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Enable Vulkan on DOTA 2 with Quick Test

Gary September 13, 2019 How-To's & Guides

1

Vulkan is a new graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.

For more information about Vulkan, visit https://www.khronos.org/vulkan.

Requirements

1. Operating System – 64-bit Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 and Linux 64-bit

2. Vulkan Ready video card and driver

• AMD – Graphics Core Next (GCN) Based Cards with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3. Visit http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/technologies-gaming/vulkan for full details.
  
  • AMD Radeon R9 Series graphics
  • AMD Radeon R7 Series graphics
  • AMD Radeon R5 240 graphics
  • AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series graphics for OEM systems (HD 8570 and up)
  • AMD Radeon HD 8000M Series graphics for notebooks
  • AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics (HD 7730 and up)
  • AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series graphics for notebooks (HD 7730M and up)
  • AMD A4/A6/A8/A10-7000 Series APUs
  • AMD A6/A8/A10 PRO-7000 Series APUs
  • AMD A6/A8/A10/FX 8000 Series APUs
  • AMD E1/A4/A10 Micro-6000 Series APUs
  • AMD E1/E2/A4/A6/A8-6000 Series APUs
  • AMD A4-1200, A4-1300 and A6-1400 Series APUs
  • AMD E1-2000, E2-3000, A4-5000, A6-5000, and A4 Pro-3000 Series APUs

• nVidia – with Windows driver version 368.69 and later and Linux driver version 367.27 and later. Visit https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver for full details.
  • Quadro Series
  • Quadro Series (Notebooks)
  • GeForce 1000 Series
  • GeForce 900 Series
  • GeForce 700 Series
  • GeForce 600 Series
  • GeForce 900M Series (Notebooks)
  • GeForce 800M Series (Notebooks)
  • GeForce 700M Series (Notebooks)
  • GeForce 600M Series (Notebooks)

Steps How to Enable Vulkan on DOTA 2

1. Go to Steam LIBRARY, select Dota 2, download the “Dota 2 – Vulkan Support” on DLC section. The download size is about 300MB.

2. Right-click Dota 2 then click Properties.

3. Click SET LAUNCH OPTIONS.

4. Type “-vulkan -vconsole”. Remove other parameters like “-dx9 -dx11 -gl” to avoid conflicts.

Verify if Vulkan is Enabled

1. Run DOTA 2  then open the console and type “vulkan”. If vulkan commands start to show up, it means that Vulkan is now enabled.

2. Press Alt + Tab. Go to “\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\game\bin\win64 “. Run “vconsole2.exe”.

3. If you see “Vulkan Extension Enabled: VK_KHR_swapchain” , it means that Vulkan is enabled. The “shaders.cache” error line is expected on AMD cards.

Quick Test

We did a quick test with an Intel i5-3470, AMD Radeon HD7750 1GB, 8GB of RAM on 64-bit Windows 7 with Radeon Crimson 16.7.3 driver. We ran a replay and set DOTA 2 to the Best Looking preset and by typing in “fps_max 500” to console to unlock the fps. Surprisingly, enabling Vulkan will reduce the performance by 11 fps. This is not what Vulkan is supposed to do, but it is just a quick test and we cannot conclude that Vulkan is useless for DOTA 2.