will be significantly easier than right now going from Windows->Linux.
 
Presbytier said:
Those numbers aren't particularly helpful to your argument. Growth of Linux Gamers within Linux usage doesn't translate to huge gains since Linux usage is so small to begin with. I don't see the big players spending money on a minority of the minority.
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We don't know just how many people use Linux, we have absolutely no idea. However 2% that we know of of global PC users is no small number and an untapped market, it's that simple.

Disagree if you want, I couldn't care less.
 
Nytegard said:
Sooner or later, AAA games will be for the mobile first. It's inevitable imho. At which point, Linux could take off a lot easier for desktop PCs, as ports will be significantly easier than right now going from Windows->Linux.
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If they use Vulkan they will be, but porting from mobile to Linux isn't as simple as you may assume.
 
BulletDust said:
We don't know just how many people use Linux, we have absolutely no idea. However 2% that we know of of global PC users is no small number and an untapped market, it's that simple.

Disagree if you want, I couldn't care less.
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My point was the market has allready decided it is not enough to warrant ports plain and simple; there are more macOS users and they hardly ever port to that as well.. This is not about bashing linux or linux users, but the reality is as of right now it does not appear to be a viable enough market to warrant porting for the majority of AAA developers.
 
Nytegard said:
Sooner or later, AAA games will be for the mobile first. It's inevitable imho. At which point, Linux could take off a lot easier for desktop PCs, as ports will be significantly easier than right now going from Windows->Linux.
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Yeah, because mobile users are known for spending $60 on new games with lots of depth and gameplay to them and not mostly one-off casual games with the occasional whale spending way too much on microtransactions...

I don't see it happening. They're different markets. This reminds me of the prophecies a few years back how tablets were going to overtake the PC and it would become irrelevant. In the future, everyone will do productivity work on their tablet. Yes, the mobile market is huge and will certainly siphon off some sales, but I just do not see them becoming the first and foremost for development of multi-million games as a whole.
 
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