Basemark To Release Vulkan-specific GPU Benchmark For Mobile & PC In Q2 2016

Basemark, makers of popular mobile benchmarking software, has just announced that it will be releasing a new benchmark in the spring that will put Khronos’ new Vulkan graphics API to a good test. This is great to hear for a number of different reasons; the big one being that as a new API, being able to benchmark it via multiple different test suites will be important.

Vulkan is the successor to both OpenGL and OpenGL ES, and it brings with it two notable features. The first one is that it’s a low-level API, allowing game developers to avoid overhead that was present with most previous APIs. The second perk is that it’s cross-platform, which means that developers will be able to easier bring their games to Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and even mobile platforms. Take that, DirectX 12!

So far, support for Vulkan has been quite good. Mere days after its announcement, Valve jumped on board. At this past spring’s GDC, the company showed off an example of Dota 2 running on the API, not only proving how far along the API had come up to that point, but probably also how easy it is to port OpenGL titles over.

Back in August, Qualcomm revealed its Snapdragon 820 SoC with Adreno 530 GPU, and sure enough, it supports Vulkan. In fact, it’s mobile where Vulkan might make the biggest difference, because the hardware is much more modest versus what we get on the desktop. Also in August, Imagination Technologies showed off what was possible with Vulkan using a PowerVR chip. You can expect more animation on the screen without slowdown – a common demo for any low-level graphics API.

It’s clear that with all of this support, accurate benchmarks are going to be important. Basemark has a number of partners who now have the code to look at and will give their opinions. These companies include Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Rensas, and Imagination Technologies. Once the benchmark suits all parties and gets the a-OK, we’ll be close to seeing it get released.

Basemark says that once the Vulkan benchmark becomes available, it’ll be released for both PC and mobile platforms.