Even though DirectX has already been around for a decade, developers are still relying on it to develop 'groundbreaking' games. Although it is possible to develop marvelous games on DirectX, it also comes with a drawback - degraded performance. However, games that are running on the newer Vulkan API perform far better than those running on the DirectX API. Popular games like Doom 2016, Wolfenstein Youngblood, and Rage 2, among others benefit dramatically from Vulkan API.
Recently, Rainbow Six Siege rolled out a Vulkan API update on PC and I took the time to test if the performance is any better in comparison to the game running on DirectX 11. I am not going to bore you with charts and benchmarks and will instead focus on a new feature added to Rainbow Six Siege that lets you decide how much performance you need at the cost of image quality.
Before you begin testing your system on Vulkan, you must first ensure whether you are launching the game on the DirectX 11 or Vulkan API. You can do so by going to your Steam library and launching Rainbow Six Siege from there. When launching the game, Steam will ask whether you want to launch the game with or without Vulkan support. Choose Vulkan and launch the game.
From the get to go, you'll experience smoother performance in general when playing Siege with Vulkan support. However, you can still make your performance smoother with a cool new feature now added to your graphics settings. Vulkan has introduced a feature called Dynamic Render Scaling to Rainbow Six Siege. This setting allows you to set the target frame rates you want to achieve and the game delivers it by dynamically scaling the render resolution. However, there is a caveat to using this feature: you'll have to enable anti-aliasing for it to work.
I tested the game on a relatively older machine, running on an i5 7500 and GTX 1060 6GB. I was easily able to achieve 120fps without any noticeable dip in image quality. However, I noticed that relaunching the game resets your target frame rates, asking you to set the target again, which can sometimes get annoying. I hope that Ubisoft will quickly fix this issue.
Overall, Vulkan is much more flexible than DirectX, and should make the game playing experience much smoother for Rainbow Six Siege fans the world over. Hopefully other game developers take note and implement Vulkan support in the future.
