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Introduction

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint was released in October of 2019.  In the last half-dozen months, this game has been very popular amidst gamers.  Ghost Recon Breakpoint is an online tactical shooter video game developed past Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft.  This game is the eleventh game in the Tom Clancy'due south Ghost Recon franchise and is a sequel to the 2017 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands.  Since its release, this game has had consistent patch updates and new content releases.  Just recently, it received a big update which gave the game an entirely new API path to run under.

Game Engine

Let'due south talk a little almost the gaming engine first, and and then we'll become into what the new patch brought so we can then test its performance.  The gaming engine this game uses is the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine which is based on DX11.  The AnvilNext gaming engine was developed by Ubisoft Montreal for varied platforms, including what we are testing today, the PC version of the game.  Other games that use this same engine are the Assassin'due south Creed games from Unity to Odyssey, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Rainbow Half-dozen Siege and of course Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Some notable features include Global Illumination with Volumetric applied science, Physically Based Rendering, larger landmasses, more objects, bigger buildings, improved AI.  1 notable inclusion is the use of AMD FidelityFX Sharpening in Ghost Recon Breakpoint.  This is a new AMD technology that can improve image quality at piddling to no price.  It can acuminate textures that get blurred past the use of temporal AA methods.  The newest characteristic to the game, which was just launched in patch Championship Update 2.0.0 on March 24th is support for the Vulkan API!  This is where the fun really begins.

Title Update 2.0.0 – Vulkan API on PC

When Ghost Recon Breakpoint released in Oct of 2019 it but supported the DX11 API.  In that location was no DX12 or other API back up.  However, we were all pleasantly surprised when information technology was announced the game would be getting an upgrade.  Later on five months of the game already being out, Title Update 2.0.0 added support for the much more modern and advanced Vulkan API.  It is interesting they chose Vulkan and not DX12.  This update was released on March 24thursday, just 2 weeks ago.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint API Selection

Delight read the article here about Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint Vulkan API on PC for the full data about this new API inclusion.  They also give you a choice, yous can nevertheless fire the game upwardly in DX11 if you want, or you can choose to launch the game in Vulkan mode instead.  We beloved that the choice is there still.


Vulkan API Improvements

The developers state: " APIs such equally Vulkan offers more than flexibility and the ability to piece of work more than closely with the hardware's capabilities, therefore requiring less CPU usage ."  And they proceed to say: " Despite DirectX 11 API being more 10 years old, it still delivers excellent operation just at the cost of high CPU processing ." They besides say: " Vulkan offers benefits that will reduce both CPU and GPU price while enabling u.s.a. to use more than modernistic GPU features that will bring exciting new things in the time to come ."

This sounds cracking, information technology's a way to better functioning, remove CPU bottlenecks, and provide a platform for adding even more modern graphics features in the future.  Talk about actually improving a game over its lifetime with such flexibility.  Information technology is groovy they are going there, and not simply leave it every bit is, but actually giving the game new improved life over the course of its life.

Some of the specific things the Vulkan API volition exist improving are things like improved texture streaming, dynamic buffer cache, and Async Compute back up.  Improved texture streaming uses defended transfer hardware in your GPU and should let improved smoothness at high-quality texture settings.  Dynamic buffer cache dynamic information is at present heavily optimized for multi-threaded usage which boosts CPU frame times while reducing memory fragmentation.  Async Compute, of course, allows more graphical piece of work in parallel reducing GPU frame times.

The PC system requirements for the game also do not modify, the aforementioned GPUs that worked before should still work.  Though you want to check for new drivers because both AMD and NVIDIA updated their drivers recently with Ghost Recon Breakpoint Vulkan API support.

Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components for xx+ years, educated in the fine art and method of the computer hardware review he brings feel, noesis, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented... More by Brent Justice