The has been a bad rumor going around the Internet that Khronos Group‘s Vulkan API would not support multiple GPU rigs on versions of Windows prior to Windows 10. That rumor is wrong! This rumor start due to a slide froma GDC presentation.
Khronos Group confirmed that “the multi-GPU specification is very definitely NOT tied to Windows 10, and that “it is possible to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension on any desktop OS, including Windows 7, 8.x, and 10 and Linux.”
The is something that DirectX 12 API does not do. DirectX 12 is tied to Windows 10. So why the confusion over Vulkan? In short, it stemmed over a misunderstanding of slides presented at GDC.
The group also clarified that on Windows, the use of LDA mode to implement Vulkan multi-GPU functionality “is not strictly necessary,” though it does make things considerably easier and will probably be the preferred option for most developers. And to reiterate, when developers do use LDA mode, they’re not tied to Windows 10.
“LDA mode has been available on many versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and 8.x,” Khronos Group said.
This news could get more developers to choose Vulkan over DX12. I the folks making Star Citizen are dropping DirectX support and moving over toVulkan.
